Virginia isn’t 1-5 this season, and 4-12 in a season and a half under second-year coach Tony Elliott, because of what happened last Nov. 13.
Elliott, though, keeps using Nov. 13 as an excuse for why his team isn’t winning more games.
Is that fair, or exploitative, on Elliott’s part?
“They’ve had to persevere through, man, a ton of adversity. I think that, you know, most people know what’s on the surface, but you know, behind the scenes, just the things that these young men have had to persevere through, just extremely proud of them,” Elliott told reporters after UVA’s 27-13 win over William & Mary on Saturday, the Cavaliers’ first in the 2023 season, snapping an eight-game losing streak dating back almost a year.
The emotional fallout from last Nov. 13 will, no doubt, be with everyone who was part of the Virginia Football program when what happened happened for the rest of their lives.
This is the case for anybody who has lost a loved one, for whatever reason; and yes, it’s probably heightened for those who lose somebody in their youth, and then on top of that, heightened still more when that loss is the result of senseless, apparently random violence.
But the way Elliott keeps bringing up the events of last Nov. 13 in the context of his program’s on-the-field struggles this season is starting to feel a tiny bit disingenuous on the part of a coach who is very much on the hot seat here at the midpoint of his second season.
Virginia, at 1-5, with the lone win being over an FCS program, will not be favored in any of its final six games in 2023 – four of which have the ‘Hoos facing teams in this week’s AP Top 25 (#12 North Carolina, #14 Louisville, #17 Duke, #25 Miami).
The latter two of those schools, Duke and Miami, also happened to hire new coaches in the 2021 offseason – Duke landing Mike Elko, who has gone 13-5 since taking the reins in Durham, and Miami going with Mario Cristobal, who would still be unbeaten this year if he would have just called a kneeldown the other night.
As it stands at the moment, Elliott has led Virginia to four wins in 16 games, two of those wins coming against FCS teams, a third coming over an ODU team (on a last-second field goal) that won three games last year.
Virginia Football is barely a shadow of the program that Elliott inherited two years ago, and it’s entirely because of the moves Elliott has made since he took the job in the winter of 2021 – because he bungled the transition on offense, because he hasn’t been able to make any inroads in prep and transfer-portal recruiting.
And, bottom line, because 22 months in, he still hasn’t laid a foundation for what Virginia Football will be with Tony Elliott at the helm.
Two years before Carla Williams hired Elliott to replace Bronco Mendenhall, who she’d run out the door after Virginia faded with four straight losses following a 6-2 start in 2021, Mendenhall had the program in the Orange Bowl.
Now, we’re reduced to celebrating tough wins over an FCS team that threw exactly two passes that traveled 10-plus yards in the air, and was somehow still in a one-score game in the fourth quarter.
“Hey, I don’t care if some people can say it might not be pretty, but a win’s a win, and we needed a win,” Elliott told reporters after Saturday’s win.
“Obviously, the record, I mean, I know, nobody, trust me, nobody in our locker room, in this organization, right, feels excited or feels good about where we are, right,” Elliott said. “You got a group of folks that, man, realize the opportunities we didn’t take advantage of, man, and we want to make sure that we capitalize on the ones going forward.
“But really, it’s just confirmation for those guys in there, because they’ve worked extremely hard,” Elliott said. “As I said, there’s a ton of adversity that they’ve been through that has been seen publicly, and then there’s a lot of adversity that a lot of people don’t realize, and the fact that they show up every single day, right.”
No one is saying the kids in the Virginia locker room haven’t had to endure unspeakable adversity.
But Virginia was 3-7, with Elliott blowing up at his guys on the sidelines, and throwing them under the bus in press conferences, and a recruiting class that would rank 13th in the 14-team ACC on its way, before Nov. 13.
The 1-5 start to 2023 that could very well become 1-11 in a few weeks even if the Virginia kids play their asses off is a function of where the program was on Nov. 12, not the horrible, unthinkable tragedy that took three young men’s lives a day later.
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Chris Graham
