Clemson OC Elliott: Knew Virginia 'Was Going to Be a Challenge'

Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott says the Tigers were fully expecting to be challenged by a well-coached Virginia team on Saturday night in Memorial Stadium.

While it certainly wasn't all pretty at times, the top-ranked Clemson Tigers did enough against Virginia on Saturday night to come away with a 41-23 win in Memorial Stadium. 

Offensive coordinator Tony Elliott says his team knew that the Cavaliers were a good football team coming in, and it showed as the Tigers certainly had their hands full at times on Saturday night. 

"Virginia's a good football team, and they challenge you," Elliott said. "They challenge you with their scheme, with their length, with their intelligence. So we knew that it was going to be a challenge and it wasn't going to be a situation where we're just going to show up, roll the ball out, and they would lay down."

While the game was never seriously in question, Virginia did make the Tigers work harder than they'd had to in the first two games of the season. However, Clemson was still able to roll up 466 yards of offense against a very solid Cavalier defense, while also not taking advantage of all the opportunities they had.

"We left a lot of a lot of plays out there too," Elliott said. "We missed a couple of wide-open balls. Threw a couple of balls where receivers had to fall down when we had opportunity for a run after the catch. We dropped a couple of balls, we gave up a sack, we had a couple of false starts."

Despite some sloppiness and missed opportunities, the Tigers offensive coordinator was still pleased with the overall result. This early in the season he knows the offense still has room to grow and is anxious to get to work on making his players better as they get set for a top-ten showdown with Miami next weekend.

"Look what we were able to accomplish with all the miscues against a good football team," Elliott said. "So let's stay humble and let's go back to work and make sure that we focus on the little things every single every single minute of every single day so that those things don't come back to haunt us, you know, in the most inopportune time which is game time."

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