Much has been, and will be, said about the remodeled roster that fueled Virginia’s extraordinary 2025 football season. Coach Tony Elliott and his staff evaluated the transfer market shrewdly, invested a cash infusion wisely and taught 100-plus athletes to sacrifice the individual for the collective.
That rare combination was central Saturday night as UVA closed the first 11-victory season in program history with a 13-7 Gator Bowl conquest of Missouri. But for all the newcomers contributed, throughout the year and against Mizzou, the essence of this squad was players and coaches who have been with Elliott from the 2022 start of his tenure.
Competing in his final college game, in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, no less, safety Antonio Clary accounted for seven tackles and a tipped pass that teammate Emmanuel Karnley intercepted. That third-quarter turnover, Missouri’s only giveaway on the evening, led directly to Will Bettridge’s second field goal.
“Being able to say that you’re the first to do something is special, and we’re able to say that for the rest of our lives,” Clary said Monday via Zoom, a Gator Bowl championship hat perched on his head.
Fourth-year receiver Eli Wood set new career-highs with four catches — all on third down! — for 71 yards. Sixth-year defensive tackle Jahmeer Carter helped limit the Tigers to a season-low 260 yards.
Fifth-year linebacker James Jackson had four tackles and teamed with Louisville transfer cornerback Devin Neal to break up Mizzou’s last-second pass into the end zone. This three weeks after his roughing-the-passer penalty compromised Virginia’s overtime chances against Duke in the ACC championship game.
Then there’s the offensive line. Alabama-Birmingham transfer center Brady Wilson is the group’s best, but UVA veterans McKale Boley, Noah Josey and Jack Witmer were indispensable, never more so than Saturday.
The Cavaliers averaged a scant 2.7 yards per rush against a top-shelf defensive front, but on the opening drive of the second half, they helped North Texas transfer Chandler Morris quarterback the drive of the year, a 19-play, 75-yard odyssey that melted 10:07 from the clock.
The line protected Morris on the march as he completed passes to convert a third-and-12, fourth-and-2, and fourth-and-3. The line plowed the way for freshman Xay Davis’s 3-yard gain on third-and-2 and Wyoming transfer Harrison Waylee’s 2-yard touchdown run.
’Twas a remarkable display of want-to.
Virginia head coach Tony Elliott walks the sideline against Missouri during the second quarter of a Gator Bowl NCAA college football game in Jacksonville, Fla., Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
“You’re trying to juggle the feel for the game (and) analytics,” Elliott said during the postgame news conference of his fourth-down gambits. “Then, once you started to get into the drive and you saw the temperament and demeanor of the guys on offense, it’s like, man, I wasn’t going to take the ball out of their hands. They were into it. They wanted to go for it in those situations.”
An XXL part of Virginia’s bravado was a defense that pitched a shutout for the final 56 minutes.
Yes, Missouri was without quarterback Beau Pribula (transfer portal), and yes, Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz inexplicably took All-America running back Ahmad Hardy off the field on a critical fourth-and-2. But that doesn’t diminish what defensive coordinator John Rudzinski and his coaches accomplished Saturday and for much of 2025.
For the season, UVA’s opponents averaged 19.6 points per game, the Cavaliers’ stingiest defense since 2006 (17.8 ppg) and a far cry from last year’s 28.8. Virginia’s third-down defense was even better, yielding a meager 28% conversion rate, second only to Texas A&M’s 22.9%.
Missouri converted 3 of 12 third downs Saturday (25%), and the only opponents to limit the Tigers to a lower percentage this season were College Football Playoff qualifiers Alabama and Oklahoma.
So credit to Rudzinski and assistants Chris Slade (ends), Kevin Downing (tackles) and Curome Cox (secondary), all of whom have been on staff the past four seasons.
Not to overlook the stability Elliott has forged on offense with coordinator Des Kitchings and assistants Taylor Lamb (quarterbacks), Keith Gaither (running backs) and the sage January 2023 addition of offensive line coach Terry Heffernan. Saturday was hardly the first time this offense sputtered, but embodied by Morris, the unit was clutch.
UVA’s 49.8% third-down conversion rate currently ranks 12th nationally, and against Mizzou, the Cavaliers went 13 of 23 (56.5%), largely because Morris was 10 of 10 passing for 119 yards on third down.
Morris petitioned the NCAA for an extra season of eligibility, and the staff would celebrate his return, but Saturday he sounded like an athlete saying farewell to college football. Asked by VirginiaSports.com’s Jeff White about leaving the program in a better place than he found it, Morris embraced the concept.
“For me, personally, that’s kind of how I’ve been raised,” he said. “Anytime you go somewhere, your whole goal is to leave it better than you found it. It means the world to me to be able to come to a university that has a ton of passion for their sports teams, and also, too, I’m just extremely grateful for the opportunity that I got to come to this awesome university and really get to experience it with everyone here.”
No matter Morris’ future, the legacies he and this team crafted will endure.
Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris throws against Missouri during the first quarter of the Gator Bowl NCAA college football game in Jacksonville, Fla., Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Morris joins Don Majkowski (1984), Scott Secules (’87), Mike Groh (’94) and Matt Schaub (2003) as the only Virginia quarterbacks to beat Virginia Tech and win a bowl in the same season.
Ranked 20th in the most recent Associated Press poll, the Cavaliers will finish among the top 25 for the first time since 2004 and, depending on voters’ whims, could attain the program’s highest year-end ranking since 1998 (No. 18) or 1995 (No. 16).
Texting with Elliott on Sunday, Clary set the bar.
“I told him there’s a new standard for UVA football,” Clary said. “Postseason is the floor now.”
Virginia was 11-23 in Elliott’s first three seasons, 11-3 this year. Moreover, the Cavaliers are the first ACC program ever to win 11 or more games on the heels of three consecutive losing seasons.
“You take guys from totally different backgrounds, different universities, different experiences, coming to Virginia,” Elliott said, “and then everybody putting their personal goals and agendas to the side to commit to the team and the overall mission of the team…
“It’s been really, really refreshing to me just to realize that in a landscape where there’s so many narratives that at the end of the day these are young people that want to win football games, and if you can get them to focus just on that and focus on each other and be a team, then you can have a special season like this year.”
No one bought into Elliott’s vision like Clary, who during seven years at UVA endured myriad injuries, nurtured program newcomers and navigated the 2022 horror of losing three teammates to gun violence.
“Everyone’s story is different, and God wrote this one,” Clary said. “I can’t even describe it, to be honest with you, because if you had told me three years ago that we would be in this position, I would have told you you were crazy.”
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
