Everything From Tony Elliott After Virginia's Win Over Coastal Carolina

You could not have asked for a better start from Virginia than the one they had tonight vs Coastal Carolina. Aside from starting quarterback Chandler Morris leaving with an injury, it was a really good night all around for the Cavaliers.

After the game, head coach Tony Elliott spoke with the media and here is everything that he had to say.

Opening Statement...

Yeah, I just want to say, first of all, thank you to the student section. I thought they showed up. I challenged them. Last time I stood in front of the first year, I think it was last Friday. I challenged them to show up early, to be loud. Thought they did a really, really, really good job that we had a good atmosphere to start. Man, it's nothing like playing in front of a good crowd with a good atmosphere. And hopefully the guys showed enough that will encourage more folks, you know, to come and fill out Scott Stadium. Hopefully this will be, you know, the start of kind of a new, new thing for us in terms of defending Scott Stadium the right way. Appreciate Carla Williams and the administration for all that they did this off-season to help us put together the best roster that we possibly could, to give us a chance to to compete. So super proud of the guys, man, really, really proud of our senior leadership. What they, what they've been able to do, is not easy. You bring in 54 new guys, 32 new transfers, and they've really done a good job of coming together as a team. Now we've got a long way to go, but we did get to see a little bit of adversity, and I thought the guys responded the right way. So really, really proud of the guys that were here, and also proud of the guys that came in that kind of put their ego to the side, put the team first. And this is just kind of the in our minds, the floor of where we are, where we start, but several things to improve upon. But overall, just just it's really happy for the guys to be able to experience a victory in the locker room, because I know how hard they worked all summer and off season, and how much they've had to sacrifice, and maybe their own personal goals and ambitions to come together as a football team."

1. On Chandler Morris...

"Yeah, so looks like his left shoulder. You know, mild possible AC. We'll get it reevaluated in the morning. But just wanted to be very cautious there. And he even said it on the ground. He's like, Man, I should have got down, but that's the competitor that he is. He said, He also said, Coach, I saw the end zone. I wanted, I wanted to score. So that's the kind of player that he is. But we're encouraged that I'm very hopeful for next week."

2. On playing complementary football...

"Yeah, I thought we played complementary football. You look at the first drive we go down, and we get ourselves in kind of the edge of our field goal range, and we wanted to take a shot, see, could we hit it there? And then defense comes out and gets a stop, and then we get stopped on a fourth down play, a play that we probably would like back because, because we felt like we could have made it. But then they come out and get a turnover, and then we have a block point, and then we have several, several turnovers on defense. And I thought that they really heeded the challenge that I had at the beginning of the game. I wanted to see a football team start fast, but then also control momentum. And I thought they did that, and we found a way to finish, and we played a lot of guys in the process."

3. On the cornerback room...

"Yeah, it was. It was good to finally, kind of see what we got, we know on our practice field, what we've been able to see. But it's different when you're going against another opponent and it's coming to full speed, and you may not have as much assistance from the coaches as you do in practice. So it's really good to see those guys play, and they played a lot of them. It's good to see Minter, you know, fly around and make some plays, run in the alle,y and then come up with the big interception. It was good to play several of those linebackers, too, I think, for Danny's first start in place of Kam Robinson. So there were a lot of moving parts that I thought the coaches did a really good job of, of having those guys ready to play."

4. On Cam Ross...

"You know, a couple, a couple days into practice, you saw that that that one, he's a he's a football player, like he's got really, really good football instincts. He's got a great skill set as a receiver. And you felt like, based off of what you saw in film from JMU last year, and then the validation of the short area quickness that he would he would be able to make some plays for you. So just super excited for him. He's a guy that just came in and worked and maybe some of the other guys might have been more talked about in terms of their transition coming in the door, but he's just, he's just a workman. He reminds me a lot of Malik, and I said that before. They're different, and he's got a long way to go, obviously, because Malik did some, some, some exceptional things here, but he's kind of cut from the same cloth. You just just his ability as a football player and also as a return guy, doesn't say much, very quiet. He just shows up every single day and goes to work."

5. On the redzone offense...

"Yeah, that was a point of emphasis for us last off season. I think last year we could get it to the red zone. We just couldn't come away with points and touchdowns in particular. And you know, to be a good offensive unit, you got to score 67 68% of the time with touchdowns. You can't, you can't, you rely on field goals. So it's good to be able to score some, some touchdowns, and losing Grady forced us to kind of adapt a little bit. And I thought the coaches did a good job of coming up with some different packages. And the fact that we have some additional depth on the offensive line gives us the ability to come in with some, some bigger packages, and some of those short yard situation with Cam Ross"

6. On where to put Cam Ross in the offense...

"We initially started met outside at z and then moved him into the into the slot, and he's shown the ability to be able to do both, and his natural home is probably in the slot. But he gives us some flexibility. And with trail coming back off of injury, we needed the ability to stretch the field. So it's really good to get trail back, which I think those two are going to play off of each other, very, very, very well. And then Jamal gives you that big body to get some of the intermediate, short conversions that you need to keep drives going so that you can be explosive down the field. And got got a chance to play some of the other guys. I saw Tyler, Eric in there, Dre green in there. Got to get cam Courtney going. He'll bounce back from the from the muck farm. I know he's a competitor. I know he will. And then we got to play the freshman the first year, receivers a little bit. So it's really good to get all those to get all those guys going, but we're going to need every one of them. It's only game one, and it's a long season. That position, there always has some some bumps and bruises that come along with it, and we need to continue to grow depth at that position."

7. On overcoming a slow start on offense...

"Yeah, so Well, first of all, we go down the field and we miss a field goal, right? So we go down the field and get into about a 35 yard line, we miss a field goal, right? And defensively, if you look at their structure, they play a lot of two shell they they roam around in extra safety, you know. So, so it just took them a little bit of time. And you got to remember to like, you know, that's the first time we've had any game snaps with with Chandler at quarterback. So we knew it was going to be a little bit of cat and mouse early on with they got a new defensive coordinator, right? So you can only prepare so much, not exactly sure if, schematically, it's going to transfer over all the way, but it was good that the defense played complimentary football. So really proud of the fact that we didn't score on that opening drive. They had a three and out. Get us the ball back. Then we get to midfield, right? So we're moving the ball, and we drop a fourth down conversion, and then defense comes out and gets a gets a turnover. So that's the that. That's how a team plays together. They play complimentary football, and sometimes it's going to be like that. I thought we would run the ball pretty decent, you know, early on, but we knew, with as many new guys as they had on their defense, with the defensive structure, with that extra hat roaming around, is going to take us a little bit of time. And what I'm most pleased with is we didn't turn the ball over on offense, right? So even though that's what a veteran quarterback does as he's finding his rhythm, you know, you try not to put the ball in jeopardy until you can get get settled in. And then new coordinator, new quarterback, you know, they got to get a feel for each other. And I thought we did a good job of finally getting settled in to be able to, you know, put some plays together to get him rolling. And once he got rolling, what you saw was the gamesmanship, you know, that he brings his ability to control the offense. Get the outlet screens on the perimeter when he needs to pull the ball on the zone read when he needs to. Biggest thing is, we just got to get him to slide. Got to get him to go feet first when he when he slides."

8. On getting momentum...

"In that regard, I thought the team overall did a good job of playing complementary football and capitalizing on momentum, and then also in times when maybe we start out, we punted the ball. I thought the defense did a good job of gaining momentum back for us and and then it allowed us to play a lot of guys in the in fourth quarter that we're going to need throughout the course of the course of the season. And I thought we, you know, even though they were field goals, it was good to be able to get in there with some, some, some guys that that needed to play and need to grow up, and be able to score some points."

9. On being able to play multiple guys along both lines of scrimmage...

"No, we want to play guys up front, because we're going to need that depth down the stretch. I think the flow of the game contributed to some of that. When you see the wholesale, you know, five for five, obviously, you want to be in a situation where it doesn't necessarily impact rhythm, if you got rhythm going on. But then we also had, it was football, man, you got, you got a series here where a guy is banged up and you need to get somebody else in there. So it was really good. And the same thing on the defensive line, it was, it was, it was just awesome to be able to see three and four-down linemen running in, you know, at a time. And, you know, we didn't get to the quarterback as much as I like to, but I thought they affected him. They weren't going to let him sit back there and throw it. You saw a lot of it was, was east and west, you know, type stuff move the pocket. So they were going to try and neutralize our ability to get a good four man rush, but it was good to see depth on both sides be able to go in and out of the game,"

10. On the improved special teams play...

"Yeah, so I think if you look at us, last year, we went from bottom in the conference to number two in punt, and we were second in the country in kickoff. So we made a tremendous jump in our coverage unit. And you know, now we want to be able to continue to make progress there and chase, you know, the top spot, and then add to it in the return game. And I think the ability of Cam Ross, and then the added depth that we have, will give us an opportunity to improve in the return game. And if we can do that, and I think collectively, we can, we can improve and get to where we want to be. And it's the third of the game, all right, I think, I think one of the hardest things is getting guys to buy in, I think, early on, the first couple years, it was hard to get guys to buy into special teams. Now, my offensive guy, I'm a defensive guy, but when you can get your best players to buy in, and over the last couple of years, you're starting to see, man, those top guys, especially, we're having a few more NFL guys, right? And they're going to the NFL and coming back and saying, Man, you've got to be able to play special teams like Yonis. Man, he's gonna make he's gonna make a big impact, you know, as a special teams player. And that's what you saw in the maturation of him over his career, you know, last year. Man, he was a war daddy on special teams. And a big reason why we improved on punt. I think the snapping, the consistent snap times, and protecting sparks gave us the ability. Man, he's an NFL punter with a big leg, and you saw it today, but we struggled to protect and we struggled to snap, you know, first couple of years, and once we made an improvement there, you saw the improvement in the in the punt game, and then, you know, a little bit of a change of philosophy and just energy with kickoff coverage. Last year we improved, and hopefully that same energy we can get to, you know, our return game to balance it out, because we're going to need to be really, really good on special teams in this league to have a shot along the lines of special teams."

11. On the caliber of player they now have on special teams...

"It's huge. And again, you know, going back to last year, I think that's what changed it for us, when Jonas was making plays on special teams, just like he was on defense. And I've been preaching that from day one, that, man, your best players have to be fully committed. And I remember, you know, after Anthony Johnson got to the NFL, he sent a video back to the guys. He's like, Man, I wish I had listened, because now I'm out here on special teams and and so we're starting to change the mindset from that standpoint, and really put an emphasis on not just getting through on special teams, but impacting the game. And you look at what special teams did a day, man, it impacted the game. And that's what we're going to need, because we're going to be playing some really, really good football teams, and as much as you would like for it to go your way every single week, man, this is a tough it's a tough game. So when maybe there's a, there's a there's a component offense or defense that is trying to get into a rhythm. Special teams has an opportunity to create some momentum that helps them get get in a rhythm a little bit faster. So it was good to see those guys and just their willingness. And you know, Caleb as a guy that played as a freshman in the secondary and and now he's making the transition and linebacker, and he did it without any question. Very, very humble guy, do whatever the team asked, and it goes out there. And we didn't even have a block call. You know, this is just a guy going and we told him, we said, Man, if you give maximum effort schematically, we're gonna put you in positions. And we were close last year at Clemson. Man, I think back to the Clemson game. Dante Hawthorne blocks that punt that might change that entire game, you know, or at least the complexion of it. And that's what special teams has an opportunity to do. So we're going to praise those guys for their effort tonight, but then we're going to go back to work on Monday. And really, we haven't done anything other than accomplish goal number one, which is to win the opener. We defended Scott Stadium, but we got a lot to improve upon, and we got a lot more challenges ahead of us in the first half."