UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 3, 2023

Tony Elliott

Press Conference

TONY ELLIOTT: Talking about a guy is, but he battled through. I thought he ran the ball hard. First half I thought he was pretty sharp throwing the ball. He's a competitor. He's a guy that needs to win going forward with him.

Q. Going into the year, Anthony Colandrea was a guy we didn't think we would see a ton of. Obviously the injury changed that. What did he get out of this experience, and how much more developed is he for it?

TONY ELLIOTT: He's learning a lot of lessons and gaining a lot of experience. First he's got game experience in some competitive situations. That's always tough when you have a young quarterback. If you have a sitting guy, let's say you have a young quarterback, when do you find time? A lot of times it's late in the game. He's been in there, in the fight, in some big time games, starting games.

He's gained experience as a starter. He's gained experience in the fourth quarter. He's gained experience just leading an offense as the guy. Also now too, he's gaining experience of learning how to also be a guy that prepares as a starter, not knowing if he's going to start the game or not.

Q. Obviously you thought he was a pretty good player since you recruited him. Until you get a guy into a game, coach him, call plays that work, call plays that don't work, how much of a better sense do you have of what you've got with him in the future now that you've had that experience?

TONY ELLIOTT: I think, in particular with him, what you saw is, whenever we were in the stadium, spring game, any of those like game-simulated situations, that meant he kind of showed up a little bit different.

Obviously that scenario, going back to your previous question where he's gaining experience, is being able to do it consistently in practice and not just when the lights come on. You don't know until you get them. You're projecting on every one of these young men that you sign. You see qualities and characteristics that you like, but you don't know until you get them in that situation.

I feel good in what we have in him, and I'm also excited about Tony having an opportunity to get out there and lead. Prior to this past game, he played 45 snaps in that first game. So really he doesn't have a huge body of work, but based off of what I saw the other night and then seeing how he's responding to some of the areas where he can improve, I'm really, really excited about his future as well.

The competition is going to make them both better. That's the beauty of having guys that can compete at a high level at the same position. You've got to manage the situation, just like you do at any other position. So far, based off of what we thought, we feel good about what we've got.

Now that we've seen a little bit of Tony's work and we've also seen a sample size that's encouraging with Anthony.

Q. How much of Saturday was a confidence builder in Tony, just in his health and in his ability?

TONY ELLIOTT: I think it was -- I don't know as much for him because for him to go out and play that way just tells me that's who he is. But as coaches, I was over there like a couple times, like okay, I know what you're dealing with with your shoulder, and he didn't run like he had any issues with his shoulder. He didn't throw like he had any issues with his shoulder.

Excited that he was able to come out, especially in the first half. Then also too, you've got to take the good with the bad. It's an opportunity for all of us as a program, but him in particular, to learn from some things we could have done better in the second half to get us over that hump, to be able to experience what these guys are so desperate to experience and that's that joy in the locker room after a victory.

Q. Of course going into William & Mary 0-5, some guys are probably desperate for a win, but how do you make sure they head into this game, not with a do or die mentality, just looking at this as just another game?

TONY ELLIOTT: Great question. From day one, I've said that every game is the biggest game of the season. As I told the guys yesterday, whether you win or lose, you've got 24 hours on Sunday to kind of enjoy it or kind of sulk in self-pity. Then when Monday comes, you've got to lock back in and focus on the next opponent because that is the biggest game of the season.

For us, it's a 1-0 mentality. We just need to focus on correcting the things we can correct as we look at the game. Got to credit Hafley and BC for doing a great job, especially in the second half. They came out, and they took it.

But 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. 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.

The message is going to be consistent. This is the biggest game of the season, go 1-0, focus on what we can control. If we do that and focus play after play after play after play, which is a really, really difficult thing in the game of football, play after play, falling in love with the mundane, the scoreboard will take care of itself.

Q. After the game, you were still seeing what the evaluation of Dre Walker and also Malcolm Greene. What's the timeline for those guys to be back?

TONY ELLIOTT: Don't have a timeline yet on Dre. Had an MRI last night, we're waiting on those results. Definitely wouldn't be available this week. Obviously with Malcolm's injury last week, he's in protocol. I don't even try to project on that. I just wait on him to heal and get back to where he needs to be and then pass all his testing, and then the medical folks say he's good to go.

Neither one of those guys will be available this week. Some of the other guys, you know Lex was back in practice. We'll see where he is, still obviously dealing with the foot. So that's kind of a day-to-day deal.

Aaron and Jah, I anticipate -- they got nicked up a little bit and kind of take a day or so to get back to full speed. I anticipate they'll be ready to go on Saturday. Smiley should be back ready to go on Saturday.

Xavier Brown is now at a point where he's back in full practice. He could be a guy that's available and ready to go. Mike Hollins will be day to day. He was with his ankle after the game.

I think those are the majority of the guys and where they stand.

Q. When you look at that secondary, especially that corner position, I know this is not where you want to be as far as depth, but how comfortable are the guys that are in there and available?

TONY ELLIOTT: Hey, next man up, and they've got to go. One thing is we can't make any excuses. But Will Simpkins is a guy that I was -- was and still am, but I haven't had a chance to see -- I was excited about him, and I think he's got a ton of ability. This will be a great opportunity for him to kind of seize the opportunity to get more reps.

Elijah Gaines is a guy that's got more versatility, so we'll move him back to corner to give us more depth there. And then try to figure out with the two young corners we have, if either one of them is close enough to being ready to where we can put them in the game and gain some experience.

Going into this week, you've got Coen, you've got Sam, guys that have played a lot of football. Then you've got Elijah who's played some football, and then Simpkins, who will be a young guy out there even though he's been with us for a couple of years.

Q. When you've been offensive coordinator, I think you've generally had really good offensive lines. So I don't know how much experience you had with that. Can you scheme your way to success when the blockers are struggling, or do you have to have kind of a level of performance with that group?

TONY ELLIOTT: I think in any position you have to have a level of performance. That's one thing we talk about on Mondays. My job is to evaluate everything, myself included, and all the coaches and players. So we have a standard performance, and every position has a winning grade. Every grade is going to be comprised of different components, whether it's technique, execution, assignment, effort, things of that nature. You've got to have a certain level of performance, a winning performance at every position.

Then as coaches, our job is to make sure that we put them in position schematically. When I look at the film, we did have some more free hitters. It was more a function of guys not knowing what to do, but it's doing it the way your technique requires you to do, and some of that's pressing, guys being too eager and abandoning their technique and not performing.

Obviously those guys are going to get scrutinized the most. Any time you're not moving the ball, more times than not, you're going to blame it on the OL, and it's not always their fault.

When you talk about protections, sometimes it's the quarterback's job to get the ball out because we are releasing five guys into the route, which means that we've got five guys in protection, and typically you have a six-man box. So any kind of pressure, you're hot. So it's not always the OL.

In my experience, it's a combination of putting them in the right position but then also, when you put them in position, they've got to win their one-on-one matchup, and that's where, in this game, where I felt like where we fell short is when we got to our one-on-one matchups and we were trying so hard, too hard, pressing, being too eager, that we abandoned our technique. If you don't bring your technique into a one-on-one battle, unless you're just superior in skill and size and speed, but when you're evenly matched, it's going to be the guy that plays with the proper technique.

So that's where we've got to get better up front. Just being around those guys yesterday and seeing their body language and kind of countenance on their face, they want to perform. They want to do better. They're eager for us as coaches. That's where we've got to improve.

Just as I evaluate the things that I've got to do better in the game, since we're talking about the players, I've got to do better in the fourth down. I took a chance on declining the penalty in that situation and thinking he was going to kick the long field goal. Luckily we got the interception. So I've got to do a better job in the fourth down situations.

Communications with substitutions on special teams, we've got to do a better job as coaches. We've got to do a better job of helping them with their fundamentals and figuring out ways to reach and teach each player so that, when they do get into a pressure situation, they can trust their technique and not abandon it and just try to get by and survive. We need to thrive, and that's where we've got to get better as coaches as well.

Q. Dating back to last year, it's six losses by three points or less. Is there a commonality in those games that you found as you kind of look back at how close you guys have been?

TONY ELLIOTT: Yeah, I don't know if there's a commonality other than -- this is kind of insight into what we're going to talk about today as a team when I meet with them at 1:00 here. We've got to have the courage to go take it. You've got to not shy away from it and expect someone else to make the play. You've got to have the courage to go and take it.

We're right there on the doorstep, man, but we've got to have the courage to step into the room. We can't wait on somebody else to invite us in, or we can't wait on the other team to make a mistake and give us the game. We have to go, and we have to go take it. That's a mindset.

As I look at where we are as a program, I think the guys have really, really identified with trying to get off to a fast start, so you've seen the last couple of games, man, the guys have gotten off to a fast start. We talk about the middle eight, so there's been games where we've been really good in the middle eight, where we win the last four minutes of the second quarter and the first four minutes of the third quarter.

And then this past week, we won half of it, right? So the first half, we won it. The second half, we didn't. Then we kind of started shooting ourselves in the foot. Offensively, short drives, couldn't convert. Defensively, couldn't get off the field.

Now we're sitting here in the fourth quarter, and we're just kind of waiting on somebody to make a play. Part of making that play is just trusting in yourself, not abandoning your technique, and making the routine play. I think some of the common things is we get to that point, and now we feel like we've got to hit the home run, and you don't have to hit the home run. Just take the base hit, and then base hits over base hits will add up to a collective run, so to speak, if we're using baseball terminology.

I just think that we're growing in a lot of areas, and that mindset of just being able to go finish, like completely finish, but doing it by focusing on yourself, that's an area where we've got to get better. Hopefully enough hard lessons -- as you point out, that many games by such a short margin. Hopefully we'll get to a point where we're tired of those tough lessons, and we just say, you know what, we're not waiting on anybody else. We're going to take it.

That's the next step, and that's where I've got to get better as a coach to figure out how to properly communicate that and instill that in the young men so that, when we're in those close games, man, we're just trusting and believing that we're going to make the play to win the game and not hoping it just goes our way.

Q. Do you have players in the locker room who you think can step up, will step up to make that step?

TONY ELLIOTT: I do. I do. Unfortunately, it's not always that person that's called upon to make the play, right? So it's all 11 have to have that mindset because you don't know which one-eleventh is going to be required to make that play. When you talk about football, you talk about cohesion, you talk about execution, what is it? It's 11 guys all doing their job at the same time.

You can go -- I don't care where you go in the country, it's going to be difficult to find 100 percent of the time all 11 guys doing exactly what they're supposed to do how they're coached to do it. It's football, and you're dealing with human beings, and nobody's perfect.

But that's where you have guys, and unfortunately, maybe those guys aren't the ones that are called on to make the play. So what I have to do is get, not just a few, but everybody believing and thinking that, hey, the play's coming my way. You look at it. You think about -- like I think about Michael Jordan. I think about Kobe Bryant. They absolutely wanted the ball in the last second of the game, and not everybody's like that.

But we play a sport where it's 11 of them out there, so we need to have a good majority of those guys with that mindset and they want to. It's just now a function of going in and living it and acting upon that want and turning it into actual productivity.

We talk a lot about it's not what you're capable of, but it's what you're willing to do. So we've got guys that are capable. Now we've just got to go do it.

Q. Do you know Mike, Coach London at all?

TONY ELLIOTT: I don't, no.

Q. There was a time when two African American coaches going head to head was a big story line. You already had that with Locks this year. Has that changed in the profession? Is that no longer a big deal, or do you still think it's significant when you have these matchups?

TONY ELLIOTT: First of all, to have the opportunity to walk out to midfield and shake hands with any coach at this level is a big deal. If you want to break out the Power 5, there's not many Power 5 jobs, right? So to be in this position at any Power 5 is extremely humbling, and it's a blessing. So that's the first level of respect that I'm going to have whenever I go out to midfield.

Then I'm interested to be able to chat a little bit about his journey. Obviously I've been a fan from afar, and I've listened to him talk and speak and have always been extremely impressed with the way he presents himself. Obviously now we have something in common that I won't have in common with a number of other coaches. He's coached at UVA. He's been here. So he knows the ins and outs of Charlottesville and the program and the university. So just to kind of hear his perspective on some things and his journey may be something that can help me along the way.

There will be a mutual respect, there's no question. Just, one, for what I talked about, how hard it is to even be in a position to be a head coach, whether it's a Power 5, Group of 5, FCS, doesn't matter. And we'll also have a good understanding of some of the challenges that may come with the position that we have.

Q. Two of your three coordinators here are African American coaches. Obviously you're going to hire the best person for the job because of the pressure that you guys are under, but is there a responsibility on your part to kind of help those coaches kind of come along and continue the progress there?

TONY ELLIOTT: I think all of us coaches have a responsibility in the profession. I remember when I first joined the profession back in, I guess it would have been 2006, times were different. There was that mutual respect, that responsibility for older coaches to help younger coaches. Then over time, things have changed. I think there's a lot of older coaches that still want that mindset, but I don't know if as many of the younger coaches really are as receptive because progression in the industry that's changed.

Guys are getting opportunities a lot quicker and earlier than per se 15 years ago. So it's kind of changed the dynamic. So I think that -- and I kind of lean towards the old school of feeling responsible for helping younger coaches. So for me, the color of our skin doesn't matter per se. I'm going to hire the individuals that are best fitted for the job, best fitted for the environment that I'm trying to create, best fitted for the University of Virginia, but I do feel a responsibility to help younger coaches.

Then I also feel a responsibility to anybody that does look like me to be able to, and I think that should be with anybody. You should have that perspective to want to help anybody that's in your profession.

Then obviously let's look at your family. Right? You're going to look at your family a little bit different than maybe you would a friend. You're still going to invest in that friend, but family is a little bit different. So that's kind of the perspective that I say that I look at it, I'm going to try to help anybody and everybody in the profession because what I've learned as a coach is we think we invent something and we want to kind of hold it, but actually it's all recycled.

And I learned that from Robbie Caldwell. He was the O-line coach at my previous stop for a long time. We were together 11 years. Let me tell you something. He's forgotten more football than I know just because he's been around for 40-something years, and he taught me that a lot of that is recycled. If it's recycled, then, man, we should share it. I think the game needs to be protected. The game needs to be shared, and it makes the game better, and it makes us better as coaches.

Q. On a completely unrelated front, I do want to ask you again about third and one. I know after NC State you told me the mindset is, if we're a shotgun team and we do it best, that's what we should do on the biggest plays.

TONY ELLIOTT: Heck, we tried it (laughter).

Q. Is there a part of you that wishes you could get under center at this point?

TONY ELLIOTT: I mean, there is a part. When we build the offense, we have a component of that. Back when we were having that conversation, obviously the quarterback was Colandrea, and somebody who doesn't quite have experience, you've got a little more experienced guy. We tried it, and we had it with Colandrea, but a little more apt to call it with Tony, a little bit older guy. We had it, and doggone it if we didn't line up offsides.

Right guard -- you crowd the ball. You want to teach them to crowd the ball. You give them the best chance to fundamentally be successful, and we overcrowd the ball, and we missed it.

In the course of the game -- Des and I talked about it -- in the third and one when we handed it to Malik, just trying to get it to the edge during the course of the game, and you're trying to establish the run game and it seems like you're not getting them covered up. You're not getting the push that you want. You see a little bit more nowadays people are mixing it up, going right at people, and then handing the speed sweep probably.

If you had the opportunity to do it over, you'd say, all right, let's just try and go right at them as opposed to go east-west, but it's a function of you're in the game and you got stuff that's working. You got stuff that's not working. So that was another opportunity.

It also gives us a chance to challenge our guys. In third and one situations, that's a critical situation. That's where your attention to detail, your footwork, your hand placement, your communication, your pad level, all of it has to be in unison working together. Or else if one-eleventh doesn't do the job, then you don't have a chance to convert.

Third and one and fourth and one, we're working on it. We're challenging our guys. Schematically, we're trying to figure out the best way to put them in position. But, yeah, that's an area where we've got to get better.

Q. You talk about guys like Kobe or MJ who want the ball in their hands at the end of the game. Tony seems like one of those guys, but when it doesn't go his way like it did on Saturday, how do you make sure he doesn't lose confidence and his chance to maybe later piece together a winning touchdown drive?

TONY ELLIOTT: Just keep working. Speaking of Kobe, I love to listen to just a lot of little excerpts of Kobe, and Kobe says -- I listened to a video earlier this morning just to try to figure out what to share with the team. He talked about it doesn't matter if you have success or you have failure, you go right back to work. In that case, yeah, we didn't get it done, but guess what, we're going to have a two-minute drill in practice tomorrow that you have an opportunity to try and go win the game in practice, and that's how you build the confidence. It's like you go right back at it. You don't stop. You try to block out any external distractions.

Hey, there's going to be times that you're going to -- probably, truth be told, like Jordan says, you're going to miss more shots than you make. He's probably missed more game winners than he's made, but you've got to keep shooting, you've got to keep going after it.

I don't think that Tony will lose any confidence, and we'll give him an opportunity this week in practice to lead one of those drives. Colandrea will get a chance to lead one of those drives in practice.

Next chance, hopefully you lean back on your training and go be successful. He knows exactly what he could have done better in that situation. I don't anticipate any issues confidence-wise with Tony.

Q. You talk about changing the mindset, not going for that home run. Some things are just ingrained in the player. So how do you go about changing, I guess, that mounting culture? How hard is it to change someone's thought process?

TONY ELLIOTT: First you've got to build a relationship to where they trust you, and then you have to understand how they think. Then you've got to put as many examples in front of them as possible to confirm that it's okay to change or that you should change. I think that's with anybody. If you just think about things that that you have ingrained in you, like from your childhood, from the way your parents raised you, it takes a little bit of time for you to have exposure.

Like perfect example and the reason I said this is because it came up the other night. We're eating dinner the night before, and usually you're going to have a lot of protein. They typically have chicken and steak, and the conversation came up. Like I ate well done steaks my whole life until I learned that it was okay not to eat well done steaks, and the players said the same thing, but I hadn't been exposed to anything other than a well done steak.

So it took like, all right, I'll try a little piece. Then I'm trying to convince myself in my mind that it's okay. Then over time, as I tried it more, I changed my perspective. Now don't bring me a well done steak. I want a medium well. So now I've got to work my way to medium, right? It's kind of like that.

So you have to expose them that it's okay to possibly think a different way. There's nothing wrong with the thought process necessarily that you have, but in order for you to take the next step, take the next progression, then there's a little bit of tweaking that you have to have in your mindset.

And I gave them the example, what's the difference between a .250 batter and a .350 batter in Major League Baseball? I asked them, how many hits a week do you think that is? They're like four, five. It's 1.7. So 1.7 more hits a week, and you go from being an average baseball player to a Hall of Famer. It's not much, but it's relationship, it's education.

Then what we need -- here's what we need. We just need confirmation. When we get that confirmation, then more guys will be apt to say, okay, let's speed this thing up.

Q. You should try Brazilian steakhouse next time.

TONY ELLIOTT: That one there, I've been there one time, and there's a lot of options. I'm a picky eater, and there's a lot of options. Actually, when I went on a visit, the home visit with Snoop, that's where we went. So we had fun.

Q. Des was saying he would like to have more O-line men available. I think two weeks you only played the starting five. How comfortable are you guys with the O-line group as far as depth at that position? Are you comfortable with six, seven?

TONY ELLIOTT: So we played seven. So Hartsoe and Jimmy, Christ got in there a good little bit early, like third series, threw those guys out there.

One of the challenges as a coach, just being transparent, you sometimes get to a point like game's on the line, things are tight, you're going to go with your guys, where you need to play some more guys but it's really, really challenging and hard as a coach when you're in that moment, like we need to play those guys.

So I feel good with those seven. I would like to get Blake Steen some more reps. I think he's come along. We need to see what he can do, what he can do in the game. So we're getting a little bit more comfortable, but one thing that I have to challenge the coaches is, man, we've just got to play guys. Even though the situation, it's a three-point game, every play matters, we've got to play those guys. That's the only way they're going to learn.

Q. Will Bettridge missed that first field goal attempt against Tennessee. He's had a couple of shaky makes, but that was a high pressure.

TONY ELLIOTT: Huge one.

Q. High pressure kick he made the other day, and he's made every kick since the Tennessee game. What has his development been like over this first half of the season?

TONY ELLIOTT: Yeah, I'm proud of Will. That's a position where psyche is everything they're a different type of football player in the way they think and act, so you have to be careful how you challenge them and motivate them because it's just a different approach.

He's done a good job. He's getting better with some of the fundamentals. One thing we've got to work on is getting the kick up a little bit more. He likes to drive the ball, and there's situations where you have to drive the ball. On long kicks you've got to drive the ball, but on some of those short kicks, we've got to get it up and over so we don't put so much stress on the protection.

But proud of him. He's working daily. The biggest thing with him is confidence. So a little insight to him is he's a good baseball player as well, and his nickname was Walkoff Will. So I'm trying to get him back to that confidence level where -- and the reason he was Walkoff Will is because he had some walkoff home runs and hits in big time baseball games. Trying to get him to Walkoff Will in the kicking game as well. He's slowly getting there. He's battled some tendinitis in his knee, in his kicking leg, so that's a challenge for him.

Q. Just wanted to bring up Mike Hollins, caught the touchdown the other day. I know you guys use him a lot in pass protection too. Where has he improved most as a football player? I know we've talked a lot about his story, but where has he improved most as a football player since last season?

TONY ELLIOTT: Great question. I would say pass protection is the thing he's really, really improved upon. It's been tough for all those backs to get going, but he's had a couple of explosives, so he's doing a better job of finding the holes and keeping his feet on the ground. Had a tendency to get a little too high on some of his cuts, and that's an area where he's improved.

I think his overall understanding and knowledge of the game has improved, which gives him the -- gives us the most confidence on third down to be in there when you start getting exotic looks and different blitzes.

Q. I have two, but they're related. Kam Butler was your most disruptive pass rusher. In losing him and certainly Chico is getting healthy, but are you going to need more from the linebacker position in terms of Jon dialing up pressure that way, or do you think you can still get a lot with your front four?

TONY ELLIOTT: Smiley coming back helps. And hopefully Paul Akere coming back helps more as well. We need to get some depth so guys can be a little bit fresher. When they're coming off the edge, they've got a little more juice.

Fundamentally, we've got to do some things. We're going down the middle of blockers. We need to attack half the man better, our one-arm stabs, the placement of our hands has got to be better, and I think that will help.

Coach Rud has done a good job the last couple of games since I challenged him to get more pressure on the quarterback of having to use the linebackers. So I think you've got to use what's there. Hopefully Chico starts to kind of really feel healthy from both the shoulder and the knee and kind of get back to where he was.

We're going to have to do whatever it takes to try and get some pressure on the quarterback. That was one thing that was frustrating is, man, we gave up five sacks, and we didn't get any. Now that quarterback we were playing, we knew it was going to be tough. He wasn't going to let you get him in the backfield. Still we've got to get to the quarterback.

But we have been more disruptive, but we've got to continue to improve there.

Then Kam Butler, it was exciting, man. This is what I love about him. He's a committed guy. He loves the program. He loves the team. He was at practice yesterday. It's only about three days removed from surgery, and I'm sure he's still in pretty much some pain, and he was out there trying to help signal. So just extremely grateful for him. Hopefully he can still bring that juice and that excitement and that energy even though he may not actually step on the field.

Q. Last week you spoke a bunch about Kam Robinson's athleticism. He's a guy who can factor in there. How important will he be in that facet of the game?

TONY ELLIOTT: So him and -- all three of them can be disruptive if you watch, you go back. I believe it was James Jackson got the sack two weeks ago on Friday night. Kam Butler is a guy that, man, you watch him coming off the edge, he had Maryland's quarterback dead to rights. Didn't stay on the upfield shoulder, so learning opportunity there.

The one also too that I think gets overlooked is Ahern. Josh Ahern is a really, really good football player. He's disruptive, and he's a guy as well that can get to the quarterback. But the challenge there is you've got to be able to hold up on the back end. So if you're going to bring pressure, you've got to be able to hold up on the back end.

Typically, when you're bringing pressure, depending upon whether it's a zone fire, whether it's man coverage, you've got to be able to hold up and get home.

That's why we do make sure, when we do dial-up pressures, we've got to get home and either force the quarterback to get rid of it or get him on the ground because, if not, you're asking the guys on the back end to cover a little bit longer and in some more one-on-one situations.