Delaney Crawford was ready to head to Charlottesville after high school and get to work.

A senior at Corona (Ca.) High School, Crawford announced his commitment to play quarterback at Virginia on November 29th, two days after the Wahoos’ regular season ended with a loss at home to Virginia Tech.

Then, three days after Crawford made his announcement, Bronco Mendenhall made one of his own: He was stepping down as football coach at UVa following the Cavaliers’ Fenway Bowl matchup against SMU.

For more than a week, Crawford and the other players in UVa’s 2022 recruiting class were stuck in limbo. Defensive lineman AJ Holmes decommitted in the immediate aftermath of the announcement; offensive lineman Joe Brown did the same days later, then flipped his commitment to BYU. Concern permeated the commits’ group text thread.

“It was a little rough last week,” Crawford admitted to CavsCorner.

That changed Friday afternoon, when news broke that Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott had accepted the UVa head coaching job. In 11 seasons coaching at his alma mater, Elliott was part of a pair of national title teams and was named the top assistant coach in the country in 2017.

But the aspect of his resume that most excited UVa recruits was the list of players who developed in Elliott’s offenses at Clemson, like quarterbacks Trevor Lawrence and Deshaun Watson and running back Travis Etienne.

“I saw the amazing things he did at Clemson with those backs,” Lexington (Ky.) Christian running back Xavier Brown, the Gatorade Player of the Year for Kentucky, said on Friday evening. “Ready to meet him too. From what I saw posted by his former players he seems like an amazing man.”

Brown got that opportunity, at least virtually, this weekend. Elliott arrived in Charlottesville on Sunday afternoon. One of the first items on his agenda, shortly after meeting with the current team at UVa, was a Zoom conversation with the players committed the 2022 recruiting class.

For more than a half hour, Elliott began re-recruiting those commits. The first-time head coach discussed his immediate plans after assuming the reins of a UVa program that has gone 11-11 combined the past two seasons. He talked about his core values and what he will expect from the recruits when they arrive in Charlottesville.

Most of the 2022 class was able to log onto the virtual conversation. One notable absence was four-star offensive lineman Brody Meadows, who was unable to take part while traveling to Dallas to be honored this week as a US Army All-American.

Matoaca three-star defensive lineman Keyshawn Burgos was also not logged onto the conversation. On Monday morning, Burgos became the third player to decommit from the Cavaliers’ 2022 class.

After getting home to Georgia following an official visit to North Carolina that he says “went really well,” Greater Atlanta Christian safety Will Hardy was on the Zoom.

“Seems like a great coach with amazing faith and goals for the team,” Hardy said afterward.

“Happy to get to meet him,” agreed Brown. “Great man who has a lot of goals that he has set. Most importantly, I can see he is a coach who cares about our development off the field and who we become as men.”

Chattanooga (Tenn.) Boyd Buchanan tight end Karson Gay was drawn in by Elliott’s vision for the program, and the energy he exuded during the conversation.

“He is easy to connect with,” Gay said. “I think he’s a great fit for me and the other guys.”

“He just really wants to build the model program and do it the right way,” said Chattanooga (Tenn.) Baylor School linebacker Trey McDonald. “Still heavily focused on academics and building awesome young men into the future. He’s just basically all about doing things with heart and effort, and I love that.”

Mooresboro (NC) Thomas Jefferson Academy wide receiver Dakota Twitty took to Twitter following Sunday night’s Zoom to reassure his followers that he still intends to sign with UVa on Wednesday. Gay and Crawford also mentioned that they will also be signing with the Wahoos later this week.

Like his fellow 2022 commits, Twitty came away from his first interaction with Elliott with a positive impression of the Cavaliers’ new coach.

“I loved what he said and I’m still locked in,” he said. “I can’t wait to meet him in person.”

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