Virginia football: 5 replacements for Bronco Mendenhall after surprise resignation

3. Jamey Chadwell (Coastal Carolina head coach)

The 2021 season was far from the same magical run Jamey Chadwell had with the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers last year but he’s still taken the program from relative obscurity and brought them into the national conversation for 2020 and heavily at the top of the Sun Belt again, even despite debilitating injuries, this past year.

Chadwell has been an offensive innovator that maximizes personnel and has done a fantastic job of, for lack of a better phrase, finding diamonds on the rough and developing them. That could play extremely well with the Cavaliers for the long term.

2. Will Healy (Charlotte head coach)

This could be a move that few people would see coming but would be potentially impactful for Virginia football. Healy has three years now at Charlotte after three years prior at Austin Peay in terms of head coaching experience. However, he’s taken relatively down programs and built them to being respectable, which speaks to his pedigree.

Healy, at just 36 years old, has the potential to be one of the next hot head coaching candidates that could, eventually, be destined to take a big-time Power 5 job. Before he gets to that point, though, and a stint at Virginia could be the next step and another instance where the Cavaliers would be getting ahead of the curve.

1. Dan Mullen (Former Florida head coach)

There’s a good chance that Dan Mullen is planning on taking some time off and simply living off the buyout money from Florida. However, the one thing that became clear with Mullen’s stint in Gainesville, especially when factoring in the totality of his résumé, is that he’s not capable of recruiting at the level required of an upper-tier Power 5 program but he remains an elite offensive mind and someone who can get a team to play above their talent level, which he showed at Mississippi State.

If there’s an opportunity to lure him out of his buyout bunker, Virginia football should jump at the opportunity to grab Mullen. He may not have been the guy for the Gators but his track record suggests he could bring great success to the Cavaliers.

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