Tony Elliott seems to think, and maybe Carla Williams thought this last December, that he can make Virginia a sort of Clemson North.
We’re only halfway through his first season in Charlottesville, but the early returns are making a mockery of those expectations.
And it’s not just the 2-4 record against a saw-f-f-f-f-t schedule.
Clemson plays its home games in front of 80,000 fans.
Virginia announced 38,000 for its Homecoming game, but if that many were actually there, I’ll eat my hat.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has built a recruiting juggernaut that again sits at the top of the ACC looking at next year’s Class of 2023, with 15 four-stars and two five-stars heading up what is right now the nation’s eighth-ranked class.
Elliott, amid much internally-generated social media fanfare over his visits to Virginia high schools to reconnect with coaches largely abandoned by his predecessor, Bronco Mendenhall, isn’t actually getting players out of those visits – his Class of 2023 currently ranks 13th in the ACC, and 68th nationally, with 15 fewer four-stars and two fewer five-stars than Swinney has gotten commitments from for next year.
At Clemson, you lose three games, like Swinney did last year, and the media and the fanbase think the game might be passing you by.
Elliott has lost three in the last three weeks, the last two in blowout fashion, and it’s not out of the realm of thinking that the Cavaliers could go the rest of the season not being favored going into another game.
Elliott seems to want us to believe that he inherited little from Mendenhall to build from, but while Mendenhall’s teams were .500 each of the past two years – 5-5 in the 2020 COVID-19 season, 6-6 last year – it’s not like he was fired, and nobody was calling for his head.
At the most, Williams may have thought about asking him to make some changes on his defensive staff, because that side of the ball is why last year’s team, which ranked third nationally in total offense, could only manage six wins.
Elliott came in guns-a-blazin’ with the mantra of deciding to fix everything, that which was broken, the defense, and the offense, which wasn’t broken, and didn’t need fixing.
Ask him why, and he’ll tell you, as he’s told reporters on several occasions the past weeks, and he’ll tell you it doesn’t matter what happened last year, that he’s trying to establish a new culture.
Which would be fine if he was talking in terms of a new culture about how the kids pull up their socks and tie their shoes.
I’m nodding in the sky at John Wooden there.
And actually, asked after Virginia’s ugly 34-17 loss to Louisville on Saturday about what he learned at Clemson that’s helping him deal with the recent bout of self-inflicted adversity, he kinda went there.
“I’m building a program, and guys are going to run on and off the field. We’re going to have an appreciation,” Elliott told reporters after Virginia’s ugly 34-17 loss to Louisville on Saturday, invoking his frustrations from last week that he pegged for being at the heart of the 38-17 loss at Duke, that some of his guys walked on and off the field for pregame warmups, setting the wrong tone.
“I told the guys in the locker room, if we go to eat as a team, you’re going to clean up after yourself. It’s nobody else’s job to clean up after yourself. And that’s where we have to grow because you know what, it creates an appreciation,” Elliott said.
“Once you have an appreciation, then you can transition to being internally motivated, not externally motivated, because the game is long. Energy is going to fade right from the stands, from the music, all that stuff is going to fade. What are you going to draw on? It’s that internal motivation, and it starts with an appreciation and a belief, and in that belief, you make a decision, and that’s what we’ve been talking about with this football team.”
That’s quite the word salad – pun about him talking about team meals not intended, but, works here – from a coach whose team’s struggles are the direct result not of guys not cleaning up after themselves after eating, but instead his decision to try to force the offensive players that he inherited into a system that they were not recruited to play in, and have obviously not been trained well by his staff to be able to play in.
“There’s a lot of expectations,” Elliott said, and he’s right, there were, coming into this season, though, those expectations are no more, given how the season is playing out.
“I have expectations. They have expectations, the fans have expectations, the administration has expectations of this program. But before you can reach your expectations, it starts with a decision. You have to decide to be successful. You have to decide that every single play, you’re going play to win, that you’re not going to take a play off.
“It’s that you’re going to decide that our core values, running on and off the field, dressing like a team, being disciplined, which we’re not doing a great job of right now. Ultimately, that’s we’re playing for. So, I have to do a better job as the head football coach of making sure that is clear within the organization. That’s what we coach to, and that’s the standard that we practice to, and that’s what either we’re going coach or we’re going to allow.
“That’s what I learned from Coach Swinney. And so, there’s some things right now that are being allowed that we have to eliminate.”
This is maybe a good time to remind you that Elliott was hired in December of last year, and that any things that are still being allowed that need to be eliminated probably should have been eliminated by now.
It doesn’t seem much to ask that out of a guy being paid $4.1 million to coach college kids on how to play a silly game.
I doubt Swinney left any of that out, but then, things aren’t going so hot for Brent Venables out at Oklahoma right now, either, so, maybe.
Share
Chris Graham
