Right out of the gate, listen to Smart explain yesterday’s exercise in practicing situations where the offense starts deep in its own territory: “… we try to explain to the kids that if the defense holds ’em and they gotta punt from their own end zone, it’s been an average of about four points per time you stop ’em…”
Schwiing! Give me that kind of attention to detail, even statistical detail, from a coach who’s got a grasp of what he wants to get out of his players and you’ll make a happy camper out of me.
By the way, dial up the clip to the 6:45 mark and listen to Smart respond to a question about satellite camps. Is that the ghost of a smile on his face as he talks about having a plan ready in response to what Harbaugh and Meyer are doing?
Get The Picture 
I’ve taken a wait and see approach with Smart. This presser was very impressive. He does not talk like a first year head coach. He sounds like he has absorbed a lot from Saban. I like the honesty in his answers. He also looks like he has an edge that Richt didn’t have. I don’t think you want to piss him off at practice. The future looks bright.
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Agree. I’ve also noticed how he’s far, far more comfortable in PC’s these days compared to his introductory PC, in which he came across as a bit unpolished and nervous. SCU fans had a field day with this, but what they didn’t realize was, due to Saban’s rule of not allowing assistants to talk to the media, in essence Smart’s development in this area was stunted during all his years with Saban.
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No doubt, much more comfortable now.
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None of which are guaranteed to translate to W’s thus I am still in the waiting and seeing area.
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I like Kirby Smart. But I hate it when men wear visors.
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I’m with you on the visor issue.
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George Carlin said it the best about men who wear visors:
“Here’s some more people who ought to be strapped into chairs and beaten with hammers: people who wear visors. You know? Let me ask you something: what the fuck is the point in wearing half a hat? Either get a hat or don’t; no one’s interested in the top of your head. Go back to the store, tell them to give you the rest of the hat. They cheated you. Or better yet, get yourself one of them little Jewish hats and sew it to your visor. Then you’ve got yourself a full-fledged fucking hat, my friend.”
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to the anti-visor crowd, have you spent much time in the south…
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I spent the first 16 years of my life in Mississippi. My father was born and raised in Athens, Georgia. Neither one of us like visors. On us or other men. Ha.
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I’ve spent my entire life in the state of Georgia and still don’t understand the appeal of visors. I played baseball growing up so baseball caps have always been the choice of outdoor wear for me. Maybe the thinning spot on the back of my head also has something to do with it….
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Visors:
1. Keep the sun out of your eyes
2. Allow heat to escape from the top of your head
Win-win
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thank you,
I stopped wearing hats in hot weather b/c it holds the heat against my head. I don’t wear visors often (pool, beach, lake) but when I do it’s for that reason.
I also have a ton of hair so I can appreciate that thin or bald heads have other considerations.
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Among SEC head coaches, are still strongly associated with a former Gator QB who quit the Scar job last year, but still wears them to hide the circumcision scars.
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Thought visors were for women and the old ball coach. Real men wear caps with a big G on it.
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If your head sweats a lot, visors rock. I’ll add that any man worried about another mans apparel bears watching, IYAM.
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Lol, let me offer a defense. I have a large head – more round than others, while most have more of an oval shape than I do. It’s very rare that I can find a hat off the rack in a store that comfortably fits my head and doesn’t look funny. And I don’t just mean fit around my head, but fit my entire head. Visors, on the other hand, fit very comfortably. I can buy pretty much any visor and it will fit comfortably, and it looks normal (bill doesn’t immediately go flat due to my wide head, stuff like that). So don’t hate on all of us visor fans too much. For me it’s not a fashion thing, it’s a comfort thing. 🙂
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LOL. And this…… I definitely have a bulbous head!
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This probably sounds lame, but what the hell. Since my HS days, I’ve been told by members of the opposite sex that I look better wearing a visor than a hat — probably due in part to the fact that I have a thick head of blond hair. Thus, it was pretty easy for me to choose visors over hats for that reason alone. On the flip side, most of the guys I know with poor/thinning/no hair love wearing hats for obvious reasons. In the coaching profession, Les Miles perfectly exemplifies this.
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As one with thinning/no hair, I only wear hats, but I only wore hats even with a head full of hair.
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That’s the best defense of a visor I’ve heard to date. But I still think they look stupid.
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Haha, well a visor is probably pretty low on the list of things that I do that make me look stupid at times. 😜
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Why? I only wear visors myself and never hats…unless I’m hiking during tick season.
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Spurrier wears visors which is why I don’t like them, unless they are being tossed to the ground in disgust
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That’s some solid Dawg Porn there. Visor? Meh. Gotta have something to keep the sun out of your eyes, and if he wins I don’t gara.
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Senator, you’re supposed to post a trigger warning before you post the Dawg Porn. That made my heart skip a beat.
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This is great news. I was afraid he couldn’t do math.
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I LOL’ed on this
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Holy shit! This guy knows what he wants and has a very definite plan about how to achieve it. Attention to detail for sure. Kirby’s energy jumps out at you. The players have got to love that. I said the entire time I was wanting to see Richt move on and a new guy brought in, all I want is a coach who I stills toughness, discipline, and competitiveness in our team and has them prepared every week and ready to fight for four quarters. That’s all I want. Not a team that has brain farts to the point that you can predict when they will happen or a team that doesn’t seem to be able to focus. We got the right guy.
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It’s amazing to me how people watch his pressers and come away with different reactions. I suppose people are seeing whatever they are longing for.
The senator hears Kirby say that punting out of the endzone give away field position and field position equals points. Now THAT’s finally attention to detail.
Cooley hears Kirby droll for 12 minutes and decide Kirby’s energy jumps out at you.
I hear a coach who’s saying he doesn’t like the players.
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Or, maybe you hear a coach who loves his players enough to want to help them be better. I think he wants to be their big toe.
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I could be way off base here, but I’m going to make the assumption that irrespective of field position, its better if your team’s offense gets a first down and doesn’t turn it over. Likewise, its probably better if your defense gets a turnover or forces a fourth down no matter where the ball is in the field. Certainly the different outcomes at mid-field are less consequential than the differences at either end.
It seems to me that the real emphasis in situational offense and defense is on the coaches putting the players in the best positions to succeed. One thing that is apparent from an offensive perspective is that the more confidence you have in your qb, the better you’re going to be with your back against the goal line. Likewise, in red zone situations being able to run against a stacked box and a short field will lead to a better td/fg ratio.
Obviously, the opposite is true for the defense. You want to be able to win single coverage match ups and not give up big plays when you’ve got the other teams offense in a hole and you want to be able to stuff the run in the red zone to force dangerous passes or fg’s.
I thought the highlight of the presser was talking about competitiveness and toughness. If there was an area that consistently lacked with CMR it was this area. The most consistent time for it was when TD and the David’s were around, but that was about them being competitive people not a cultural dictate. We were too often “soft.” I never really thought CMR was nearly as soft as his rep, but his teams were too often for whatever reason.
We were better with CMR than we ever were before because we got better players. Historically, though our identity had been being a scrappy and tough football team that you didn’t want to see on Saturday. I remember a time when we felt we could beat anybody on any given Saturday. We might be a 8-3 team, but put No. 1 in front of us and we’ll give them all they wanted for 60 minutes. If we can even further upgrade the talent (and it looks like we are) and play with that Dooley-era edge once again, we’ll be ok.
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I think you nailed it.
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Makes me think of David Greene in Tuscaloosa in ’02 with the shadow of his own goalposts at his back when I read this stuff. That game alone was full what’s being talked about here.
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CMR road record for the first 6-7 years was best in college football showing a toughness to not lose anywhere. Do not know what happened later on, if teams got better or we just lost that edge.
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Likely a little of both and lost focus on OL. I like what I hear out of Smart so far and I was in the camp that didn’t want a HC without prior HC experience.. We will see how the team reacts. I am excited to see the next few years. He does seem to have a plan and “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week” Patton
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Well, that initial run on the road was unsustainable over a longer term. I think LSU in 2003 was the first SEC road game CMR’s Dawgs lost. 2001-2005 was a run where they lost @LSU in ’03 and @Auburn in ’04, and that was it for road losses (neutral sites however…)
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We got spoiled about our road warrior type of dominance from 01-05. Many thought that came from the same laid back personality that many say became his undoing.
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The pipeline he’s trying to establish at IMG seems to have a dual purpose. 1) it’s obviously a good idea considering the talent and 2) it seems like a “quiet” shot at what Harbaugh is trying to do. Sure…go have your camp there to try and get a foothold or sell your program but you’ve got a hell of an uphill climb. Be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming years.
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I was struck by the same sentiments. Mark was so much slower and much more contemplative, using fewest words and details as possible. Leads me to believe that he simply faded from on field coaching and didn’t really have any of this individual personnel and depth chart stuff on his mind at all. I agree that the program got softer over the years, I think the kids were mainly playing for their position coaches.
And I’m a visor guy. Full head of blonde hair, short, and simply must wear a visor in the summer due to the heat. Regulation caps in cooler seasons but the heat kills me, might be an age thing with heat tolerance, I’m 46.
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