Tony Elliott on this weekend’s must-win game for UVA: ‘It’s a 1-0 mentality’

UVA coach Tony Elliott is acknowledging what most of us have been saying about this weekend’s game with William & Mary – that it’s an absolute must-win.

“The message is going to be consistent. This is the biggest game of the season, go 1-0, focus on what we can control,” said Elliott, who, as you know, is trying to get his team into the win column for the first time in the 2023 season, after an 0-5 start.

Elliott, 3-12 in his two seasons at Virginia, has lost eight straight since a 16-9 win at Georgia Tech last October.

It’s been a minute since the good guys have come out on top.

On paper, you’d want to think that W&M, an FCS team coming off a 14-6 loss to Elon last week, would be a relatively safe W.

But the Tribe, even with the loss, is still ranked in the Top 10 nationally in FCS, on the heels of an 11-2 season a year ago, and under fifth-year head coach Mike London, who was the head coach at Virginia from 2010-2015, you know this is as big a game for that side as it is for the Virginia kids.

The one area of the game that I’ll be paying the most attention to: the Virginia D vs. the W&M ground game.

William & Mary is averaging 258.2 rushing yards per game, and had 307 yards on the ground in last week’s loss to Elon.

Virginia is allowing 183.0 rushing yards per game, and was gashed in last week’s 27-24 loss at Boston College for 203 yards.

The prescription for W&M to pull the upset is obvious: run the ball, eat up clock, shorten the game.

The pressure is almost entirely on the Virginia side, so the longer this one is a game, the more the pressure ratchets up on the guys in orange and blue.

The message from Elliott to his kids: “it’s a 1-0 mentality.”

“We’ve got to focus on what we can control. If we control the things we can control, we’re going to be in good position,” Elliott said. “So, we can’t start pressing because part of what you saw in the second half, especially for us offensively, was guys were pressing. They were trying to do a little bit too much, trying to do more than their job.

“When you do that, you lose your fundamentals, you lose your technique, and in essence, you feel like you’re getting your job done, but you’re really not getting your job done because you’re pressing too hard and playing outside the control.”