UVA Football: Tony Elliott is trying to convince himself to stick with Anthony Colandrea

You can hear UVA Football coach Tony Elliott struggling with the call that he has to make with Anthony Colandrea, his sophomore starting quarterback, who has been struggling mightily, going back several weeks now.

Elliott, talking with reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, said he is splitting the first-team reps between Colandrea and grad senior backup Tony Muskett, though he is leaning toward putting Colandrea back behind center for Saturday’s game with #12 SMU (noon ET, ESPN2).

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ICYMI

• UVA Football: The role of the future in the late-season QB decision
• UVA Football: Elliott leaning toward Anthony Colandrea as starter at QB for SMU
• UVA Football: Tony Elliott has a decision to make as to who starts at QB
• UVA Football: Tony Muskett has to be the starter at QB going forward, doesn’t he?

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I’ve pored through Elliott’s comments regarding his QBs in the presser several times now, and the sense I’m getting is, he’s trying to talk himself into sticking with Colandrea, who, in his last three outings, has been plain not good – Colandrea is 40-of-73 through the air for 368 yards, one TD and seven INTs, and he hasn’t completed 60 percent or better of his pass attempts in a game since Virginia’s 43-24 win at Coastal Carolina way back in Week 4.

A couple of times in the presser, Elliott tried to minimize Colandrea’s truly awful outing in the 35-14 loss at #6 Notre Dame, in which Colandrea was 8-of-21 for 69 yards and three INTs, as a bad “three minutes” – referring to the disastrous end to the first half, in which Colandrea threw the three picks in the final 2:57 of game action.

“The first one, I know he probably wants that one back. He tried to force it with the safety sitting on the hash,” Elliott said, beginning the stand for his guy, which is admirable, honestly. “The other one he’s trying to make that throw to X (Xavier Brown). Really I’m jumping on X, too. It’s, like, X, don’t run back inside. When we coach our scramble drill, we get to the sideline, stay friendly with the quarterback, and don’t go back inside to even entice him to throw that ball. That’s probably the one there.

“Then the last one, again, we’re in two-minute situation. He’s trying to force the ball down the field. I think it was more of a situation of you have a young man in a game that he wants to make his impact. The team is kind of out of sorts a little bit, and he’s trying to go make a play,” Elliott said.

The problem there being, there weren’t plays to be made in any of the three situations.

It’s not Colandrea’s fault that his receivers weren’t getting open, that maybe his offensive coordinator, Des Kitchings, had a crappy game plan and was calling a bad game from that crappy game plan.

The INTs – one a fundamentally bad misread, the second a force, the third a combination of both – are rookie mistakes, which you shouldn’t be seeing from a guy with 16 career college starts.

Colandrea started six games as a true freshman in 2023, in two three-game spurts – Games 2, 3 and 4, then Games 10, 11 and 12.

The first run ended with Colandrea throwing three INTs in the 42-14 loss at Maryland and two picks in the 27-24 walk-off loss to NC State – for a total of five picks in 71 pass attempts.

Throwing in his relief appearance in the 45-17 loss to Georgia Tech in Game 9, in which Muskett was injured in the first quarter, Colandrea had three INTs in 142 passes in his second run as the #1 QB last season.

The frustrating thing for Elliott has to be the recognition that Colandrea, in the here and now, nearing the end of his first full season as the starter, is looking more like the true freshman starting a couple of weeks in than the guy who finished up strong and has significant experience from his play this season.

“He’s coming off of that, really, three minutes of bad football right there in the end of the second quarter, which warranted Tony an opportunity to go in there and finish out the second half,” Elliott said. “But also, too, I look at his body of work. He’s put us in position to win a lot of football games. Unfortunately, we came up short in a couple, but we also have won a couple because of the position he put us in.”

This, again, is Elliott trying to convince himself, more than trying to convince us.