I keed, I keed.
Seriously, how’d you like that massive data dump that emanated from Butts-Mehre yesterday? We’ve got defensive players lining up every which way, players getting reassigned to new positions, lots of “nothing is etched in stone” talk from the head guy, the ghost of Fabris being exorcised with the new special teams coaching assignments… you name it.
There were even tactical changes announced, for those of us looking to grasp at any post-Martinez straws we can find:
On the secondary:
“It’s going to be a little different philosophy. We were more of a boundary corner and a field corner, not to say that we won’t continue to do that, but the boundary corners in our old scheme were counted on to do a lot of run support. I don’t know if we’ll doing quite as much of that. … We still may go left-right in that regard. I think we’re going to be experimenting a little bit at the corner position. You’d like to have safeties that can play both the strong and the free. That’s ideal really in any defense. …We’re just going to be mixing and matching with these guys a little bit to see who can do what.”
Certainly, any talk-is-cheap caveat you want to toss out about now is appropriate. But one thing that strikes me after reading this…
Georgia’s players aren’t the only ones getting used to all the changes around the football offices. Richt said he has done his best to soak in some new ideas that Grantham and fellow first-year assistants Scott Lakatos and Warren Belin have brought to the table, too.
“It’s a healthy exchange of ideas,” Richt said. “A lot of times you spend a lot of money to fly around to different schools to get details of what’s going on, but how much can you get in a one- or two-day period compared to a guy just being there, living there.”
Richt already has decided to implement two suggestions of his new staff.
First, he’ll be going back to a Monday through Thursday practice schedule, with walk-throughs on Fridays. Last season he had the team practice on Sunday and gave the players Monday off, but he has since reconsidered the plan in light of some input from his new assistants.
Grantham also suggested revamping the daily meeting schedules, so rather than open with special teams work, Richt will address the entire team first, then break off into special teams and segment meetings. Richt said it’s a schedule used in the NFL and makes organizing meetings much simpler…
and this…
–Wondering why Georgia is starting spring practice Thursday before the university goes on spring break and then is resuming workouts on March 16?
Bobo said the main reason is that it allows for extra meeting time.
“We’ll basically do that first practice again when we get back,” he said. “We’re going to install the same thing twice.”
… is that it appears the coaching staff is shedding some of the complacency that dragged it down the past few seasons and starting to think about and question the way the program goes about its business. There are no guarantees that any of this winds up making a big difference, but in my mind it still beats the “when you’ve got enough talent, the rest will take care of itself” attitude that’s characterized Georgia football for a while.
Now if they can just get past the “all he’s ever wanted to do” mindset…
Get The Picture 