UVA Football coach Tony Elliott is hitching his wagon to the guy he told at the beginning of the summer was going to be his starting QB.
Seems somebody wants to be proven right.
Beware the rumblings of the money people, which are getting louder, there.
“If you’re going to change the quarterback, then I need to change a lot of other positions too, right? Because there’s a lot of guys that just didn’t do their job the way they’re capable of,” Elliott said Tuesday, throwing the rest of his offense under the bus in defense of the QB1, Beau Pribula, who was plain awful in last week’s 38-7 loss at Florida State.
ICYMI
The numbers don’t lie: Pribula was 14-of-32 for 168 yards, and diving down, wasn’t even passable in the short-passing game – just 8-of-14 on passes at or behind the line of scrimmage and less than 10 yards downfield, for 70 yards, with an average depth of throw on those balls at 1.9 yards per attempt.
He also was sacked 10 (!) times by an FSU defense that had recorded a total of seven sacks in its first four games.
Elliott on the sacks:
“Like, I mean, you say 10 sacks, is that all on the quarterback?”
Right back atcha, Coach: who is it on, then?
Credit to the reporter who took Elliott up on his “I need to change a lot of other positions” comment, leading Elliott to serve us up another of his word salads:
Good question, but I still believe we got the best offensive line in the league, right? We didn’t play well, right? And we didn’t, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We got what we need. And for 15 minutes of that game, when you watch the first 15 minutes of the game, we were good enough to win the game. Now, we didn’t make the plays that we needed to make, and they did. It changed the momentum, and we couldn’t get it flipped. But I think guys got to be challenged, for sure, to play well. We need our best players to play well. And then we need all of our supporting guys to do their job. They’ll be challenged.
But in terms of throwing, it out and saying that all is lost, I mean, we’re 1-1 in conference, right? We’re 3-2, and we got a ton of football left to play. We just got to take ownership, right, of it. And that’s what happens when you lose. There’s a high level of ownership and accountability. Where we got to get better is maintaining that edge when we’re having success, right? And even that carries over to the game. Always trying to preach, hey, it’s 0-0, score don’t matter. We’re not playing to a scoreboard. But also, too, you’re dealing with, you know, you travel 80 guys, I got 80 18- to 22-year-olds that I got to keep focused at all times.
So, no excuses. I’m not making any excuses, but man, I love my team. They show up every day. They love to work. My job is to lead them. So, if anything, I got to lead better, which I’m committed to doing. That’s how we’re going to approach it. And, man, we got a ton of football left. And if we play how we’re capable of playing, I think we can win every game on our schedule. And if that were to happen, I think we would love the result in the end.
So, that’s what our focus is.
Correction: that’s a word salad bar, not a word salad.
Bottom line: regarding a change at QB, Elliott made it clear – “not at this point considering it.”
“Really, it’s a reset for all of us just to understand the difference and just how hard it is to execute at a high level,” Elliott told reporters, noting, as he commonly does in these Tuesday pressers, that “yesterday was a great day of practice.”
“I’m excited to see how the guys come in today,” Elliott said. “It’s been a great level of accountability and ownership, coaches and players, to get better. But at this time, not a thought of changing quarterback.”
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Chris Graham
