Weeks before the end of the regular-season football finale between Virginia and Virginia Tech, it was clear that the rival quarterbacks would be Brennan Armstrong for visiting UVa and Grant Wells for the Hokies.
Not only was the game canceled and the season ended in the wake of the Charlottesville shootings that ended the lives of three UVa football players, but Armstrong has since entered college football’s transfer portal and Wells’ future in Blacksburg is equally uncertain.
Wells began his college career at Marshall.
Both UVa and Tech have taken quarterbacks from the transfer portal since the end of the regular season.
UVa has added Tony Muskett, a graduate of West Springfield (Va.) High School who has started 23 games in parts of three seasons at Monmouth College, where he passed for more than 5,600 yards.
Muskett was a first-team All-Big South selection in 2021 before Monmouth moved to the Colonial Athletic Association this past season.
If Armstrong heads elsewhere, either to another college or to the pros, the most likely candidate to succeed him would be 2022 back-up Jay Woolfolk, who has shown promise but is also a top returning pitcher for the UVa baseball team.
UVa also has landed a promising receiver in Malik Washington, a Lawrenceville, Ga., product who had a team-leading 65 receptions for Northwestern this past season.
One of Muskett’s teammates at Monmouth, Ugo Obasi, began his career at UVa.
Daijon Parker, a 6-3, 300-pound offensive tackle, is headed to Virginia from Saginaw Valley State.
As for the Hokies, the portal produced Kyron Drones, a back-up quarterback for Baylor this past season. Drones, who played in parts of five games, has three seasons of eligibility remaining. He was a four-star (out of five stars) recruit coming out of high school.
According to the Baylor website, Drones had offers coming out of Pearland, Texas from Baylor, Auburn, Mississippi, TCU, Missouri and Georgia Tech.
Tech also has landed Old Dominion wide receiver Ali Jennings, who has 116 receptions for more than 2,000 yards over the past two seasons.
Tech fans might remember a former Hokies quarterback, Quincy Patterson, who was at Tech for parts of three seasons, transferred to North Dakota State and more recently was at Temple, where he was listed as a redshirt junior this past fall.
Staffing
It will be interesting to see what direction Virginia takes with the announcement that offensive line coach Garett Tujague, who had been serving as recruiting coordinator, has resigned and accepted a position at N.C. State, where he will be joined by former Cavalier associate Robert Anae.
Anae was the offensive coordinator at Syracuse this past season. … On another note, former Virginia Tech head coach Justin Fuente will serve as a radio analyst at the Sun Bowl. His ex-rival at UVa, Bronco Mendenhall, hosts the HeadCoachU podcast.