Everything From Tony Elliott After Virginia's Dominant Win Over William & Mary

Virginia was able to get back-on-track with an explosive Week 3 victory over W&M following a tough loss to NC State last week.

After the win, coach Tony Elliott spoke with the media and here is everything that he had to say:

Opening Statement...

"I'll actually open it up today before we go to questions. First thing, I just want to say: God is good. It's been a very challenging week for a lot of folks within the program, especially the folks that were here back in November of '22, and man, everybody wanted to have a day like today in remembrance of Lavel [Davis Jr.], Devin [Chandler], and D'Sean [Perry]. And it's so fitting. I was made aware that the last time UVA scored 55 points was a game that Lavel and D'Sean actually scored touchdowns in.

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Just super proud of the staff, super proud of the players in the locker room for taking ownership of something that they really didn't know or understand, but they know that they got Virginia on their chest, and they said they're going to carry the burden. What we wanted to do today was just to bring glory to those guys' legacy. And still—it's still extremely difficult three years later. I know how hard it is for me. I can't imagine, you know, what it's like for the families. So it's great to see some of them back in town, and great to have Mike [Hollins] and Marlee [Morgan] back, and really have a celebration.

It was awesome to see the guys perform in such a way as to kind of make it right. You know, 55, and those guys scored the last time we did that. So just super proud of the staff, the players, on their performance all week."

1. On getting a lot of guys playing time...

"It's huge because it's a good opportunity for those guys to be rewarded for the hard work that they put in. And we're going to need them in competitive, tight games down the stretch in ACC. We're going to need those guys at some point in time, and so it's so great to reward them, but then also gain valuable experience. And man, they're going to get coached just as hard as the starters. We're going to get on the film on Monday as a group, but just super happy to be able to have a game where you can play the bulk of your roster."

2. On Kam Courney's Touchdown...

"A little insight into the locker room: we had a cool moment. I had to tip my hat, because in all my time as a play caller, I never had a game with that many yards in it. And so I tip my hat to coach Kitch[ings], and the offensive staff and the players. They threw coach Kitch up on their shoulders. It was just awesome to see that moment, because that tells me that those guys believe. And so when your offensive linemen are out there on the reverse, they believe in the plan, they believe in the player, and they believe that with proper execution, it's going to result in a touchdown.

So it's just awesome to see those guys. And overall, that was the mindset that I wanted this group to show up with. I told the senior leadership point blank, I said, "Look, we're going to find out a lot about our football team this week. How mature are we? Are we going to be able to show up and play to a standard, or are we going to show up and play to an opponent?" And I felt like they came out ready to go in all three phases, trying to establish a standard. And that's what we're chasing every single week.

As great as this game was and is on paper, we're going to enjoy it for tonight. But you know what? Next week we're trying to play an even better game, and every week we're trying to chase our best game as a team. So I think it's just a testament to the guys believing in each other, believing in their preparation, and having some fun out on the field."

3. On Harrison Waylee and Noah Vaughn having big rushing days as well as an injury update on Vaughm...

"Update on Noah is components of a high ankle, but we'll get more detail. As far as I know, the X-rays look good. We'll just see how it swells within the morning. But I got some reassurance walking out from Doc that he thought he's going to be okay. Don't know what time yet, and I'll know by the time we have a press conference on Tuesday.

It's just a competitive group, and what they're doing is they're embracing the competition, and it's making each one of them better. And so they're not pressing, but when they go out there, they're just ready and they're prepared. And so Coach Gaither has done a great job of just having those guys not worry about how many touches, but worry about the standard of performance in the running back room. Really, I'm at a place where you can throw any one of them out there. To me, it doesn't have to be a certain one. Put them all in there, let them play, because they've proven that they understand what we're doing, and they can go out there and execute at a high level."

4. On Des Kitchings...

"Well, I've always been a big fan of coach Kitch, and he's a football guy. I've said that before—like, he loves football. He knows it at the highest level. It's awesome to see everything coming together. Now you're starting to see the cohesion, because there were times where we were good in spots, and now you're starting to see it all kind of mesh together. And he's learning how to kind of tailor it to the skill set that he has, which has been really fun to watch, because I think that's kind of been the difference with what we're doing.

Now he's got a better feel for the guys that he has, and he can put together certain packages for certain guys. And knew that, like, "Hey, that was a call for Kam Courtney." We were going to put Kam Courtney in there because he's probably the best on the reverse type of play. He's just able to call it free, because he's got more pieces to work with.

He handled it like a pro, and I think that's made the difference, because J'Mari [Taylor] has done the same thing. He's handled his business that way. And then X[avier Brown] and Noah [Vaughn] did that. So he handled it the right way. But we should have got him in the game. I love how the football gods work, right? So then he comes out, and now not only is he the active leader in rushing in college football, he's now got a record at UVA. Had three touchdowns. So because he was humble and handled it the right way, I believe he was rewarded the right way."

5. On the quarterback usage today...

"The plan was to try and get him into some good, competitive work in the first half. And I thought that Chandler [Morris] and the guys made that possible. Got in there, were moving the ball, and right there in that clutch, he was ready to go in that clutch drive. And we get him hit, and we have the two false starts. I think he was going to be able to move us down the field in that clutch situation there. But we have the two snap-infraction deals that were running clocks with 10-second runoffs, and he didn't get to.

But I was pleased. Put the ball on the money for the most part. Even Cole [Geer] got in there and converted a third down. I mean, to finish above 50% on third down with three different quarterbacks in a game like that shows the ability for those guys to run the system."

6. On Harrison Waylee's Performance...

"First of all, you know, I apologized to him. We should have got him in the game, but he handled it well. And to be honest, he didn't even know that he was the active leading rusher in college football with over 3,200 yards, and he handled it great. He didn't complain, he didn't say anything, he just showed back up to work. And he is who he is. That's what I like about him. He's got such an even-keel temperament. He's never too high, never too low. Shows up every single day, asks good questions."

7. On what he was most proud of today...

"Most proud is it's just a workman mentality. They showed up ready to work when circumstances could have created otherwise. You're playing an FCS opponent, you've got UVA Strong going on, a ton of distractions. And you kind of could have been feeling sorry for yourself for last week, coming up short. And they just showed up from the gate today and yesterday, with all of our meetings. Everything started early by five minutes, and at our pregame meal, everybody was dressed and ready to go. Not that we've had any issues, but normally, you know, you start right on time. But today, everything was early by five minutes, and the buses were packed and ready to go.

The guys showed up, their energy in pregame was very businesslike. Which is a good thing to see and feel as a coach, because you know that your senior leadership is really taking charge of the locker room."

8. On how to approach practice next week...

"Oh, yeah, there's plenty of mistakes we got to correct. We're gonna go back to work and get those things corrected. We're going to have a little fun on Monday, like we normally do—fun's in the wins. When we win, we get a little extra highlight tape, but after that, it's right back to work. It's Mindset Monday, and that's what I've learned in my experience. That was the difference. That it doesn't matter who you're playing, doesn't matter where you're playing, doesn't matter what uniform combination you're wearing, doesn't matter the circumstances. You prepare to a standard. You treat every game as if it's the national championship. If you do that, then you give yourself the best chance to win enough games to eventually, potentially, get there.

So we're gonna go right back to work. When we go in on Monday, we're gonna be honest. I mean, we're gonna get evaluation of coaches. There's things that I gotta do better. The coaching staff has to do better. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about, you know, did we hit our standard of performance from a grading standpoint? Eighty-five percent is the grading threshold. How many guys on the team hit that? We're going to go back to focusing on us and how we can get better, and not making it about Stanford.

It's conference play, right? And so these guys, they got a big dream. Our second goal as a team is on the table, and that's to win the conference opener. The first one is to win the season opener. The second is to win the conference opener. And that's what we're going to focus on. We're going to go back to work, and based off of what I saw last week, I think these guys have the maturity. Now we got to help, right? As coaches, we got to make sure. And guess what? You know what I'll do? I'll go through the locker room, I'll look for trash on the floor, I'll look for the alignment of the helmets in pre-practice, and just going back to the little things. And that's how we approach it."

9. On the offensive line...

"First, I think Coach Heffernan does a phenomenal job, and I float around throughout the course of the week, but I also find myself spending a lot of time just going into the offensive line meeting room just because I love the way that he teaches the guys, both technically and schematically. Those guys understand that it's a fist—it's five is one, right? Five is strong together. And so, it doesn't matter who's in there, and I think they believe in the quarterbacks. They understand that the quarterback is the program. We got to protect the program at all costs. And so it's just been awesome to see that everybody is striving to uphold that standard when they're put in the game."

10. On the injury to Daniel Sparks...

"Just kind of strained his hip flexor a little bit, and we just wanted to be cautious. Took him in the tent, did an evaluation, and then, you know, luckily, we didn't pump much. And then [Elijah] Slibeck did a great job coming in and putting the ball in the end zone. We'll know more, but right now, it's preliminary—just kind of a hip flexor strain. And we wanted to be smart with Sparky."

11. On Kam Courtney...

"I think he accepted the challenge because Kam knows that I'm hard on him. He's a guy that comes from a great high school program that's used to winning championships. And a big reason why we wanted him in our program was to bring that type of leadership and toughness. And saw it last year, and then kind of hit a little spell where he dropped a ball or two and wasn't at his best. And then we challenged him and just said, "Man, you're better than that. We expect better than that." And just the way that you fix it is to go back to work. And that's what he did.

And so happy to see him. He's going to learn from letting that ball hit the ground on kickoff too. So even though he got the reverse for the touchdown, we got to work on making sure that we don't let that ball hit the ground. The opportunity to continue to coach him, and hopefully this boosts his confidence, because we're going to need him. He's a really, really good football player, and today we were able to, you know, highlight some other guys. But we're going to need all of them: Cam Ross, Jahmal [Edrine], Trell [Harris], all the way down to Dillon [Newton-Short] and Isaiah [Robinson] and Josiah [Abdullah], the first-year guys. Just got to go back to work. And we're going to need all of them. And that's why today was great for them to get some valuable snaps and have a little bit of success."

12. On playing to the standard today and if they achieved it...

"What we've seen over the last eight months with this group, to me, has been phenomenal. Y'all know that I was probably one of the biggest skeptics of kind of where college football was heading with the transfer portal and building a roster that way, but this has been an exceptional group of young men that have—have won me over from the way that they've come together, the way that they practice, the way that they push each other, the way that they cheer for each other. The expectation was that they were going to come out and play to the standard, and they were going to hold each other accountable. And I think that's what you saw for a good portion of the game.

Still opportunities to grow, and we're not there yet. To be honest with you, as I told the team in the locker room, I said, "What did we accomplish?" They said, "Nothing." We're going right back to work. We won a football game, had some success, but, you know, we still haven't reached that best game and that's what we're going to be chasing. That's kind of the standard every week: we're chasing our best game in all three phases of complementary football."

13. On the run defense...

"I thought tackling was just better. Guys fitting their gaps of safety, triggering and just doing their job, and doing it at a high level and with a lot of confidence."