With Colandrea headed to portal, UVA in market for 2 QBs

By Jerry Ratcliffe

As if Virginia football wasn’t in enough of a bind, now Tony Elliott is going to have to hit the transfer portal even harder in an attempt to find at least one quarterback, with the news that Anthony Colandrea is leaving.

Having been benched for the regular-season finale in Blacksburg last night, the most important game of the season, Colandrea told certain teammates that he intended to enter the transfer portal, which opens soon.

With Tony Muskett — who started ahead of Colandrea against Virginia Tech — out of eligibility, UVA’s roster essentially doesn’t have a quarterback with reasonable playing experience.

Gavin Frakes, who transferred to Virginia from New Mexico State during the offseason, started five games there in 2022. Grady Brosterhous, who has entered games mostly for the “Tush Push” quarterback sneaks and other short yardage situations is a former walk-on, along with freshmen walk-ons Boone Lourd and Alexander Brady. There are two incoming scholarship recruits at quarterback, Cole Greer and Bjorn Jurgensen.

Apparently not getting the start against Tech on Saturday night triggered Colandrea’s decision to enter the portal, which is completely understandable. Why start a guy 11 straight games and not in the finale?

Afterall, Colandrea did lead the Cavaliers to a 4-1 record to begin the season and beat nationally ranked and then-once-beaten Pitt on the road a few weeks ago for the fifth win.

Muskett played admirably against the Hokies in a 37-17 loss that didn’t seem that close.

“It was a tough evaluation because AC (Colandrea) got hit a bunch and the group around him didn’t help him as much as I would like to have seen,” Elliott said after his team finished the season 5-7, one win short of becoming bowl eligible. “I was looking at the last four weeks since the North Carolina game and we just haven’t had a great rhythm on offense, except for the Pittsburgh game.

“But we weren’t clicking on all cylinders and I knew it was going to be a tough environment up here. It was going to be cold and we needed to do something. I felt like to maybe give the offense a spark, and watching Tony late in games, you see that there was a little bit of a spark at times when he would come in in certain situations.”

Elliott said he prayed about it, talked to offensive coordinator Des Kitchings and quarterbacks coach Taylor Lamb and felt that the change was the best thing he could do to get the offense back in rhythm.

“There was nothing that AC did right or didn’t do,” Elliott said.

“He’s been hit so many times, but we wanted to get the ball out quick and do some different things, plus I have two freshmen running backs in there, so just a little bit more of a calming presence. Just looking at all the factors, I felt like that would have gave us a best chance.”

Heading into the Tech game, Virginia ranked next-to-last of all FBS teams in sacks allowed with 42. Colandrea was sacked 39 times, and according to Pro Football Focus analytics, those came on 151 pressures on 392 drop backs.

He also ranked No. 71 out of 185 Division I quarterbacks (FBS and FCS) with at least 10 pass attempts of 20 or more yards (in the air) with 15 completions.

After opening up the season against a couple of opponents that used soft coverage vs. Virginia, the better teams presented problems to UVA’s passing game, using more man-to-man coverage, which forced Colandrea to throw to tighter windows and gave Cavaliers receivers less space to work in, an adjustment that made the passing attack less effective.

Couple that with Virginia’s inability to establish much of a running game, making the offense more one-dimensional, and teams began to put more pressure on Colandrea.

While Colandrea was guilty of holding onto the ball too long, he also had the capability of extending plays with his feet and sometimes turned busted plays into big plays, either with his arm or by picking up yards on the scramble. He also was an effective runner on designed runs, particularly the quarterback draw.

Because of the lack of experience at the QB position on the roster, Elliott may have to bring in two from the transfer portal, and the competition for quality quarterbacks in the portal is fierce and often expensive via the NIL.

Couple that with the fact that it is extremely difficult for Virginia to bring in players (academically) who haven’t already earned a degree and Elliott’s challenge increases dramatically, often having to look at the Ivy League for potential players.

For the record, Colandrea, who hails from St. Petersburg, Fla., finished his two-year career ranked No. 8 in UVA history in 200-yard passing games with 11.

Colandrea played in 19 games, started 17, and completed 62.2 percent of his passes (352 of 566) with 20 interceptions and 26 touchdowns. He threw for 4,083 yards, including 2,125 yards this season when he passed for 13 TDs and was intercepted 11 times.