RollSpides

Everything UR football

May 11, 2026

May 2026 Update

Not much news once spring ball ends so it’s a good time to go over the recruiting map and overview where our 2026 roster comes from.

Roster update

Cameron Dawood | Wide Receiver – An additional walk-on for the 2026 roster, Dawood received a PWO offer in January and is now officially listed on the team website. The 5′ 9″ receiver from Michigan also played safety in high school.

That brings the Spiders’ total to 88 players for the 2026 campaign, a healthy number that features large freshman and sophomore classes.

Roster maps

Three things I want to show:

Overall roster map & trends
Concentration on states surrounding Virginia
Increased local Virginia presence

Overall roster map

93% of our roster comes from the (near) East Coast. Nothing surprising about that, and the regional breakdown continues to follow the trend I pointed out last year. Virginia is still our stronghold, comprising over 1/3 of the roster, with the northeast continuing to outpace southern states. Comparing the 2022 roster to 2026, we see a stronger emphasis on Virginia while keeping a solid northeast presence.

We saw this trend start to play out even before we joined the Patriot League and it has put us in a great spot for the future. Keeping 30%+ of our roster in the northeast region has us battling for recruits plenty of other Patriot schools want. Although we aren’t going south as often to grab new recruits that doesn’t mean we aren’t keeping a majority of our efforts centered around the Virginia area.

Pennsylvania -> North Carolina

58 of our 88 players (65% of our roster) come from four states: Virginia, bordering states Maryland & North Carolina, and Patriot League stronghold Pennsylvania (with Villanova’s addition, four of the 10 Patriot League members now reside in PA). While the general feel of our roster has slightly shifted away from the south, having 8+ players from three neighboring states shows our recruiting core remains intact.

We may have fewer players from Georgia/Florida and more from New England, however the core of Richmond recruiting remains rooted in these states. Based on plenty of early 2027 offers to northern VA, central VA, and North Carolina prospects, I would not expect that to change anytime soon. If you want a running list of any 2027 offers posted on social media, the guys on the UR message boards have a great thread going. SpiderNation.community.forum/threads/2027-football-offers

Virginia

As interesting as the north/south trends are, Virginia remains the heart of the Richmond Spiders. With 31 players making up over 1/3 of our roster, the homegrown Spiders continue to increase our local footprint.

The above heatmap shows just how concentrated we are on local recruits. 19 players are within an hour drive of campus, 2x the number compared to 2022, as our RVA emphasis in recent seasons is really paying off. Northern Virginia remains an area we always have a handful of guys from but this is the most local the Spiders have felt in a while.

Overall, I think the takeaway is to not get too focused on the northeastern shift. It’s a relevant detail, and it makes sense given our move to the Patriot League, however seeing our “core” states and RVA focus increase in recent years makes our roster composition feel incredibly solid. I’ve seen the coaches post more about recruiting other areas (Texas, for example) so it will be interesting to see how we blend new regions while maintaining our Virginia base.