Seth Emerson introduces us to Will Friend. Dramatic changes are not in store, it seems.
It doesn’t sound like there will be any major overhaul of how things are taught and done on the line. Friend, a protégé of UAB head coach and former Georgia o-line coach Neil Callaway, said Callaway and Stacy Searels used the same basic terminology.
“Obviously there’s certain things that you kind of may tweak a bit, different techniques and things,” Friend said. “But we’re all in the same deal.”
Well, except for this.
… Finally, in news that warmed the heart of reporters around the table, when it comes to players speaking to the media Friend said he would defer to the head coach and sports information staff. (Searels was much more restrictive.)
As a blogger hoping to hear more on the zombie avoidance front, this can only come as very good news.
Get The Picture 
He also threw out the “Best 5 Will Play” mantra we’ve been hearing alot out of the UGA camp recently. I think Searles said the same thing, but didn’t seem to move on it till late in the season, just from my outsider’s perspective.
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Will preps for his first meeting with the OL corps. The agenda will be boxing intros, mullets and a show of hands from them on who they think the best five are
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“Same basic terminology” must have a different meaning in Friend’s book than mine. Callaway used “split” and “tight” designations for his guards and tackles rather than the more common left and right designations that Searels employed.
That’s a rather huge difference in strategy and technique, let alone terminology.
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Here’s hoping CWF will not be too surprised by our fat beer gutted OL. I hope he can get better results out of the underachievers than CSS did.
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Once again we come back to S & C. I think CWF will do very well with the product CJT seems to be trying to turn out.
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Amen, brother. I’m no expert on o-line technique, but it looked more like our guys were getting overpowered than that they didn’t know what was going on.
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From my very uninformed standpoint, I tended to view the Searels situation as a personality clash with others on the staff. If Friend is able to mesh better with the current staff, that can bode well.
Of course, I could be completely off base as well. But then, this is the internet and all….
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After the massive learning curve and personnel adjustment that switching to the 3-4 has been for us, I’m very happy to here that the nuts and bolts of this particular unit won’t be changing.
Then again… if the best front 5 end up being 5 new guys, maybe that’s a good thing? 🙂
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CMR said the Oline would use the same tech but with some tweaking. There you have now. But I do not think Friend will watch a line play along from a game like LALaf to UCF. I’m still shocked by the line play in the first game of last season. And I almost stop watching the Liberty Bowl because of the O line play. You have to think the line play and rushing game will be there in 2011. I think Callaway was an underrated offensive line coach. I think Friend can coach these guys. We will see.
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I think Coach CMJ with the UVR came up with the ERW on the way to the NHF.
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I’m underwhelmed.
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