The ball sat on the Virginia 39-yard-line, its side held by the right hand of then sixth-year offensive lineman Drake Metcalf and its end resting on the hashmark closer to the Virginia sideline. Then-graduate quarterback Chandler Morris clapped — a crack of thunder beckoning the storm of Stanford defenders to come. The Cardinal defense brought pressure from the second level, sending a linebacker and three defensive linemen towards the Virginia helmsman. Well into his dropback, Morris drew contact from a Cardinal linebacker, barely escaping the possible six-yard loss.
But the signal-caller still found himself well behind the line of scrimmage. A cavalry of white jerseys and crimson pants chasing after him, he rolled right. Now merely trying to triage a down gone sour, Morris was forced out of bounds.
The play registered as a four-yard loss for the Cavaliers and a sack for Stanford. It forced a second-and-14 in the waning minutes of the third quarter. Virginia, however, still led by three scores. In the course of this Sept. 20 Cavalier victory, the play was almost entirely insignificant. Aside from one, largely unnoticed, detail.
Those eight seconds constituted Virginia’s first sack surrendered all season. Just four of 135 other FBS programs had not allowed a sack by that point in the season. It took four matchups, eight halves and over 220 minutes of game clock for an opponent to do to the Cavaliers what they did to opponents 31 times in 2025. Virginia’s offensive line was a brick wall.
Luckily for offensive coordinator Des Kitchings, that wall has lost very few bricks from a year ago. Fifth-year offensive lineman McKale Boley, sixth-year offensive lineman Noah Josey and now-seventh-year Metcalf will all return as starters to anchor the Cavalier unit. Boley and Josey will likely retain their spots at left tackle and left guard, respectively. Metcalf — spending most of his Virginia career as a right guard, despite playing interim center last year — is expected to change his primary role this season to the middle of the line.
To Metcalf’s right will be two names that may be familiar to Cavalier fans — though they did not see their first game action in orange and blue until Saturday’s affair with NC State — sixth-year offensive lineman Makilan Thomas and seventh-year offensive lineman Monroe Mills. Both transferred to Charlottesville prior to the 2025 season but suffered season-ending injuries before week one.
“They’re extremely motivated right now,” offensive line coach Joey Orck said. “I think they both feel like they’ve got a ton to prove.”
For Thomas, who previously spent four years at Arkansas State, the question is one of his ability to perform at the Power Four level. For Mills, it centers around gaining confidence in the health of his knee — what held him out in 2025. But, per Orck, the two are well-equipped to answer those questions.
“They’ve got a ton of things to prove to people,” Orck said. “To show how good they can be.”
The Cavalier offensive line is capable well beyond the starting five. Returners fifth-year Noah Hartsoe and third-year Ben York both played reinforcements for injured Virginia linemen in 2025 — and are well-equipped to do so again, if needed. Fifth-year and incoming transfer Ryan Brubaker brings valuable SEC experience as a backup. But Brubaker is one of only two transfers in the entire position group.
In an era of collegiate athletics that sees players collect jerseys like trading cards, roster turnover has become the norm. For most programs, each year means teaching the same scheme to a new group. The degree of continuity present within the Cavalier offensive line is thus uniquely valuable. And it positions the unit that anchored this team in 2025 to do so even more in the coming season.
Why did the line choose to stay intact?
“The hunger to chase some unfinished business,” general manager Justin Speros said. “We all know that we were just a series short of playing in that [College Football Playoff]. I think a lot of those guys that signed up to come back want to chase that.”
Should the offensive line’s 2026 performance mirror that of 2025, Virginia will be in good shape to do just that. But the Cavaliers’ 18 sacks allowed just a season ago only constitute half of the battle. Just as important is the unit responsible for almost twice that number — the defensive front.
If the Cavalier offensive line represents an anomaly in this era of college athletics, its defensive counterpart is a portrait of the standard. Though neither of Virginia’s two biggest defensive line departures are portal exits — defensive coordinator John Rudzinski’s sack leaders last season, Mitchell Melton and Daniel Rickert, both departed for shots at the NFL — the result is just the same.
Incoming transfer defensive ends fourth-year Matthew Fobbs-White, fifth-year Ezekiel Larry, sixth-year Justin Townsend and seventh-year Nnanna Anyanwu should fill some of the gaps left by Melton and Rickert. But those newcomers do not come without their accompanying questions.
Townsend, much like Rickert, recorded extensive success at the FCS level. He became the all-time career sack leader at Columbia before making the trip down to Charlottesville. But the similarities do not end there.
“[Townsend] brings a motor, similar to Rickert,” Coach Tony Elliott said. “He’s another guy that’s in the conversation to be a rotational guy for us.”
It is not just Townsend that displays shades of Rickert. A transfer from Yale, Larry led the Ivy League in sacks en route to a First Team all-conference selection. If that sounds familiar, it is because Rickert did the exact same for the Ohio Valley Conference-Big South in his final year at Tennessee Tech. But for both Larry and Townsend, their Ivy League roots pose an advantage.
“Those guys typically come in a little more mature,” Elliott said. “The situation that they’ve been through, it requires them to be. … It’s high academics and then you do football.”
That maturity will be crucial for a defensive line losing some of its greatest contributors. And though Larry — still nursing an injury — will not make his debut until mid-September at the earliest, he and Townsend could quickly prove to be hidden gems.
The Cavalier defensive line, however, is not losing all of its 2025 production. Fifth-year defensive end Fisher Camac highlights the returners, as he brings with him four and a half sacks from the year prior. At 6-foot-7, Camac is a force on the line — and after making a statement a few months ago in the spring game, the fifth-year will continue to occupy his 2025 edge spot. Pair Camac with returners fourth-year defensive tackle Jason Hammond, fourth-year defensive tackle Anthony Britton and third-year defensive end Jewett Hayes — also the author of an impressive spring game story — among others, and the Cavaliers should have plenty of depth on the defensive line.
But the bar is awfully high. Last season, Virginia recorded eight sacks before that fateful third-quarter Morris rollout out of bounds. With the depth and experience on both sides of the line that the Cavaliers have this year, Elliott and company will look to make it more.
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