Tony Elliott Details Decision to Start Anthony Colandrea Over Tony Muskett

Matt Newton | Aug 27, 2024

Tony Elliott says Virginia's quarterback battle was "extremely close", but Anthony Colandrea's improvement in decision-making helped him win the starting job over Tony Muskett. / Virginia Athletics

Three days after he finally revealed that Anthony Colandrea had beaten Tony Muskett for UVA's starting quarterback job heading into the 2024 season, Virginia head coach Tony Elliott faced the media in his Tuesday press conference and was expectedly asked several questions about the resolution of the quarterback battle, which lasted the entire offseason and was apparently very closely contested.

One of the main deciding factors in Colandrea's favor, it seems, was apparent improvement in the biggest flaw in his game, a tendency to make unnecessarily risky throws and generally putting the ball in jeopardy far too often. While those gambles sometimes paid off with exceptional highlights, the turnovers they sometimes produced were and continue to be a major cause for concern heading into Colandrea's sophomore season. According to Elliott, though, Colandrea has made substantial progress in that aspect and those refinements helped paved the way for Colandrea winning the starting job over Tony Muskett.

"What I've noticed [about Colandrea] is that he's a lot more conscientious when he pulls it down to run, keeping it high and tight," Elliott said on Tuesday. "And also, from a decision-making standpoint, just not, some of those plays that he just, you know, he feels like he wants to pull the trigger, he's being a lot more conscientious and understanding the situation, that sometimes it's better to just pull the ball down, throw it away, or run, get four yards, get down, as opposed to putting the ball into jeopardy by throwing into coverage... All indications is that the maturity has taken place related to [Colandrea] just in the live reps, which gives us confidence that we're going to see improvement in the game."

READ MORE: Virginia Football Releases Depth Chart for Season Opener vs. Richmond

Elliott was asked if he put his finger on the pulse of the UVA locker room in order to help decide who the starting quarterback should be and the head coach confirmed that the opinions of his players did play a part in that decision.

"I asked questions and I won't, you know, expose the guys that I asked on the team, but I asked some guys some questions, just to get their perspective. And obviously it was just one piece of the puzzle," Elliott said. "It wasn't just hey, I sat there and said I'm making the decision by myself because this is a program decision. Every position battle is a program decision, but the quarterback more so in particular. And so it was important for me to at least have their perspective on how they saw it and I think it was consistent with what I thought because the competition was real, like it was a real competition. These guys battled every single day and it was extremely close."

Elliott noted that the evaluation of both quarterbacks included the tape from the 2023 season, practices during spring football, and then most importantly, how each player performed most recently in fall camp.

"When you start looking at all the factors, you look at last year, right, that's part of the equation, so we've already evaluated last year. And then you look at Spring. Spring probably was not as good as a piece of a body of work to evaluate because [Tony Muskett] was hurt," Elliott said. "So then it came down to, okay, now we're going to look at fall camp and every day, every rep, not just the live reps, the reps away from the defense, everything was evaluated. It was very, very, very close. I'm proud of both AC and Tony for the way they handled it. And also proud of the the way they handled when the decision was made."

Finally, Elliott made the claim that while Colandrea will be Virginia's starter on Saturday against Richmond, his hope is that both Colandrea and Muskett will continue to compete every day in recognition of the fact that both quarterbacks will need to perform at a high level in order for UVA to be successful this season.

"The thing I think everybody in that locker room and in our program understands is we're gonna need both of them. We're gonna need both of these guys to go win football games," said Elliott. "And so where we're at right now is AC will be the first one to run out there versus Richmond, but the expectation is that they continue to compete every single day because that's going to bring out the best version of each one individually and then collectively, they're going to help each other put their best foot forward because they know that they're battling."

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