Athlon Sports assesses Tony Elliott's hot seat temperature entering 2025

The 2025 season is rapidly approaching. That means that coaches who find themselves on the hot seat need to get ready to quickly set themselves up for success in what could be make-or-break seasons. That includes Virginia Cavaliers head coach Tony Elliott.

Ahead of the season, Athlon Sports broke down the hot seat temperatures of several coaches around college football. That included Elliott, who has struggled to get things going in three seasons with the Virginia program.

“Virginia took a step forward in 2024 with the program’s best mark (5-7) of Elliott’s tenure,” Athlon wrote. “However, the Cavaliers are 11-23 and have just six ACC wins since Elliott took over in ’22. The Cavs have finished 12th or worse in the ACC in scoring every season under Elliott, whose background is on offense.”

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Tony Elliott was hired by Virginia ahead of the 2022 season. He came over from Clemson, where he had been a successful assistant coach and won two national championships as the team’s co-offensive coordinator. The hope was that he could bring some of the magic with him to Charlottesville, but that hasn’t happened to this point.

Virginia is 11-23 overall in three seasons under Elliott. The Cavaliers are also just 6-17 in ACC play. That includes a sixth-place finish in the Coastal division, and then in a conference without divisions Virginia has tied for 11th and tied for 10th in the ACC standings.

Early, Tony Elliott’s tenure was marred by the 2022 shooting that killed three football players and injured another. That led to the final two games of the season being canceled. It also left a cloud over the program early in his tenure, even though it was not directly his fault. In many ways, however, it did force him to reset for a second season in a row.

The offense has been an issue for Virginia, despite Elliott’s background being on that side of the ball. Virginia was 93rd in total offense nationally last season, averaging 360.9 yards per game. They were also just 107th nationally in scoring offense, averaging 22.7 points per game.

At quarterback, Virginia is also going to need to answer a few questions. Anthony Colandrea took the majority of snaps last season at quarterback. However, he transferred to UNLV this offseason. Chandler Morris enters as a transfer from North Texas while Daniel Kaelin is coming in from Nebraska. So, there are going to be options there, at least.

The hope for Tony Elliott and Virginia is that the jump from three wins to five last season is an upward trend for Virginia. If he can win a couple more games, there’s a chance he can find himself in a more stable spot than he had been.