How Virginia jumped from mediocrity to top 25 and what it means to Elliott

By Jerry Ratcliffe

There wasn’t anything fancy about Tony Elliott’s message to his team at halftime Friday night when his Cavaliers were locked in a 21-21 tie with 8th-ranked and unbeaten Florida State, a team that had dismantled powerhouse Alabama a few weeks before.

“The message in the locker room was you’re right where you want to be,” Elliott said. “We knew it was a heavyweight fight, we had given them some punches and they had given us some punches.”

This time around, Elliott knew that he had brought some fighters to the fight, players who could deliver haymakers, players who could deliver body blows. It wasn’t that way in the past when UVA didn’t have the quality personnel and the depth to trade punches with the big boys.

Virginia spent somewhere between $20 and $30 million via NIL and sent big-game hunting in the transfer portal. The result was a 46-38, double-overtime win over the Seminoles.

Elliott & Co. brought in a bevy of playmakers who can go jaw-to-jaw with the traditional heavyweights of the game. All but one of UVA’s touchdowns was scored by a transfer.

Welcome to the new world of college football, a world that traditionalist Virginia resisted until it realized something had to change.

Former Washington Redskins Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs used to hand out business cards that had a dinosaur prominently displayed with this slogan: Adjust or Die.

Virginia adjusted, and if one polled most of the 50,000-plus fans, festooned in blue and orange as they stormed the field in rare celebration of a major program win, if the store-bought roster was worth it, they’d answer, you bet.

While much of the college football world wasn’t aware of what was waiting in Charlottesville, Florida State was nervously hip to the situation.

‘Noles coach Mike Norvell, after studying UVA on video, declared that the Cavaliers were capable of contending for the ACC title.

Norvell’s defensive coordinator Tony White, who some have speculated will be the next head coach at UCLA, said that “Virginia’s no joke,” and that “Virginia wasn’t being given the credit it deserved” after the first four games.

Elliott and his offensive coordinator Des Kitchings didn’t let on, but they had to know that they could take on the high-octane Seminoles if it came down to a shootout, which it did.

The coach finished his halftime speech by challenging his players.

“Who’s going to find a way to make a play?” he said. “And really, the play that you need to make is the routine play. Just focus on making the routine play. Get it to the fourth quarter and we’ll find a way to go in.”

His troops got the message and that’s exactly what they did, matching FSU’s seven points in the third quarter and same in the fourth, then trading field goals in the first overtime before somebody made the determining plays: a gutsy, 4-yard rush by quarterback Chandler Morris in a mad dash to paydirt, followed by a game-ending interception in the end zone by Ja’Son Prevard, a transfer from Morgan State, a play that sent Scott Stadium into pandemonium.

When it was over, this sportswriter had a simple question for Elliott. After three years of adversity, pressure and criticism, what did this win — arguably Virginia’s best win in two decades — mean to him personally.

“I know what I signed up for,” Elliott began his answer. “I understand that heavy is the crown. But for me it’s really about the Davis family, the Chandler family, the Perry family, the coaches in that locker room, the staff, players and just trying to be a model of that belief.

“There’s been days that I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but as soon as I walk in the office and see their faces it reminds me of why we’re here, what we’re about. Stay the course, don’t deviate from the plan. Double down on what you believe in. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and I didn’t know what adversity we were going to walk into, but here’s what I do know, is that adversity is a companion of a champion, so we had to embrace the adversity.”

Who knows what this season, this program would look like had it not been for a donor that dropped a fortune of NIL money into the program, which completely changed the direction of Virginia football. One insider said that once the money landed, someone walked into the recruiting war room, looked at the recruiting board and said, erase it. Things have changed.

The recruiters started all over again, going after new talent, experience, skill, speed, depth, the likes of which UVA had not seen in years. Some were from programs of note like Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State. Some were from NC Central, Tennessee Tech, Morgan State, North Texas State, players who wanted a shot at Power 4 football.

Five weeks into the season, Virginia fields one of the nation’s most powerful offenses behind a quarterback who was mentioned in the same sentence as the Heisman on Monday. The Cavaliers returned to the AP’s Top 25.

So far, Elliott has gotten almost everything he dreamed about, including a distinct home-field advantage last Friday night.

Now, he must teach his players how to handle success, because not everyone who watches college football is convinced. Virginia travels to Louisville this weekend, a place that hasn’t been kind to the Cavaliers.

Louisville is a touchdown favorite.

Elliott knows what’s ahead and what’s at stake.

“We go on the road to Louisville with a chance to win another one,” the coach said. “We wanted to be in the driver’s seat, so we’ve got to keep two hands on the wheel, put the seat belt on, make sure that we check the rear view mirror, make sure we’re awake so that we don’t hit a pothole along the way.”