Welcome to a brand new series I’m rolling out this offseason, titled Welcome to Underdog Best Balls. The goal of this series is to dig into the new faces in the P4 that we’ll need to learn about as the best ball season draws nearer. The transfer portal has given us a plethora of options, some good, some bad. Let’s talk about Virginia receivers and the three incoming transfers from the MAC.
The Cavaliers are essentially out of an entire receiver room with Cam Ross graduated, Trell Harris to Oklahoma, Jahmal Edrine dealing with off-field issues, and Eli Wood stuck in the portal. Adding in other departures from the team, and you’re looking at least 312 of last year’s 470 targets (66%) that need to be replaced. Opportunity is there, and UVA isn’t afraid to look to the portal to find producers, as we saw last year with Harris and Edrine’s success in year 1.
Maybe the biggest question is: what exactly are we fighting for? Trell Harris finished as WR39 in 2025, and Malachi Fields finished as WR41 in 2024. In 2023, we saw a monster year from Malik Washington, who caught 111 passes for 1,384 yards and 9 touchdowns. He did this from the slot while Harris and Fields played out wide in their respective seasons.
Da’Shawn Martin, Kent State to Virginia
Martin played mainly out wide in 2025, catching 33 passes for 507 yards and four touchdowns for Kent State in 11 games. He had zero drops on 48 targets, an aDOT of 12.2 and 2.20 yards per route run. That aDOT and YPRR would have put him in the top two on last year’s Virginia team.
Watching Martin play, he’s not the big target that Fields and Harris were in prior seasons. He can pop the big play, though, like we saw Harris do multiple times last season. Martin had a 75-yarder against Florida State and a 59-yarder against Northern Illinois in 2025.
Jacquon Gibson, UMass to Virginia
In ten games last season, Gibson caught 63 passes for 616 yards. This was a pretty bleak passing attack that loved to force him to catch the football, garnering 95 total targets on the season. He dropped six of those passes and owned a 2.09 YPRR. He played 86.7% of his snaps out wide during his four years at UMass, so it would be expected that he takes over that same role at Virginia. Gibson’s frame is stockier than Martin’s, with Gibson being an inch shorter but 25 lbs. heavier than the Kent State transfer.
Tyson Davis, Central Michigan to Virginia
Davis doesn’t jump off the page when you see him play, and that shouldn’t surprise you. He was only the third highest producer on the Chippewas in 2025. Davis does feel like a good low-cost replacement for Cam Ross, though, as the slot guy. He had just one drop on 33 targets and had a 2.15 YPRR.
Ross, as a fifth-year player at James Madison, caught just 37 passes for 443 yards and had eight drops on 63 targets. His YPRR was a lowly 1.16 that year, so we’re getting a big step up with Davis in 2026. Ross didn’t turn into anything special, though. He finished 2025 as the WR111.
Draft Consideration
Even though not sexy, this role does feel worth attacking. And it’s one that’s going to be cheap all offseason long. The lack of name power in these incoming transfers and the fact that Beau Pribula is the quarterback are going to keep all three of their ADPs fairly late in drafts.
The fact that Malik Washington had such a big year in 2023 is why Davis is even worth being mentioned as a “last guy taken dart throw”. Otherwise, this does feel like a Martin vs Gibson battle. Martin has received more buzz from the Virginia football fans I follow on X, but we all know how that can be.
Without knowing more about ADP and spring camp news, I’m going to try to draft all three with Martin, then Gibson being drafted the most. And I’m likely to cap my overall ownership of these three to no more than 15-20% total.
