I just really disagree with the Elliott was a good hire revisionism. Clemson was pushing him out the door in the midst of a downward slide. He ran an archaic offense there that was buoyed by talent weāll never in a million years get to Charlottesville. The hiring process was a complete mess (Jerry Ratcliffe deserves some blame for that but we should just expect him to make things worse at this point) where he looked like the best candidate only because the other āseriousā ones were so bad.
Elko wanted the job and we didnāt interview him! I love Carla Williams but thatās a borderline firable offense. It was not a thorough search and it could very well lead us to relegation to a group of 5 level conference in the near future.
No one knows for sure the details of the hiring process. Duke insiders say they chose Elko over Elliott. Tennesseeās AD publicly stated that they never offered him the job. Itās possible UVA is the only P4 job that Elliott was ever offered. Also not sure how we can say that Elko wanted the UVA job. But either way he wouldāve left us quickly like he did to Duke.
I think we need a program builder type. Not an attainable P4 assistant. There are some P4 assistants that Iād want but I donāt think they are attainable. I look at Illinois, Rutgers, Kansas (not a great start this season), Wake, etc and they got back on track with experienced head coaches. As did UVA before Elliott.
Well, at least Elliott hasnāt followed Daboās lead in refusing to use transfers. Thatās honestly the sort of performative nonsense I absolutely could have seen UVA trying to pull in the past.
Remember those days well. The first 2 months of the 1990 season might have been my favorite time as a Hoo fan, outside of the 2019 NCAA tournament run.
Wouldnāt go as far to say that āClemson was pushing him out the doorā, more that Clemson fans werenāt particularly happy with how their offense looked in 2021 and were fairly indifferent towards him taking the job here (at least from what I saw online when he got hired).
A common complaint I saw was that his scheme was too conservative and worked mainly because of the immense talent that Clemson had at their skill positions, basically they were able to win an abnormal amount of 50/50 balls towards the sidelines due to their WR talent and Lawrence putting most of his throws right on the money. Also to that point, he apparently rarely attacked the middle of the field in the passing game despite having pretty good talent at TE. Their offense was mediocre/below average in 2021 after they lost a lot of their top talent and also had DJU as their QB, so itās hard to say how much of that was scheme or how much of it was a sharp decline in personnel.
Thatās a tough chicken or the Egg. It could be argued that CTE was the first fall guy for the decline of the Clemson empire. Ad @UVApride7 said the emense dropoff in talent was so big that it would be difficult for anyone to execute at the rate Clemson did 18-20. Even without CTE the Clemson offense has been a sheel of what it was with Watson Lawrence etc.
As far as CTE leaving it feels more like he got out before taking the full fall.
I mean he went from turning down jobs/interviews at Auburn, TCU, and NFL OC spots to choosing between Virginia and Duke in the span of a year. I feel like itās pretty clear Dabo wanted to make a change and told him he should take an HC job. A guy previously that picky about his landing spot suddenly accepting the Virginia job is a red flag, and I think itās okay to admit that.