By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE –– More than three months have passed since Tony Elliott was named head football coach at the University of Virginia. He’s observed his players in their strength and conditioning workouts, but Elliott has yet to lead his team through a practice.
That’s about to change. The Cavaliers open spring practice Tuesday morning, and much has changed since the end of an up-and-down season in which they finished 6-6.
In early December, Bronco Mendenhall announced that he was stepping down after six seasons as Virginia’s head coach, and Elliott was hired about a week later. He retained three assistant coaches from Mendenhall’s staff––Marques Hagans, Garett Tujague and Clint Sintim––and hired seven others, including coordinators Des Kitchings (offense), John Rudzinski (defense) and Keith Gaither (special teams).
Elliott is no novice when it comes to spring football. He came to UVA from Clemson, where he spent 11 seasons on head coach Dabo Swinney’s staff, and he’s also been an assistant at South Carolina State and Furman.
Still, Elliott said, this spring “is different, because I’m not going in with a ton of expectations. Typically at Clemson, you would kind of get ahead of yourself, trying to figure out how the position battles from a competition standpoint were going to play out. You had an idea of who you thought the leaders were. Here, you start with a clean slate.”
In Brennan Armstrong, Elliot knows he has an elite quarterback, and the Wahoos’ receiving corps also ranks among the best in FBS. At most other positions, however, the coaching staff will be trying to see “how it’s going to work out,” Elliott said, “to see how the players respond to the style of coaching, the different systems that we’re installing on offense, defense and special teams.”
His main goals for the spring?
“One, to get a lot of quality work in and stay healthy,” Elliott said, “because numbers-wise, from that standpoint we’re not where we need to be. So that’s first and foremost.”
Next, Elliott said, he wants to lay the foundation for his system, with the installation of all three phases, “and come out feeling good about where the guys are from a comprehensive standpoint.”
Finally, he said, “I want to establish a physical mindset, both offensively and defensively, in the trenches, because that’s where it starts. We want to be able to establish the line of scrimmage and run the football and be able to stop the run, be able to protect the quarterback, and then also be able to get after the quarterback.”
At Clemson, Elliott worked with the offense, “so I wasn’t really concerned about the defense,” he said, laughing. “Now I’m the head coach, and I want to have success on both sides of the ball. I want to be able to run the ball and stop the run. That’s going to be difficult. One side is going to have the advantage, but I want to be able to create a physical mindset in the trenches with the personnel we have.”
Elliott’s first game with the Cavaliers––Sept. 3 against Richmond at Scott Stadium––is still more than five months away. Spring practice will give him a clearer idea of what to expect from his team in the fall.
“It’s like the potter and the clay,” Elliott said. “We’ve got the clay, and we’re going to have a chance to try and mold it a little bit. In football, the workouts are great, because we get a chance to see, from a mental-toughness standpoint, who can push through and who your leaders are, and you get to see them do some football movements. But other than that, everything has been a walk-through, and there’s been no pads. The intensity level will go up, and you get to see how they’re going to respond. So we’ll know a lot more once we get through the spring.”
COMING AND GOING: Four newcomers enrolled at UVA and joined the program in January: quarterback Davis Lane Jr. and linebacker Steve Bracey, freshmen from Lynchburg and Atlanta, respectively; wide receiver Devin Chandler, a transfer from Wisconsin; and defensive end Jack Camper, a graduate transfer from Michigan State.
Virginia has signed four other grad transfers—defensive linemen Kameron Butler (Miami-Ohio) and Paul Akere (Columbia) and offensive linemen John Paul Flores (Dartmouth) and Mac Hollensteiner (Georgetown)––but they won’t enroll until after the semester and so aren’t participating this spring. That’ll mean extra reps for the Cavaliers’ returning linemen on both sides of the ball.
Tujague is back for his seventh season as UVA’s offensive line coach, and he faces a monumental rebuilding project. Gone are his top six linemen from last season: Olu Oluwatimi, Chris Glaser, Ryan Swoboda, Ryan Nelson, Bobby Haskins and Joe Bissinger. Their understudies included Derek Devine, Ty Furnish, Jestus Johnson III, Noah Josey, Jonathan Leech, Charlie Patterson, Logan Taylor and Zach Teter, all of whom are still on the roster.
The returning O-linemen are inexperienced, but many of them figure to be in the rotation in the fall, and so this is a pivotal spring for them.
“It’s a great opportunity for those guys to be able to show what they’re capable of,” Elliott said, “because there was a lot of experience on the offensive line last year that walked out of the program, whether it was graduation or it was transfers. I think there’s some young, intriguing guys, but we gotta see them in action. So I’m excited about that.
“Right now there’s two [grad transfers] coming that we know of, and we’re still chasing another grad transfer on the offensive line. If you’re projecting that those guys are going to be able to come in and play, you still gotta have three other guys that have got to step up. So you’ve got to make sure that those guys get reps and stay healthy [this spring], but at the same time, too, that they can be evaluated fairly by being given opportunities.”