Postgame Quotes That Matter From Tony Elliott After Virginia's Loss to Florida State

It was a pretty shocking result today for Virginia Football against Florida State.

The Cavaliers came into the game as the favorites against the Seminoles and after going ahead 7-0, FSU scored 38 unanswered and took down UVA, who has a lot of questions to answer after this troubling result.

After the game, UVA head coach Tony Elliott spoke with the media and here are the most notable things that he had to say.

1. On what FSU did that made life difficult

After the quick start against the Seminoles, the offense was a dreadful mess for the rest of the way, even worse than the loss to West Virginia. Elliott tried to explain away the issues after the game, giving Florida State a lot of credit:

"Yeah, we we knew it was going to be a a hard-fought battle and um I thought that uh you know, we uh missed some opportunities and when we needed to fully flip the momentum, uh we couldn't. Uh we missed uh missed some tackles, missed some plays on offense, a couple of drop balls, and uh before you know it, uh the momentum had had fully changed and we couldn't we couldn't get it flipped."

If Virginia is going to make something of there season, the offense has to get fixed at some point and some point soon or else this season could really spiral.

2. On the level of concern

Virginia losing the game is not a shock. It was a road game and in the one game that UVA has played outside of Charlottesville, they could not beat West Virginia, who has dropped two straight. The offense has had issues against power four opponents not named NC State and things were taken to another level today.

After the game, Elliott talked about his level of concern with his team after losing a game like this:

"I mean, everybody's got ownership in it. Starting with me. Uh, it starts with me I got to do a better job of making sure they're prepared and ready to play. You make sure that they they fully understand the plan and are ready to go execute it. So, and I love my guys. We going to go back to work. I mean, it's it's it's a great group of young men. It was a tough day at the office. We're going to own it, take accountability for it, and uh we don't have a long time to uh to hang our head about it.

We got to go back to work uh on Monday because we got a good Syracuse team coming into uh into the house. we'll fix the problems that we got, but everybody's got ownership and you know that the challenge is just for all of us to to take the accountability necessary so that we can go work on it and fix it and uh um there's also a lot of pictures of them doing good too. So we got to we got to make sure that that we don't throw the baby out with the bath water and think that everything is lost."

3. On the defense

In both losses this season, UVA's defense, which was one of the best in the ACC last season, has gotten torched with explosive plays and struggling to contain a mobile quarterback. A unit that is usually disciplined did not play like it today.

Elliott talked about the defense after the game:

"Yeah, I think u you know a lot of it is is we got to do a better job of wrapping when we tackle to get ball carriers on the ground. Like there were some several explosive plays that came after we had contact on the on the ball carriers. And so we got to do a good job. Um we all we all got to strain a little bit harder uh to make sure that we uh that we prepare them better, coach them better, and then challenge them to go out and execute to the best of their ability."

The offense has plenty of problems right now, but the issues on the other side of the ball should not go overlooked.

Virginia is back in action next Saturday night against Syracuse (7:30 p.m. ET on ACC Network).

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