Mark Richt’s assessment of the new defensive scheme strikes me as being realistic:
“The 3-4 is a good aggressive, attacking style and it’s one where we have enough personnel to run it effectively,” Richt said. “The question is, how well will we do it, how many mistakes will we make along the way, and when we make the mistakes, what’s it going to cost us? On the other end, hopefully we’re going to pressure people enough to get them to turn the ball over more than we did a year ago.”
One thing to hope for is that the increased emphasis on fundamentals offsets some of the costs of mistakes from the change of scheme. Which is what I think Richt is getting at with this quote:
… Richt said the game plan for now is to build a foundation this summer, then throw as much of the new defensive playbook at the players as possible during the first few weeks of fall camp. About two weeks before the season opener, coaches will pare down the plays and come up with a game plan that will hopefully be a bit easier to implement on game day. For now, however, Richt said he’s taking more solace in the impressive approach his coaches and players have shown this offseason and worrying less about the new scheme.
“It’s not so much what you run as how you run it,” Richt said. “I think Todd has got a presence about him that guys respect, and I think we’re going to get after it.”
Get The Picture 
Read and react…..meh, not so much.
“I think we’re going to get after it”…..me so horny.
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I can live with mistakes being made from playing aggressively and learning a new system. That is much better than giving up big plays because of poor angles to the ball and not playing the ball in pass coverage.
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It’s hard to imagine we’ll be worse on defense. I’ll take a few risks if it means we actually instill some fear in people from time to time.
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Would it be counter-productive to run a mostly 4-3 look against UL-L? I would think that having Washington or Houston with their hand in the dirt on, say, 60% of the defensive snaps would let the players ease into the new look in a live game setting. It would also have the added benefit of revealing as little as possible of CTG’s playbook to Spurrier and USC.
It makes sense to me, but I guess if the players haven’t already gotten a good grasp of the 3-4 system by that point it would probably work against them.
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Gob, I agree 100%, I don’t think the Dawgs are going to show their hand in the first game. It would make it harder for Spurrier to scheme against.
Sounds like CTG is going to force feed the 3-4 and then by game time give the guys something their comfortable with.
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No matter the alignment, the objective is still to tackle the ball carrier and defend passes. If they do that well enough, lapses in assignments can be overcome. Hopefully, lapses in assignments will be the exception and not the rule. I just can’t see these coaches calling the same coverage or blitz or whatever if the players blow their assignments time and again.
The good news is that the defense knows what the opposing offenses will want to do, but the opposing offenses won’t know much about what the defense is going to do. So, how much of the impact of the defense not having the plays down is mitigated by the unknown faced by the opponents?
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Ah man, I liked the bend but don’t break D that gave up 40+ in most big games
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