As the 2025 season looms just a month away, the Virginia football team opens preseason camp this week knowing that it is a critical period for the schedule ahead. The Cavaliers will feature at least 54 new players this season, accounting for approximately half of the roster, as Tony Elliott and his staff try to prove they can win at UVA.
Elliott enters his fourth season at the helm without a winning record on his head coaching resume and just six ACC wins across three seasons. That leaves a lot of fans and observers in ‘prove it’ mode as a new season approaches, though the offseason debate has been what ‘proving’ it would look like for this campaign. The Hoos have one of the easiest projected schedules among their Power 4 peers according to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) in its “remaining strength of schedule” ratings and that system currently gives UVA a 71.4% likelihood of winning at least six games based on its simulations. That has led to some setting a ‘successful’ floor as six wins while others think seven, eight, or more is the real gauge.
Regardless of where one falls on that scale, it’s the backdrop for the upcoming season. Elliott and company need to deliver toward those heightened expectations.
That’s how and why those 54 new players arrived during the offseason. A set of donations infused in the neighborhood of $30 million into the program, allowing Virginia to dive into the transfer portal market with a war chest. The Hoos turned that into 247Sports’ No. 26 transfer class with 31 players making the move to UVA and another (Nevada receiver Cortez Braham Jr., who received a preliminary injuction from a judge for an additional year of eligibility) showing interest even with camp days away.
Some players on that list drew a lot of attention. In some cases, the programs they left are a who’s who of college football - Alabama (defensive tackle Hunter Osborne), 2025 National Champion Ohio State (edge Mitchell Melton), Notre Dame (receiver Jayden Thomas). In others, a ton of collegiate production is on the board - quarterback Chandler Morris ( 3,774 yards passing and 31 TDs to tie for No. 4 nationally last season), running back Harrison Waylee (3,199 yards and 16 touchdowns rushing to date in college), and Fisher Camac (7.5 sacks ranked fourth in the Mountain West in 2025) are some examples there.
Something posted on social media by former Cavalier quarterback Kurt Benkert, however, may hold the key to how close this Virginia team can come to ‘proving it’ and winning more games this season.
Man I really miss UVA. We were so bad but we worked hard and tbh had a better record than our talent level should have. We had a few NFL guys but the depth drop off made it tough down the stretch.
When Bronco took over so many people transferred out that it made it so hard to…— Kurt Benkert (@KurtBenkert) July 28, 2025
Benkert wrote “the depth drop off made it tough down the stretch” and “In college I’d argue the core of the team is more important than the top players most times. You need a TEAM to win consistently in college football, not just a handful of good players.” Those statements point to the importance of depth and why a huge transfer portal class plus some unexpected returnees could help UVA, and by extension Elliott, bolster its chances this fall. Elliott himself calls it competitive depth, meaning multiple players capable of pushing for playing time at a position.
On offense, the Hoos have stacked 11 offensive linemen with previous starting experience. Two years ago, four of the starting five linemen underwent varying surgeries within a couple of weeks of the season’s final game. Having that many players with some significant playing time already should theoretically help reduce the need for players to battle through that type of situation.
At receiver, while there isn’t a clear-cut No. 1 production guy, UVA has four players with at least 750 career receiving yards and 4 or more touchdown catches. At running back, there are three guys with at least 698 rushing yards in the fold and two of them are at 1,800+ career yards. Morris has shown he can put up numbers at quarterback, but that spot and tight end are the spots with the least proven depth in terms of previous college production.
On defense, the line has a similar story to the offense. Virginia features eight players with previous starts plus five more players with some level of playing experience at defensive end and defensive tackle. Of those 13 players, four have made at least eight sacks in their career and four others have at least one sack. If you think back to some seasons over the last decade where UVA shifted to a 2-4-5 look due to available linemen, that type of depth could be beneficial.
The list in the secondary is long as well. One of the main focal points in the transfer portal, Virginia now has 10 players on the roster with previous starts. There are nine players with at least 20 tackles in their career and nine players with at least three passes defended among those 10.
Finally at linebacker, there are five players with starting experience. Three of those players have more than 100 tackles in their career, while a fourth has 70. Virginia only plays two linebackers at a time in most of its defensive schemes, but the depth behind the experienced grouping at the top features only one player with significant on-field time to date.
None of these little snippets include incoming freshmen or redshirt freshmen that didn’t get on the field at all last season. So there’s additional potential depth there too.
Overall, the big picture suggests that the UVA coaches have a roster with more options than in many previous seasons. This could help with practice competition, injury concerns, matchups, special teams, or other things that can be hard to address without depth. Of course, none of that guarantees having a better team or more wins.
Many of the incoming newcomers, which again is roughly half the roster, must learn new schemes, terminology, and expectations. The players still must build chemistry and work together. Some of these guys with starting experience won’t be starters, which means accepting a role with the same edge when they do get on the field.
That all brings it back to why this preseason carries such weight. The Cavaliers have a few weeks to try to put it together and then try to stack wins on the schedule. It comes with the backdrop of coaches trying to prove they can win (and potentially keep their jobs) and the influx of money, which adds a player locker room dynamic as well. Practice begins Wednesday as the Hoos take those first crucial steps for 2025.
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