Virginia Athletics
Terry Heffernan Seeking Consistency from the UVA Offensive Line This Spring
College football games are won and lost in the trenches.
In the final years of the Bronco Mendenhall era, the offensive line was a position of strength for the Cavaliers as Garett Tujague sustained a group of six or seven quality offensive linemen who played a significant number of snaps together. Since the end of the 2021 season, however, the offensive line has been a revolving door for the Virginia football program.
After losing six offensive linemen with significant starting experience last offseason, UVA has had five more offensive linemen, including four who started at least five games last fall, exit the program since the end of the 2022 campaign. Just five offensive linemen who appeared in a game last season are set to return in 2023: Ty Furnish, McKale Boley, Jestus Johnson III, Noah Josey, and Colby McGhee.
The change also extended to the coaching level, as Garett Tujague departed from the program after seven years to take the offensive line coaching job at NC State. As the Cavaliers look to turn the page under new offensive line coach Terry Heffernan, one idea has become a critical theme for the UVA offensive line unit during spring ball. Consistency.
"What we seek now is consistency," Heffernan said after Virginia's 10th spring practice on Monday morning. "There's been plenty of guys that have had a good practice or two or three good practices. What I tell them is the guys that are going to play for us are guys we can trust. That's the No. 1 trait we're looking for is trust."
That Virginia's first game of the 2023 season, a "neutral" site matchup against Tennessee in Nashville, is such a significant challenge only gives added motivation for Heffernan to want to build trust that his offensive line unit will be able to handle that environment in the season opener.
"When I put you out there in the big environment that our first game is, I want to know the product that we're going to get," said Heffernan. "That's from built trust together, so that comes from consistency and showing up to work every single day."
Heffernan said that most of the offensive line has had solid practices, including the younger players, which excites him about the potential of this group to develop into a very capable unit. But the next step is to maintain that level of play in every practice, something that even the players will admit hasn't been the case so far in spring ball.
"We've had great practices, but we've also had very bad practices," said rising sophomore tackle McKale Boley. "Just consistency. We come out every day, we'll have a good practice and we've seen what we can do at practice... but we just gotta be consistent."
Junior center Ty Furnish, who suddenly finds himself as one of the veteran leaders of the group, attributes the inconsistency of the practice performances to the youth and inexperience of the offensive line unit.
"I think we have up and down days stemming from that young room," Furnish said. "I think when we do well, we look really good. And when we don't, we look terrible. We just gotta get that consistency down and I think we'll be good."
Of the 16 offensive linemen currently on the roster for spring ball, seven are sophomores, and very few have had significant real game playing experience. Still, Heffernan has been impressed with the strides the offensive line has made so far in spring practice, particularly in the area of pass protection.
"We've shown a lot of improvement. We've grown in our pass protection most recently," Heffernan said. "It's a young group and not a lot of people have played together. So you have to build that kind of bond and shared experience in pass protection to be able to pass off schemes and pick up blitzes and I think we've made a jump there."
Heffernan is confident that the offensive line will continue to progress especially as the players build chemistry by gaining experience playing alongside one another. He had quite the colorful metaphor to describe that process.
"Building an offensive line isn't like grilling or baking. It's kind of like a slow cooker. You got to have all of those ingredients around each other for a long time," said Heffernan. "And when you put them in the slow cooker in the morning, you might say that doesn't look very good. And then you come home from work and you smell it when you come in the kitchen and you're like, alright, now we're rolling."
See more Virginia football news and content: Virginia Football on Sports Illustrated
See more Virginia sports news and content: Virginia Cavaliers on Sports Illustrated
To stay up to date on all Virginia Cavaliers sports news, follow CavaliersNow on social media:
Facebook: @CavaliersNow
Twitter: @CavaliersNowFN
