Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney says he couldn’t be prouder of former longtime Clemson assistant and current Virginia head coach Tony Elliott.

Elliott’s Virginia team sits atop the ACC standings right now, at 5-1 overall and 3-0 in the ACC. The Cavaliers are also currently ranked No. 19 in the AP Top 25 Poll.

“Super proud of Tony,” Swinney said during his Tuesday press conference. “I think they’re the epitome of a team that believes. They’re playing together, and they believe. That is a powerful thing, when you get a team that’s really, really together and really, truly believes.”

Elliott was a wide receiver at Clemson from 1999-2003 and was a team captain of the 2003 squad for which Swinney served as Elliott’s position coach in Swinney’s first year at Clemson.

Elliott later served 11 years as an assistant coach at Clemson from 2011-21, helping the Tigers to a 130-21 record in his tenure. He was promoted to assistant head coach and offensive coordinator in January 2021 after seven seasons as co-offensive coordinator (2014–20) and a decade as running backs coach (2011–20).

Elliott — who won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach in 2017, and helped guide the Tigers to national titles in 2016 and 2018 — is now in his fourth season as Virginia’s head coach. The Cavaliers went 3-7 in Elliott’s first year at the helm in 2022, 3-9 in 2023 and 5-7 in 2024.  

“They’ve had three losing seasons in a row, and they’ve been through a lot,” Swinney said. “I couldn’t be more proud of Tony, and I’m so happy for him. I’m thankful for [Virginia athletic director] Carla [Williams] and the administration, everybody up there, for hanging in there with him. It’d be very easy to just give up on a guy. But man, Tony’s special. He’s special. He always has been, and it’s fun to see. Hopefully they can keep it going, but I’m super proud of him.”

Virginia opened this season with a 48-7 victory vs. Coastal Carolina before narrowly losing at NC State, 35-31. The Cavaliers have since reeled off four straight wins, including back-to-back overtime wins vs. then-No. 8 Florida State on Sept. 26 and most recently at Louisville this past Saturday.  

The victory over FSU marked Virginia’s first over a top-10 opponent at home since 2005, when it also knocked off the Seminoles.

“When you win a couple of those games – they’ve had a couple overtime wins – but when you’ve got a team that’s truly together and a team that’s playing with an unshakeable belief, magic can happen, and maybe sometimes you can win a game maybe you’re not supposed to win on paper,” Swinney said. “And when you do that, next thing you know, you get a lot of synergy. So, it’s just been awesome.”

Elliott’s first two seasons as a head coach were unlike any ever experienced by a college coach. Near the end of his first season in 2022, a campus shooting took the lives of three UVA players – Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry.

The remainder of the season was canceled, and Elliott faced an unforeseeable and monumental challenge that he’s since led a grieving program through and helped it find a way forward.

“What they’ve been through up there from when he first got that job — but I think that was God’s plan, to take him there for that reason, because he’s the right leader for what they’ve been through,” Swinney said. “He’s done a good job. The staff’s hung in there, and fun to see. Fun to see.”