Virginia Quarterback Gavin Frakes Enters the Transfer Portal

A 6'4", 235-pound quarterback from Norman, Oklahoma, Frakes only became a starting quarterback at the high school level in his senior year at Norman North High School, but racked up nearly 3,000 all-purpose yards and 32 total touchdowns in that senior season. Frakes initially committed to Princeton before flipping to New Mexico State, where he appeared in 11 games as a true freshman with five starts in 2022 and recorded 736 passing yards and four touchdowns to go along with 143 rushing yards and two more rushing touchdowns that season.

That ended up being the last time Frakes saw real action on the field in a college football game for the next two and a half years. In 2023, the starting quarterback job at New Mexico State went to Diego Pavia, who went on to win Conference USA Offensive Player of the Year as he led the Aggies to just their second 10-win season in program history. Frakes, meanwhile, did not play in a game and redshirted the season.

At the end of that 2023 campaign, New Mexico State head coach Jerry Kill stepped down and joined the Vanderbilt coaching staff as a consultant. Diego Pavia followed Kill to Vanderbilt and became the Commodores' starting quarterback. When Kill stepped down, Gavin Frakes entered the transfer portal and ultimately committed to Virginia.

Frakes understood the UVA quarterback situation when he committed, as the Cavaliers had two quarterbacks returning in 2024 who had each started six games in the previous season in Anthony Colandrea and Tony Muskett. Frakes was a solid third-string option in the QB room and did not see any action on the field this past fall.

With Colandrea transferring to UNLV and Muskett exhausting his eligibility, that left Frakes as the top quarterback in the room, albeit for a very brief period of time. Virginia went and snagged commitments from Nebraska transfer quarterback Daniel Kaelin, who redshirted his only season in Lincoln, and North Texas quarterback Chandler Morris, who came to Charlottesville to play his final season of eligibility as UVA's starting quarterback in 2025.

Designated once again as the likely third-stringer, Gavin Frakes remained at Virginia for spring practices and played in the spring game, completing seven of ten passes for 72 yards and this 10-yard touchdown strike to Kameron Courtney.

Frakes will graduate from the University of Virginia and will then understandably seek a new school where he can actually play in 2025.

Virginia's projected quarterback depth chart this season will likely read Chandler Morris as the starter and Daniel Kaelin as the backup. Beyond that, the Cavaliers have senior QB sneak specialist Grady Brosterhous, a pair of freshmen quarterbacks in Bjorn Jurgensen and Cole Geer, and sophomore walk-on Boone Lourd.