New Virginia defensive ends coach Chris Slade has been to California, all over the Commonwealth of Virginia, back home to Atlanta, then back to Charlottesville.
“It’s just been, you know, crazy busy. I haven’t had a chance to really literally breathe,” said Slade, a two-time All-America at Virginia in the early 1990s who came back home to coach at his alma mater last month.
“I’ve fallen asleep more times with the TV watching me than me watching the TV at night,” Slade said. “But it’s been fun, you know. It’s a transition for me learning a lot as I go, just seriously on-the-job training.”
Slade got to know the new head coach, Tony Elliott, while Slade was coaching at Pace Academy, a prep school in the metro Atlanta area that he led to a state title in 2015.
Elliott was at Clemson, recruiting two players from Pace – Andrew Thomas, who ended up being the fourth pick of the 2020 NFL Draft, and Jamari Sawyer, who was the starting left tackle for Georgia’s national championship team.
“He was just a running backs coach at the time, and I had just gotten on board as the head coach at Pace, so we were both kind of newbies starting off,” Slade said. “We just clicked and had a bond, and we would sit and talk, and he would come to visit during a recruiting trip for an hour, we just talked 10 minutes football, the other 50 minutes, we talked about life and family and just anything, anything other than football. We just build that bond.”
Elliott recruited Thomas and Sawyer “pretty hard,” Slade said.
“The way he handled them, the way he treated them, the way he was even when they decided to go to Georgia, I knew he was a class act. He was interested in those guys’ well-being, not just getting those guys as football players,” Slade said.
Slade and Elliott maintained the connection forged through those recruiting talks over the years.
“You know, when a guy like sometimes these guys get too big for their britches, and they don’t remember the high school coaches, don’t remember people who helped them. I’ve seen him come up through the ranks, and he’s the same guy now that I’m working for him,” Slade said.
After Elliott got the job at Virginia, he began working his recruiting trail magic on Slade, hoping this time he could be successful getting the guy he wanted from Pace.
“We had some conversations about some former players that would be good for the program to come back to work, just what I thought about the program, did I think he would be a good fit, being a former player and an alum,” Slade said. “He was asking me questions, you know, and I never thought about it, because I didn’t think about the possibility of it. He just, you know, asked me, he said, I want to use you in some capacity to help me figure this whole thing out in Charlottesville. I don’t know if you want to coach, if you want to be a player personnel guy, we just talked about it, and I didn’t give any more thought after that.
“Then he called me up week or two later, and he’s like, hey, I want to offer you a job,” Slade said. “So, our conversations were more general at first, just, you know, he wanted my advice on UVA and the culture, and did I think he’d be a good fit, would the alumni guys embrace him, you know, how did I see him fitting in Charlottesville. And then after we talked, I told him I had stepped down from Pace, I said, if the opportunity came up, and you felt like I could help you in any capacity, you know, I would love to have a conversation. And that was it. And then he called me up a few weeks later, and that’s how I ended up there.”
Before saying yes, Slade conceded that he had to give some thought to returning to his alma mater, and changing up his comfortable post-NFL life in Atlanta.
“I had to really think about, you know, am I coming back to UVA just because it’s comfortable, and I know the school, and I want to coach football?” Slade said. “I didn’t come back because of that. I came back because I felt like this is the right time, and Tony would be a great guy to work with, and work for. I’m excited about being back.
“I’m back for a couple of reasons,” Slade said. “One is I want to compete, I want us to win. And I want to just continue to help young men flourish and get to their next goals. In high school, it was, I want to see the guys go to college, and now those guys who want to mature as young men, grow as men and go to the NFL, maybe help them prepare and get those guys where they want to be, you know, like those guys did for me.”
The challenge to the new defensive staff, under former Air Force defensive coordinator John Rudzinski, is there. The Virginia defense ranked 13th in the ACC in total yards per game (466.0) and 11th in points allowed (31.8), a key reason that a team with the league’s best offense finished 6-6.
“When I watched us play last few years, you know, we had no guys that can make plays,” Slade said. “We’ve always had a defensive lineman or somebody in the front seven that can change the complexity of the game in one play. I haven’t seen that in years. We’ve got to get bigger up front. Obviously, everybody is looking for length and size, especially on the edges.
“I tell you, Rud, Coach Rud, I think he’s going to be great for our defense,” Slade said. “He has a lot of good stuff. He did a great job, you know, those guys at Air Force always played hard. Go back and watch him. And he’ll be able to have, I think, no disrespect to Air Force, but I mean, he’ll have probably a little more talented athletes that you get to work with.
“We’ve just got to get those guys to play at the level of the Air Force players, with effort and desire and want to, then they will be OK. But we’ve got to get guys. I don’t care who we’ve got on the sideline coaching, you’ve got to have players. The players make the coach a whole lot better.”
Getting guys is the focus now, which is why Slade has been burning both ends of the candle since getting the job last month.
Along the way, he’s gotten to know Elliott better and better each road trip.
“Some head coaches walk around, and you know, they let you you’re the assistant, and he’s the head coach, because they tell you that, or they just have an air about them. I don’t sense that,” Slade said. “At the end of the day, obviously, he’s going to make all the final decisions, and we know he’s in charge. But he’s so humble. We went to California, and he would not let me drive. I was like, man, go be a head coach, let me drive, you sit over in the passenger seat. He’s like, No, I’m gonna drive. You talk to your, you know, your kids on the phone or whatever.
“You just don’t get that a lot of time from a coach,” Slade said. “They just plop in the passenger seat assuming you can always drive them around the whole trip, but he drove all around California, you know. And so, this is, you know, this is a sign of him being humble, and understanding that we’re all in this together. And, you know, you’ve got to be able to delegate. I mean, being a former head coach for 10 years, there’s certain things you want done a certain way, and you demand that, and you expect that from your staff. But you’ve also got to delegate and get opinions and ask questions and be able to take constructive criticism and be open to it.”
OK, though, but it may have been a bad experience on the road in the 757 that had Elliott wanting to drive Slade around California.
Elliott hinted to something involving not wanting to get in the passenger seat with Slade driving at a recent presser.
“I’m pretty sure he’s referring to a late night in Virginia Beach, going over one of those overpasses, and I kind of got out, well, not kind of, I went out of the lane a little bit,” Slade said. “You know, the boss had me driving for, like, six or seven hours that day, and I was a little tired, and I kind of went off a little bit. Woke him up, and french fries went flying, but we made it we made it to the Waterfront OK, though.”
Story by Chris Graham
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