Tony Elliott weekly press conference 10-4
Comments from UVA football head coach Tony Elliott ahead of the Louisville game.
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00:00 Clemson media guy correctly,
00:02 you have not experienced back-to-back losses
00:05 as part of the coaching staff
00:06 since your first year as an assistant there.
00:11 This is kind of uncharted territory for you.
00:13 What are you drawing on as you work through this?
00:17 Really just drawing on the advice
00:20 that I got from Coach Sweeney
00:22 and any of the coaches I've talked to
00:24 in terms of building a program is just, man,
00:27 hold true to your core values.
00:30 Continue to look for small signs of improvement,
00:35 and I've seen those, and obviously disappointed
00:39 with our inability to figure out a way to win at this point,
00:44 but still encouraged.
00:48 I'm building a program, and that's one of the things
00:51 that I'm trying to get these guys to understand.
00:53 There's a difference between having a good team
00:55 and building a program,
00:56 and good teams, they may be good for one year.
01:01 Good programs, they sustain success over the long haul,
01:05 and in order to build a program,
01:07 there's philosophies and processes
01:11 and the way that you operate and core values
01:14 that you have to truly, truly instill,
01:18 and then a lot of bamboo tree.
01:20 You might not see immediate results,
01:23 but you got to keep watering, believing and trusting
01:27 that at one point it's going to click,
01:29 and you're going to see the growth.
01:31 What was the - how do you prep?
01:35 Not knowing their quarterback situation exactly,
01:38 what's the plan of attack there?
01:40 Right. You prepare for what you see,
01:42 and over the course of Satterfield's time there,
01:47 they've played different quarterbacks,
01:49 so you can draw on some of the schematic things
01:52 that they might do different, but it's very difficult
01:54 to reinvent what you're doing in one week for somebody else,
01:59 and so typically you're going to recruit the skill set
02:02 to fit your offense, and so I just look at -
02:06 Jim and I were talking on the way over,
02:08 Taylor, my staff played for him at App,
02:11 and Taylor's different than Malik,
02:13 but it's a very similar offense,
02:14 so there's components that they'll be able to tap into,
02:17 so I think you prepare for what you see.
02:19 You still got to prepare as if their guy is going to be the guy
02:23 because you don't know it's going to be a game-time decision,
02:25 and then be ready to adjust,
02:27 and I think that's where as a program and as a team,
02:33 we have to learn that you've got to own the plan
02:36 so that you can make adjustments,
02:37 and if you don't own the plan,
02:39 then it's impossible to make the proper adjustments
02:42 during the game.
02:45 When you're a coach, when you're helping the players
02:48 adjust to fundamentals, technique, it's one way,
02:51 but when you're trying to change the mentality of the team,
02:53 how do you approach that?
02:55 What's the challenge when it comes to that?
02:56 Yeah, that's - the biggest challenge
02:58 is for me to keep my composure, right?
03:00 And I pride myself on trying to be a calm guy.
03:05 Technique is technique.
03:06 I know that technique is muscle memory,
03:09 and it's consistently doing it a certain way over time,
03:12 and then it becomes just part of your DNA,
03:15 so I understand that.
03:16 The cultural piece, you know, it's finding the right way
03:20 to communicate to these guys to get them to believe
03:23 and to buy in,
03:26 and, you know, I was a little bit embarrassed
03:29 with my reaction to a couple things during the game
03:34 just because I lost my composure a little bit,
03:36 and, you know, and I apologize to the staff and to the players,
03:42 but I saw things that from a cultural standpoint
03:45 that I just did not like,
03:47 that that's not going to be who we are as a program,
03:50 and, you know, I just believe that my job at that time
03:54 is to try and address those things.
03:56 And sometimes, you know, frustration
03:58 can get the better of anybody, but, you know,
04:00 there's a commitment to making sure
04:02 that the core values of this program
04:04 is what we lean on to be able to win
04:07 and what we display and what we represent
04:09 when we go out there.