Bronco announces Virginia’s captains for 2020

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Perhaps the greatest honor any athlete can receive is to be named a team captain. There are no trophies or certificates, usually not a ton of fanfare.

It’s all about earning the respect from teammates, and that means more to athletes than anything they can place on a shelf or on the wall.

Virginia’s football players honored four individuals as team captains after Friday night’s practice and Bronco Mendenhall announced the outcome of their selections.

The Cavaliers will be captained by these four players for the 2020 season: sophomore quarterback Brennan Armstrong; sixth-year defensive end Richard Burney; senior wide receiver Terrell Jana; and senior outside linebacker Charles Snowden.

UVA football announces its team captains for the 2020 season: https://t.co/WIYpTHGeyw

— JerryRatcliffe.Com (@hootie_dotcom) August 29, 2020

It’s almost expected that a team’s quarterback is one of the captains, and so it’s no surprise that Armstrong was one of the selections. Quarterbacks are usually natural leaders of the team, and Armstrong received a strong boost from his teammates by becoming one of the four captains.

Armstrong was just named the team’s starting QB on Thursday, so what an end of the week he’s having. He served as backup to a very durable and record-breaking Bryce Perkins the past two seasons, so he didn’t get a ton of playing time, appearing in 11 career games.

His career numbers are strong, considering the limited playing time he’s had: 17 of 25 passing for 258 yards and two touchdowns. He has rushed 16 times for 93 yards, and has already carved out a reputation as a physical runner.

One of his favorite targets will likely be Jana, who was one of five FBS receivers with 100-plus targets, a 70-percent catch rate and 10-plus yards per target last season when he came on strong midway through the season. Jana was second in the nation with the fewest drops with 100 targets. He had only one drop, which sounds great until one considers that former teammate Hasise Dubois had zero drops, making UVA the nation’s No. 1 team with the lowest drop rate.

Jana hauled in 74 receptions for 886 yards and three TDs, and was fourth in the ACC with the 74 catches, good enough for seventh on the Cavaliers’ career single-season list.

Burney, who was chosen to “Break the Rock” to end UVA’s training camp earlier in the week, will participate in a sixth year for the Cavaliers this season. He has played in 41 games over parts of five seasons. He started out as a tight end but converted to defensive end for the 2017 Military Bowl. He is coming off a season where he made 21 tackes, 2.5 tackles for loss and a sack.

Snowden was honorable mention All-ACC as a junior after posting 72 tackles, 11 tackles for loss, 5 sacks, four pass breakups and made a fumble recovery.

The Walter Camp foundation selected Snowden as the National Defensive Player of the Week for his performance against Old Dominion last season when he finished with 15 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss and two sacks against the Monarchs. As a sophomore in 2018, Snowden was the top linebacker in the country in the category of having nine pass breakups and 11 passes defended, using his 6-foot-7 frame to bat down several passes.

Snowden has been named to the Nagurski, Butkus and Bednarik preseason watch lists for 2020.