Adams Getting Up to Speed with Cavaliers

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When Billy Napier left the South Carolina State coaching staff in 2006 and took a position at Clemson, Mike Adams moved into the apartment where Napier had been living. He soon added a roommate: Tony Elliott, who like Adams had been hired as an assistant coach in the Bulldogs’ football program.

Napier and Elliott, of course, are now Power Five head coaches at Florida and Virginia, respectively.

“Isn’t that crazy?” Adams said this week in his McCue Center. “That little ol’ apartment in Orangeburg, South Carolina, had all these different characters.”

Adams and Elliott coached together at South Carolina State in 2006 and ’07, after which Elliott left to become an assistant at Furman. Nearly two decades later, they’ve been reunited at UVA, where Adams was hired last month as linebackers coach.

From their time together in Orangeburg, Elliott said, he remembered Adams’ “presentation, his demeanor, ability to communicate, just the tenacity in which he coaches. I learned that he’s a great teacher. He understands the game at an extremely, extremely high level. So we felt like from a developmental standpoint, he was gonna help our guys kind of take the next step.”

The Cavaliers are nine practices into their third spring under Elliott. Adams didn’t start at UVA in time for the first practice, but he was there for the second, and “I’ve just been catching up since then,” he said. “But it’s been good. There’s been so many people here to help me catch up, so it’s not like I’m doing it on my own.”

Adams, who was born and raised in Indianapolis, did not play college football, unlike most of his coaching peers. “I knew when I got done with high school, one, I wasn’t good enough, and two, I had to go have my spine kind of rebuilt,” he said. “Which was a major undertaking, so I kind of knew that was it.”

His dream was to become a football coach. He enrolled at Ball State in Muncie, Ind., and “I sat there as a student for about two years thinking, ‘Man, I’m getting a sports administration degree, but I’m not getting enough out of football,’ ” Adams recalled.

“I watched it and went to every game, all that, like any student, but I knew I wanted way more. So I went in my junior year and talked to the staff [at Ball State] and just kind of showed up and said, ‘Hey, I’d like to be a part of this. What can I do?’ ”

He joined the Ball State staff as student assistant, working mostly with linebackers coach Curt Mallory. “And so that was me for the next basically two seasons,” Adams said. “I just kind of took notes, didn’t say a word, was just at practice trying to figure it out.”

After graduating from Ball State in 1998, Adams spent three years as an assistant coach at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana. He’s also coached at West Georgia, South Carolina State, South Alabama, Charleston Southern, and at Mercer. West Georgia competes in the NCAA’s Division II. South Carolina State, Charleston Southern and Mercer are FCS programs, and South Alabama is in the FBS.

“I had to just go from the ground up, which a lot of people do,” Adams said. “It’s been just tons of years of enjoying where you’re at and trying to just live in the moment and appreciate the fact that you get to do that. Fortunately, once I got into the South, I kind of stayed in the Southeast, so I wasn’t having to bounce all around the country.”

Early in his coaching career, Adams spent five seasons (2001-05) on the West Georgia staff. He returned to the Carrollton, Ga., school in December to become the Wolves’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, and he had no plans to leave. Early last month, however, linebackers coach Clint Sintim left UVA to join the staff at Illinois. Suddenly Elliott had a position to fill, and an opportunity arose for Adams to rejoin his former colleague.

Adams said he and Elliott had stayed in touch as their coaching paths diverged.

“When were brought into South Carolina State, we were both young, fiery, ready to go, just coaching the mess out of those dang kids, and we had a lot of success together,” Adams said. “And then as we broke apart, there was just never a good opportunity to come back together, but we’ve always stayed friends.

“It’s hard, because you get separate and you’re not on the same staff, so you only see each other a couple times a year maybe. But I always respected the fact that no matter how busy he was, there was always good response and good communication. And then when this happened, there was real communication and some extensive talks.”

Elliott’s title has changed from his days at South Carolina State, but “he’s what I thought he would be [as a head coach],” Adams said. “I remember as a young coach he was detailed and intense, but underneath it all was a great respect for the game and the people, and I see that every day in our staff meetings and [with the team]. There’s a ton of attention to detail and intensity about it, but there’s also a way to go about things and do them the right way. It’s amazing because he’s held on to that all the way through to where he’s at.”

Before coming to UVA, Adams knew several of Elliott’s assistants, including defensive tackles coach Kevin Downing and quarerbacks coach Taylor Lamb.

He and Downing are longtime friends, Adams said, and “it’s been awesome to be able to work with him. He’s an excellent coach. I always knew that., but he’s just such a good, high-quality human too, and honestly, that’s all that matters to me anymore. I just want to be around a bunch of good, quality people that are on the same task, same mission, and treat people right. Probably the biggest draw for me here was I knew what kind of people were going to be here because of Tony.”

Adams, who’s coached more than a dozen players who went on to have NFL careers, served as defensive coordinator at South Carolina State for seven seasons. John Rudzinski holds that position at Virginia. Before he interviewed at UVA, Adams said, he hadn’t met Rudzinski, but he quickly learned that their philosophies are similar.

“There were so many things I felt like we had in common as we were just talking the game and the techniques and the things that apply in the way we see the game,” Adams said. “I think that was probably a really good mix for us, and I still feel that way each day that I’m here.”

He’s had to learn the terminology the Cavaliers on defense, “but conceptually, I’m totally on the same page with everything that that they’ve got in place here and that [Rudzinski] wants to do moving forward,” Adams said. “So it’s been really good.”

His wife, Natasha, and their 8-year-old daughter, Sasha, are still in Georgia, Adams said, and they’ll join him in Charlottesville when the school year ends. In what little free time he’s had, Adams has been house-hunting, but football has been his primary focus.

Six weeks ago, Adams knew nothing about the Hoos’ linebackers, but before his interview he “tried to kind of familiarize myself with some of those guys and what they’ve done and where they’re from,” he said. “What was awesome was on the interview I got a chance to actually meet them all and just kind of briefly have an interaction with them. And so that was really cool, because that meant a lot to me being able to actually see the group and see if you connect with them.”

At the top of the depth chart are returning starters James Jackson and Kam Robinson, with Trey McDonald and Stevie Bracey among those behind them.

“They’re awesome,” Adams said of his group. “They’re awesome. They’re calling me right now trying to get up here to watch more film voluntarily. So that’s what you want.”

Like Adams, Elliott gained experience coaching at schools that don’t have the resources of Power Five programs.

“Just coming up through the ranks, when you’re working at a smaller school, you’ve got to do a little bit of everything,” Elliott said. “You might be a position coach, but you’re also the housing liaison, you’re a financial aid liaison, you’re the liaison to the dining hall. You’re doing a lot of things that at bigger schools, a lot of times you have different individuals [handling that].”

Elliott said he believes in “giving guys that are credible an opportunity at this level, and I know that they’re going to be loyal, they’re going to work hard, and they’re going to grind. No job is going to be too small. They’re going to be invested.”

In Adams’ first month in a Power Five program, he’s noticed “a million differences” from his previous coaching stops. “But maybe the one that stands out is the amount of people that can focus daily on recruiting, which is phenomenal,” he said.

FCS and Division II programs have fewer support staffers to assist with recruiting, and “it kind of gets lost in whatever else you’re doing,” Adams said. “So if you’re in spring ball, that’s the focus, but here you’re able to maintain daily reminders of players and kids and prospects and what’s coming up next. And so I think that’s awesome.”

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