Tony Elliott understands the lack of preseason love for his UVA Football squad. But he’s also torqued by it.
“We’re not gonna let that poll define us, and we darn sure ain’t gonna let people make us think less of ourselves, because, man, we know what we’re working towards, and man, I can’t wait for these guys to experience it, because it’s gonna be something awesome when they when they put it all together,” Elliott told reporters on Wednesday, addressing the preseason media poll that had come out earlier in the day, and pegged Virginia to finish 14th in the 17-team ACC.
ICYMI
News flash: this UVA Football team isn’t going to finish anywhere near 14th in the ACC this season.
The money folks gave Elliott an ungodly sum – $30 million – to work the transfer portal, and the portal class has been ranked in the Top 25, bringing in a top QB recruit, Chandler Morris, along with significant upgrades to the O and D lines, the defensive secondary, and the wide-receiver and running-back rooms.
ICYMI
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The hard part to forecasting college athletics in the here and now is that everybody seems to be starting from scratch in this era of everybody being a free agent every year.
“Pretty much everybody’s got a new team, like, you know, and so, I think some of it is, you got to go off of historical data, right, and then you try to look at the amount of returners, right, and then we got 54 new guys, right?” Elliott said.
It’s human nature for writers to forecast by slotting teams in where they’re supposed to fit, and Virginia, under Elliott, is supposed to fit toward the bottom of the ACC.
His first three teams won three, three and five games, and the 2024 team slumped to a 5-7 finish after a 4-1 start, as the lack of depth on the lines and the secondary got exposed in October and November as injuries began to mount.
Depth will not be an issue for the 2025 ‘Hoos, but it will take some time for folks on the outside to come to realize that.
ICYMI
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In the meantime, Elliott has something to pin to the bulletin board to use as extra motivation on one of those particularly hot and humid days in summer camp.
“I’ll show it to them at some point, I’ll mention it, and I’ll try and poke and, you know, prod them a little bit to get them fired up. But that’ll wear off quickly, because this is a long season. It’s a really, really long season. It’s a grueling season. And, man, we’re trying to play for a really long time, right? So, 12 is long, and we’re trying to go, you know, how many, 16, 17?” Elliott said.
Seventeen, incidentally, means, playing in Charlotte in December, getting into the CFP, and getting to the final game.
That’s a lofty goal for a program that is 11-23 in its last three seasons.
“The frustrating thing is that that it’s almost like they infer that they want me to come in and tell my team you can’t win a championship, you’re not good enough. First of all, champions behave like champions well before they’re champions, because to become a champion, you gotta think like one, and every champion that we celebrate, that’s how it started,” said Elliott, who was the offensive coordinator for two national champs down at Clemson, so you can say that he knows what he’s talking about on that one.
“I’m excited, because I think we got the best roster that we’ve had, and we’ve done some good things at times with less, and I’m excited to see this group have a little bit more, to see what we can do, and then at the end of the day, right, if we got more, and we underachieve. I’ll be the first one to tell you that we underachieved, alright, but I’m not going to come in here and tell these young men to work as hard as they can to be average or to see themselves as average,” Elliott said.
At the end of the day, the preseason poll is just that – “it’s preseason,” Elliott said.
“I tell the guys all the time, man, I ain’t worried about what they say in the preseason. The only poll that matters is the one that comes out at the end of the season, and that’s how we’re going to be judged. So, you can use it for motivation, but what I do know is I’ve been a part of the process of being at the top at the end, and here’s what it takes, boys,” Elliott said.
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Chris Graham
