Give it a couple years.
I'd restate what you said a different way. Elliott is wise enough to know whoever takes the UT job is going to get his nuts handed to him, no matter how good a coach you are. This program is so broken that it's going to take a while.
Huepel on the other hand is Jeremy Pruitt 2.0. He's confident because he just got handed 4 million bucks out of the blue. Nobody else was looking to hire him. It's awful easy to be that confident when you got a huge pay raise of guaranteed money that is yours even if you fail miserably. And Heupel KNOWS he wasn't the guy UT wanted. So the expectations are very low that he will succeed.
Elliott on the other hand can have any job he chooses and the expectations on him are through the roof. Why would he NOT walk into the best possible opportunity to win? Huepel wasnt in that position. Nobody was looking at him.