🏈 2025/26 Football Offseason Recruiting and Transfers

[Hoohoohoo]

We weren’t even getting visits though from the PSU decommits. Unless I’m mistaken.

Don’t want to distract from the success of this season, but the staff really have been poor HS recruiters.

[Jerome]

Already are in 2027, especially once Demarcus commits on Friday.

[lodger96]

Which is why I want us to find a spot for Dex. Whatever that is, just get him.

[4547Lambeth]

The 2026 kids mostly committed last summer when a sizable portion of the fanbase was putting Elliott and staff on the hot seat and needing a good season to stay and some were calling for his outright firing immediately after last season.

This was also before the football building opened and we had deficient facilities. Tony Elliott even mentioned it in his speech to Antonio Clary after the game, talking about him eating his lunch in a trailer in his own locker room.

What kid is going to commit to that situation?

[Hoohoohoo]

@4547Lambeth

What kid is going to commit to that situation?

I mean Maryland flipped one of our recruits with a lame duck coach. And is 41st in the country to our 90th.

Every year there’s a new excuse. The football operations center opened in 2024. That excuse is tired.

Lol even BC out recruited us.

[EmbracePaceUVA]

And every year fans move the goalposts on the staff.

[4547Lambeth]

I’m not saying the staff is doing a good job with HS recruiting. But Virginia hasn’t been the easiest place to recruit to the past few years. WRT guys flipping now or our staff’s inability to flip kids this fall in the midsts of a great year and VT, UNC, PSU et al falling apart, I don’t know. It’s not great.

[Stylesmajor]

Imagine complaining about anything football related right now. Lol in the middle of a dream season, talk of Morris possibly adding another year of eligibility, multi million dollar donations have been made, still fretting over HS players.

[MaineWahoo]

Nobody is expecting us to be like top 25 in recruiting. And everybody understands there have been limitations. But we’re currently ranked 91st on 247. That is awful.

For context, the only P4 programs ranked below us are Colorado (one four star), UCF (one four star), Oklahoma St (fired their coach), Nebraska (tiny class but two four stars) and Penn St (fired their coach). Literally every other P4 program is above us. We’re dead last in the ACC. And ranking by recruit quality instead of the cumulative total doesn’t change anything.

Anyway, yes, let’s hope 2027 goes great and so does the portal. The future looks brightish and the current season is awesome. But this isn’t really an OK level of high school recruiting no matter the context.

[4547Lambeth]

My bad on misremembering when the Hardie Center opened.

[Hoohoohoo]

Eh this is a thread about recruiting so gonna call it what it is. I’ve been pretty consistent over the years in my feelings and nothing today’s class has done to change it.

This year proved we can win without strong classes Just hard to sustain. Would like to see us get better at the recruiting part.

2023: 13/14 in the ACC, 65th composite rank

2024: 15/17 in the ACC, 93rd composite rank

2025: 13/17 in the ACC, 58th composite rank

2026: 17/17 in the ACC, 91st composite rank

[EmbracePaceUVA]

HS recruiting is one piece of the puzzle. Tony’s goal is to build a roster that can compete. I’d argue he has done that, regardless of what the 247 class rankings say.

Yes you can point to the cash infusion that helped with our transfer class but A) our staff is good at scouting transfers not just offering them more money than others, B) some of the transfers on this roster (Trell, Metcalf, Ennis) came before the gifts, and C) there shouldn’t be an expectation that we will suddenly lose our financial resources such that we can no longer attract portal talent.

Class size is a big factor in HS class rankings. We have an intentionally small class. We’ve also retained talent better than most P4 programs so we don’t have as much roster churn that requires bringing in huge classes every year.

[MaineWahoo]

@EmbracePaceUVA

HS recruiting is one piece of the puzzle

Exactly. It’s one piece of the puzzle. If it’s awful, it creates issues. You can work around those issues and periodically be ok, but if you want long term success, you want all the pieces to be trending in the right direction.

@EmbracePaceUVA

I’d argue he has done that, regardless of what the 247 class rankings say.

For one season. We’ve been pretty awful every other season. He was probably about to be fired this year if he didn’t produce a good season. Thank goodness he did, but it’s not like the other rosters he assembled in all the other years were competitive.

@EmbracePaceUVA

Class size is a big factor in HS class rankings. We have an intentionally small class

Even if you re-rank by recruit quality, so taking out class size as a factor, we’re still ranked badly and worst in the ACC.

Also, to be clear in terms of my own opinion, a bad recruiting class this year is by no means the end of the world, and if everything trends in the right direction in future classes and we have another great portal haul, it wont really matter much. But I do think this staff has been pretty poor at recruiting overall, and I’d personally be encouraged if they brought somebody on in the offseason who might help improve things in that area. But maybe with additional resources and momentum they’ll do better. Regardless it needs to improve - we can’t be near dead last in the ACC year after year and not have it catch up with us to some degree.

[StLouHoo]

@Hoohoohoo

weren’t even getting visits though from the PSU decommits.

No one was, they all blindly followed Franklin if he wanted them.

[Galileo24]

So, worst recruiting class in the ACC. We’re not going to be able to build a team through HS recruiting with the current staff. We’re going to have to repeat what we did last off season, buying transfers and hope the money keeps coming in.

I’m not in the camp of believing winning is going to dramatically change that. We may do modestly better in HS recruiting with consistent winning, but great recruiters recruit well from day one. Mediocre recruiters never do. When Bronco took the team to the Orange Bowl his recruiting still sucked and it wasn’t going to get any better.

If we can repeat what we did last off season, we can be competitive. We had some good fortune with the scheduling this time around so I wouldn’t anticipate another 10+ win season, but we can be competitive and be in bowl games, we just have to hope the big donors keep finding spare change in their pockets.

[norfolk_hoo]

I mean if yall really think we’re going to recruit this poorly, then we should probably fire Tony regardless of this season. Recruiting is going to be one of the better long term indicators of program strength in the long run.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s probably about to pick up now that we have adult facilities and a winning record

[UVAdrian]

Why are people worried that the money will continue to flow?

Rich people love spending money on college football. UVA has finally shown they like accepting money from rich people to pay for football. A lot of rich people went to college at UVA.

I don’t see how or why the money would stop.

[Papihoo]

247 has the ‘’27 class at 15. I’d let things play out a little longer that the staff can’t recruit. The success of this season seems to be attracting major interest from ‘27 & ‘28 kids.

[Hoohoohoo]

Fat Rat went to Maryland on an OV!

[StLouHoo]

@StLouHoo

Taking a look at needs going into the offseason, obviously with the caveat that return-vs-go decisions need to be made by a lot of guys. These decision include low-on-the-depth-chart guys who need to decide if they have a future, and older guys who have bonus eligibility remaining but may elect to move on, whether due to missing this past season with injury or just debating their appetite for a ~6th year.

Will knock out a couple positions at a time.

Moving on to wideout and tight end (jump to the referenced post for QB and RB).

Wide Receiver

Gone:

• Jayden Thomas
• Cam Ross

Eligible to Return:

• Jahmal Edrine - RS Sr (Medical waiver needed)
• Trell Harris - RS Sr
• Andre Greene - RS Sr
• Eli Wood - RS Sr
• TyLyric Coleman - RS Jr
• Suderian Harrison - RS Jr
• Kam Courtney - Jr
• Triston Ward - RS So
• Dillon Newton-Short - So
• Isaiah Robinson - So
• Josiah Abdullah - RS Fr

Incoming:

• Dylan Cope - Fr
• DaMari Carter - Fr
• Isaiah Harris - Fr
• Jack Rhodes - Fr

Needs: Unclear at this point, depends on who leaves in the Portal. If Edrine, Trell, and Courtney return, that’s our starting lineup outside of grabbing a can’t-miss stud. Mostly just looking to add a body or two for depth to replace any outbound transfers, keep the number around a dozen or so, especially if we can get some additional firepower for Special Teams.

Tight End

Gone:

• Sage Ennis

Eligible to Return:

• Dakota Twitty - RS Sr
• TeKai Kirby - RS Jr
• John Rogers - RS So
• Willem Thurber - RS Fr
• Justin Zames - RS Fr

Incoming:

• None

Needs: A lot depends on the confidence level in Twitty returning to form by next fall. Rogers looked promising as Ennis’ backup down the stretch, and could earn a bigger role. Have to see if Kirby feels jumped and seeks PT elsewhere, as well as seeing if we keep both Thurber and Zames in the fold. Expect to target replacements for any outbound transfers, but not sure if we go above five total unless a great option presents itself or there are additional injury concerns to backfill.

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