Year 3 of the Tony Elliott era is upon us with the season opener against Richmond coming in just a few days. It’s been a busy offseason for the program, as they’ve added a big group of newcomers via the transfer portal, had one staff change, and opened their new football facility, a dream that was years in the making.
But now, the attention turns to the product between the lines, in what should be a pivotal and revealing season for the Cavaliers.
The last two years have certainly been a challenge for Elliott, a first-time head coach looking to make a traditionally middling program competitive in a now-expanded, division-less ACC. The hope is that after a tumultuous first year, followed by a second year focused on healing and rebuilding, that Year 3 of the Elliott era can resemble a rather typical football season and one that will lead to consistency and growth.
The last two have been about building as a program, in what has become a hard reset that many fans and media didn’t necessarily expect when Elliott took over from Bronco Mendenhall, with the Hoos having been bowl eligible five seasons in a row. Now, it’s time for real, obvious progress to be shown and an increased win total to follow.
Through two years, Elliott is 6-16 as UVa’s head coach. Two of those wins have come against FCS opponents; another came against a 3-9 ODU team on the final play of the game. Elliott’s Cavaliers are just 4-8 at home, with just one home ACC win, coming last year against Duke.
Simply put: Most of the results have been poor. The Hoos have lost five of their 15 ACC contests by three scores or more. The worst of which, of course, was last year’s 55-17 embarrassment at home against arch rival Virginia Tech, which certainly left a sour taste in the mouths of all UVa fans. There were also blowout losses to non-conference foes Illinois, Tennessee and Maryland, too.
Off the field, UVa is yet to sign a top-50 recruiting class, though the current class is the best one yet, ranking in the 40s. And perhaps the new operations building will help the staff get better results on the trail going forward, too. There’s also a lack of buzz around the program, as the fanbase seems to be somewhere between pessimism, wait-and-see mode, and outright apathy. Ticket sales have lagged of late and attendance has dropped below the Mendenhall-era levels. UVa, which plans to roll out a number of gameday improvements, has broken the 45,000 attendance threshold just once in the Elliott era (JMU, 2023). He isn’t personally responsible for attendance, and the athletic department owns some of that responsibility, but the lack of excitement heading into the season is relevant, as it demonstrates the work that still has to be done to win fans back.
There are also ways to look at the results and find optimism. We mentioned the ugly losses but UVa has also been very close in a lot of games and simply hasn’t been able to close them out. In 2023, for example, UVa lost nine games, and five came by one score, four by a field goal or less. In 2022, UVa lost to conference foes Syracuse, Miami and UNC by a combined seven points; two of those games were decided in the final minute or in extra time. Virginia had two games last year where the Wahoos played as nearly three-touchdown underdogs on the road and pushed their opponents (Miami and Louisville) to the brink, losing late in the game or in overtime. And of course, UVa got its first AP top-10 road win last year at UNC, another game as three-score underdogs.
There have been some personnel accomplishments as well. After a rough first year with Brennan Armstrong at the helm, it seems that the staff has managed the sport’s most-important position pretty well, bringing in two quality options with sophomore Anthony Colandrea set to start on Saturday against UR. The transfer portal has yielded some success as well, particularly Malik Washington, who was one of the nation’s top receivers under this staff’s watch. And that success has seemingly made it easier to pitch to more-recent transfers, and we’ll see if that begets more on-field success, and so on.
Despite the fact that the breakthrough hasn’t come yet, Elliott is staying the course. Through two seasons, his only staff departures have been voluntary job changes, with all three of Mendenhall’s former assistants that were held over now in other jobs, including two UVa alums. Despite brutal results on special teams, it seems that the operation and coaching of those groups has remained the same. The offense had a rough year one and made some strides last year, and Year 3 will be a big one for Elliott’s offensive coordinator, Des Kitchings. And it will be a big year for Elliott too of course, as someone with an offensive coordinator background who has continued to empower Kitchings to run the show offensively without making a quick decision to take over play calling duties himself.
We’re not saying these decisions are the wrong ones, but they need to start looking like the right ones in 2024.
While all of the coaching staff roles are held by coaches brought in by Elliott from outside the program, the roster is mostly made up of players his staff identified and recruited, too. Or at least, the players that didn’t play for the previous staff. Most of the guys were identified by this staff, thought to be fits for the scheme and for the program at large, and now we’ll see if the staff identified and recruited well enough.
The easiest way to summarize where the program is right now is this: Progress is needed. Another three-win season isn’t moving the program forward at this point. There are very few examples of head coaches having three bad seasons, and then turning it around after that, at least at the P4 level. David Cutcliffe had four straight losing seasons before reaching a bowl in Year 5 but Duke was in really bad shape at that time. Jonathan Smith recently turned Oregon State around after three losing seasons (though the last was a shortened 2-5 campaign in the 2020 COVID season with conference games only), and now he’s at Michigan State. But that’s the list. There aren’t even that many examples of coaches having two years like Elliott had to start their careers at a P4 school and then getting it right. Mike Norvell, Jim Harbaugh (at Stanford) and Dave Clawson did it, though, so there’s some hope. And many of those coaches didn’t have to deal with what Elliott has had to manage in two years at Virginia.
It will not be terribly difficult for Elliott’s team to beat the expectations this fall. The Hoos were picked 16th in a 17-team league and aren’t expected to get back to the postseason. It’s difficult to set a drop-dead win total that the program must reach to be considered successful. But while last year was about healing and demonstrating progress towards better football, 2024 needs to be a year where progress is demonstrated and there’s reasons for optimism going into 2025.
And if that doesn’t happen it’s fair to start questioning where the program is headed, next year and beyond.
