Here’s a quick read on your snow day updating the comings and goings of the transfer portal, along with where our roster currently stands and which position groups we may continue to target.

Transfer Portal

Departures

A total of 13 transfer portal entrants this offseason, with seven guys committed elsewhere and one returning.

Five going FBS, with two staying in the FCS. About what I expected, as most of our guys are good enough to make the jump to the FBS level, a sign that we continue to develop talent well. Two things stand out to me:

Camden Byrd – That’s an important “recruiting win” for the Spiders, keeping one of our own who looked around but loved the situation he was currently in. In an age where older talent is hard to come by in the FCS, finding ways to retain more experienced players remains paramount. I’m hopeful we can add another guy to this list soon, as despite not having an old roster (more below) we’ll have experience at some key areas.

Cornerbacks – That’s five cornerbacks who made starts for the Richmond leaving the program the last two years (Tomlinson, Graves, Stocker, Haskett, Fraser). A couple were graduates but we are really struggling to keep continuity in our secondary. Both Fraser and Haskett are underclassmen that would’ve been key pieces in 2026, so seeing both depart for less successful FCS schools is incredibly alarming. This is very different than losing graduate students or guys like Peyton Seelmann to a Power-4 school. Whatever the reasons/causes are, we have to address the secondary situation.

Additions

Krystian Williams – A transfer from Virginia Tech, Williams played his high school ball at Collegiate and has two years remaining. He was a DB at Tech but will move back to WR for us (he played both in high school). Based on social media activity the staff was quick to hunt for a receiver so I’m glad we have that checked off early.

Offers/other activity

Quiet in terms of our portal activity. Too quiet if you ask me. The Spiders intentionally signed a smaller high school class yet don’t seem overly aggressive in the portal. Keep in mind the Krystian Williams offer/visit wasn’t posted anywhere, so a few weeks from now my concerns may look foolish, however from the outside we seem slow out of the gate once again. We never want to be a school adding 10+ guys, which I feel is the correct approach, but picking our spots still means we can be active early. Thankfully we don’t have many starting spots to fill but that’s no reason to not dive in. Here’s how other familiar schools are doing (list is based on social media postings from official team accounts, so reliable but not perfect).

Keep in mind Holy Cross lost a bunch of guys, plus they were awful last year, so seeing them add double digits isn’t surprising. The top of the CAA has been more active, however outside of the Crusaders I’m glad the Spiders aren’t far behind the top of the Patriot. Ultimately we all wanted to see more than one addition given the 10,000+ players that entered the portal, so I’m hopeful a few pickups in the coming weeks change that sentiment.

Roster Overview

Freshmen additions

Brady Quist | Offensive Line | Benedictine – Quist committed to the Spiders in late December, a preferred walk-on that helps our numbers on the O-line and continues to develop our footprint with local high schools. Benedictine continues to be a spot we’re targeting so this is a nice pickup.

Kyle Bitsko | Kicker/Punter | Douglas Freeman High School – Another local product, Bitsko committed to the Spiders last week and gives us three kickers entering the season. I had kicker as a spot we needed to add a body so Bitsko likely rounds out our specialists needs for the upcoming season.

Current Roster

If the Spiders can get one more grad transfer to return, we only need five more guys to get into the high 80s. That’s a fine spot for us to sit but the pie chart does point out something glaring. Our total numbers will end up fine but our experience continues to decline. Right now we have just five players on the 2026 roster that are on their final year of eligibility. That’s great we’re playing young guys but our balance of youth/experience is leaning too heavy towards the youth. That’s why retaining older players is super important, even if they aren’t starters. With the Patriot League graduate transfer rule still in effect, “older player” retention becomes extra important. Guys like Cam Byrd and Carter Glassmyer coming back are huge not only for their on field performance but also for the experience and leadership they bring to a young locker room.

Targets

No better way to start 2026 than with a speculation disclaimer. These are 100% my predictions – the staff has not outlined a specific number or which groups we are prioritizing.

Entering the new year I thought 10 additions (both portal and adding to the ’26 freshmen class) was realistic. So far we have three, the two freshmen and one transfer I listed above. If we were to add that many, here’s my guess at how to spread them around.

Quarterback, Tight End, and Nickel I think we’re fine at. I’ll start listing nickel separately since it’s worth breaking out from LBs/DBs.

I think Running back has just three scholarship players, so another body would help.

Linebacker is mostly a numbers game, as I love our starters for ’26 but six total is slim.

Defensive backs have great numbers but an insane amount of youth. An older guy here would be nice. *due to how many guys changed positions last season, I held off on breaking out Corners v Safeties. I could see one even moving to nickel, so I’ll get a better handle on this during the Spring.*

Long snapper is in a good place with Wes Sharpe taking over, however you don’t want to only have one snapper. This is a great spot to add to our freshman class.

The big spots for me are O-line and DT. Offensive line makes sense – Coach Huesman has stated he prefers to have 16 or 17 linemen, so we need at least two more to get to that number. With the losses of Scott Hummel, Trey Gray, and Gabe Carbajal, our game experience has dropped off a cliff.

Defensive tackle is a tricky one, and this would purely be an experienced player. I love the class that redshirted this past season and with Robert Edwards joining them we have plenty of talent on the interior. However, Coach Wood has shown he wants to rotate in three DTs consistently, meaning DT3 still plays 40%+ of the snaps in a year. There’s a big difference between being a good freshman and being ready to handle that many snaps throughout a 12-game season. We saw what happens when you’re thin at defensive tackle, as Bucknell ran through us for four quarters the one game Matei Fitz was out.

If one of the young guys is ready that’s ideal – disregard this section and we’re all set. If the Spiders don’t feel a third DT is ready to go this year I could see us looking to pickup a transfer.

Next Post

Spring Break is the week of March 9th – 13th. We’ve started spring practice before that the past few seasons and I expect the same in 2026. My goal is to have a February roster update either the first or second week, then a quick Spring preview before practice #1.