Elliott impressed with his two transfer QBs

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Two new quarterbacks from the transfer portal are getting acclimated to Tony Elliott’s Virginia system, and the coach said after Monday’s practice that both are settling in quite nicely.

Daniel Kaelin is a 6-foot-3, 215-pound QB, who transferred to UVA from Nebraska and has four years of eligibility remaining. He was redshirted by the Cornhuskers last season as a 4-star recruit.

Chandler Morris, by contrast, is 24 years old, and is as old or older than at least five starting NFL quarterbacks. Virginia is his fourth school (Oklahoma, TCU, North Texas), and last season he passed for 3,771 yards and 31 touchdowns for the Mean Green, coached by his father, Eric Morris, considered one of the best offensive minds in the nation.

Eric Morris, by the way, was the guy who recruited Patrick Mahomes to Texas Tech.

Virginia’s Elliott beams at the prospect of both quarterbacks boosting the Cavaliers.

“The first day, you could kind of tell that they’re coming into a new system and things were moving fast,” Elliott said after Monday afternoon’s practice. “But I thought there was a huge jump between practice one and practice two. I thought they had a good day.”

Virginia’s spring practice was paused after a couple of days’ work due to spring break, with practices resuming Monday. Even though there’s been only a few sessions, Elliott has learned a few things about his two new QBs, but mostly Kaelin.

“Daniel moves much, much, much better than you may anticipate for a bigger guy,” Elliott said.

UVA’s coaches had watched high school game film of the Nebraska native and saw that he could run the football, but because he redshirted last season, there wasn’t any way to gauge his speed against college competition until they witnessed it this spring in Charlottesville. There also wasn’t much to go on to evaluate his passing skills until he got to Virginia.

“The ball jumps out of his hand, so you don’t get to see live evaluations unless they played a ton of football somewhere else,” Elliott said.

Chandler has played a ton of football, so Virginia knew exactly what it was getting from the golden-armed Texan.

“But what you didn’t see as much from him last year is that [North Texas] didn’t run him as much,” Elliott said. “But to watch him scoot around and move around, he’s got a lot of quickness to him and he’s not afraid to pull the ball down and run.

“It’s good for everybody to kind of see the moxie that he has, so it’s been fun to watch those guys just battle. And it’s made Gavin Frakes (who transferred in after the 2023 season) kind of elevate his level of play as well.”

Elliott believes the staff will see major strides by all the quarterbacks over the next four or five practices when the coaches will be on the sidelines rather than out on the field, and players will be in live action (although the QBs are off limits from contact).

“We’ll be able to see those guys kind of in an uncontrolled scrimmage-type situation,” the coach said.

While on-the-field evaluations are important, coaches are also observing the QBs off the field. Elliott said that you can look at the measurables, watch film, watch them throw, but it’s important to see how they conduct themselves in the locker room, how they display leadership, how they carry themselves in terms of commanding respect from their teammates.

“You can tell that both have great leadership skills, a little bit different,” Elliott said. “They’ve got different styles, but nonetheless very effective from a leadership standpoint, and that’s what’s been fun to watch.

“The coaches are going to be more on the X’s and O’s, but for me, it’s more about the big picture, looking at the chemistry, the cohesion, the leadership, what’s the identity of this group going to be. A lot of that is going to be driven by the quarterback.”