I’m one of many who wonder if Tony Elliott is not ready, and Carla Williams picked a shiny new guy rather than someone with HC experience. Not sure Anthony Poindexter would’ve been better, but Tony E has a lot to prove. Do you think Des Kitchings is gone after another terrible offense this season? How much leeway does Carla give Elliott? Three years? Four? What record keeps wolves at bay?
– Marc Weathersby
Lots to unpack here, but all are good topics for branches of conversation.
I’m not one to go back and relitigate the hiring of Tony Elliott. He was one of the most sought-after assistants out there, and seemed to have his pick of a number of good situations when he finally decided to take the job at Virginia.
Anthony Poindexter was never a serious candidate for the job. I’ll never get why my good friend and colleague, Jerry Ratcliffe, made that push for Dex. That was never going to happen, and it shouldn’t have happened.
The problem with Elliott, to me, isn’t that he wasn’t ready to be a Power 5 head coach; it’s how he was brought in.
All the talk from Elliott last spring, summer and fall about having to rebuild a culture tells us that he was hired by Williams with direction from her to tear things down and start over, which wasn’t at all necessary.
Bronco Mendenhall had the program in an Orange Bowl by Year 4, in 2019, and though the next two seasons had fallen back to .500 finishes, all that was needed to get things moving forward was a simple tweak – fix the defense.
We know now that Williams put pressure on Mendenhall to go in another direction with a new defensive coordinator, and he surprised her and everybody else by deciding to step down.
OK, so, but if the issue was, fix the defense, you could hire a defense-minded head coach, have him focus his efforts on that side of the ball, keep the offense as is, and build off what had been working.
Or you could do what Williams did – hire an offense-minded coach, have him overhaul everything, and basically reset to where things were when Mendenhall took over for Mike London in 2015.
Basically, Elliott could have kept things pretty much as is on offense in his Year 1, and with John Rudzinski bringing a quick fix to the defense, last year doesn’t play out like it did.
This year was going to be painful even under that scenario – we’d still be in need of a new QB, the wideouts were going to be on their way to the NFL – but Elliott would have at least had momentum in recruiting with the excitement of a winning season in his Year 1.
Now, there’s no momentum in recruiting, which ended up ranked 12th in the ACC this year.
There’s certainly no momentum from the fan base; we’re going to continue to be told that 40,000-plus are in attendance for the home games, but around 10,000 of those are going to be dressed, as they were last fall, as empty seats.
I think the best we can hope for this fall is maybe four wins, and in the eight losses, at least being competitive – don’t lose 49-14 in Nashville, figure out a way to beat JMU, don’t let Brennan Armstrong and Robert Anae run up the score on the Friday night in September, and damn it to hell, beat Tech.
Maybe pull an upset at UNC or Miami.
Be plucky. Give people some reason to think things are moving forward.
Even with that, 2024 has to show some actual progress in terms of wins and losses. Anything less than 6-6, and I think Elliott goes into 2025 on notice, and to be blunt, Williams does, too.
She orchestrated all of this, got the guy she wanted, and if things don’t work out, she shouldn’t be the person to fix the mess she would have, effectively, created.
To the question about Kitchings: he said this week that he’s “pissed” at how bad the offense was last year. I’m among those pissed that he still has a job given how bad the offense was last year.
Williams pressured Mendenhall to replace his defensive coordinator, which led to him quitting.
She needed to pressure Elliott to replace his offensive coordinator, whose previous two stints as an OC, at Vanderbilt and NC State, were each one-year-and-dones.
I think the problem with Virginia Football is more than Elliott. I think it starts at the top.
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Chris Graham
