Virginia Football: Xavier Brown Named to Doak Walker Award Watchlist

Another day, another Virginia Cavalier named to an award watchlist.

Virginia’s Xavier Brown has been named a preseason candidate for the 2025 Doak Walker Award, the PwC SMU Athletic Forum announced Tuesday (Aug. 5). The Forum annually presents the award to the nation’s most outstanding college running back.

A Fourth Team Preseason All-ACC selection, according to Athlon Sports, Brown appeared in 11 games last year and finished second on the team in both rushing yards (488) and rushing yards per game (44.4). He had a breakout game in UVA’s 43-24 road win over Coastal Carolina, when he rushed for a career-high 171 yards on nine carries. Brown had two touchdowns – including the go-ahead score – in the Cavaliers’ 24-19 road triumph at No. 23 Pittsburgh, where he also rushed for a career-high 15 carries.

The PwC SMU Athletic Forum Board of Directors will name ten semifinalists in November, and three finalists, as voted on by the Doak Walker Award National Selection Committee, will also be announced in November. The committee will cast a second vote in December to determine the recipient. The National Selection Committee consists of past recipients, former NFL All-Pro and college All-America running backs, media members and selected special representatives. The recipient of the 2025 Doak Walker Award will be announced Dec. 12, 2024 live on The Home Depot College Football Awards.

Nov 9, 2024; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Virginia Cavaliers running back Xavier Brown (0) runs on his way to scoring a touchdown against the Pittsburgh Panthers during the third quarter at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images | Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

The award is named for SMU’s three-time All-America running back Doak Walker. Each Tuesday of this season, the PwC SMU Athletic Forum will once again announce a Doak Walker National Running Back of the week. University athletic departments nominate candidates for the award and can continue to do so through October.

Honoring the legends of sports for 36 years, the PwC SMU Athletic Forum celebrates outstanding success in athletics. Based in Dallas, the series features major figures from a variety of sports. The PwC SMU Athletic Forum includes four events and the prestigious Doak Walker Award Presentation Banquet.

The Doak Walker Award is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA), which encompasses college football’s most prestigious awards. The NCFAA’s 25 awards have honored more than 950 recipients since 1935. Visit NCFAA.org for more information.

The preseason media poll for the ACC was just released last week and Virginia was picked to finish 14th in the conference.

Clemson was the pick to win the ACC, garnering 167 first-place votes, while Miami was picked to finish second and got seven first-place votes.

Here are the full results of the preseason poll with first place votes in parentheses:

1. Clemson (167)

2. Miami (7)

3. SMU (2)

4. Georgia Tech (2)

5. Louisville

6. Duke

7. Florida State (4)

8. North Carolina

9. Pitt

10. NC State

11. Virginia Tech (1)

12 Syracuse

13. Boston College

14. Virginia

15. California

16. Wake Forest

17. Stanford

While there seems to be external doubt about where the Cavaliers are going to finish in the ACC, Cavaliers head coach Tony Elliott sounded very optimistic about his team at ACC media days:

"There's a lot of excitement surrounding this year's team. I absolutely love being around our young men. Another huge thank you to our administration, Dr. Williams, our donor base and staff for contributing the resources, the time and the effort to assemble the deepest and most complete roster that we've had in four seasons.

Speaking of the staff, we're one of only six Power Four programs to return our entire staff. This off-season we added 54 new players. 32 of those through the transfer portal and 22 of those being high school signees. I'd also like to add that our staff has gone about building to this point, and we've done it the right way. Three years ago on the front end we made a decision to honor the commitments of the young men that were committed to the previous staff. We also decided to honor the commitments of the young men that were currently on the roster, to embrace them and work alongside them until graduation.

Our current roster is very balanced. 46 percent of our players are upperclassmen and 54 percent are underclassmen. With the addition of the players that we added in the transfer portal, we added 850 games of college football experience.

We held a lead in nine of our 12 games last season, and we're hopeful that the added depth and experience will help us in working towards closing out games in which we have a lead.

As a staff and administration, we're hard at work building a competitive roster. The scholar athletes are hard at work on the grounds in the classroom. In the spring we set a football record with a 3.23 team GPA, and as a program we've been above a 3.0 GPA five of the seven semesters we've been on the grounds. In our seven semesters, we've averaged 77 members of our team accessing a 3.0 or Above Club each semester. This season we have seven home games, four of which are within the first five weeks, and our staff and players are excited to see our outstanding fan base pack Scott Stadium and create an environment that makes it the hardest for opposing teams to play in."

Virginia opened fall camp last week and their first game is at home against Coastal Carolina on Aug. 30th.

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