Former longtime Clemson assistant coach Tony Elliott says you can’t count out Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.

Elliott, now in his fourth season as Virginia’s head coach, joined The Zach Gelb Show and had a message for those doubting Swinney and the Tigers amid their 1-3 start to this season.

“I would say that their season is not over, right, so watch out,” Elliott said. “They’re going to bounce back. You can’t count him out because he’s done it [won a national championship] not once but twice, and he’s been there four times. And man, he knows how to kind of adapt. And the years we were there, we had to adapt each year.

“So, I’m fully confident that Coach Swinney and the Tigers will bounce back.”

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 — was asked why he thinks Swinney could still go win a national championship again at Clemson one day.

“Because he’s done it before,” Elliott said. “That’s Coach Swinney — you can’t count him out. He’s going to figure it out. He got the job when I think the previous 29 interim coaches did not get hired — he got the job. And then he took Clemson from where it was at that point to what we all know it to be now.”

Coming off a big win over then eighth-ranked Florida State last Friday, Elliott has his Virginia team sitting at 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the ACC this season. The Cavaliers are now ranked No. 24 in the AP Poll.

UVA is set to play at Louisville this Saturday, while Clemson hits the field to face North Carolina in Chapel Hill on Saturday (12 p.m., ESPN).