Georgia celebrated its version of Groundhog Day yesterday, as its two coordinators popped out of their holes to do a presser, never to be seen again until season’s end.
Then again, if this is the kind of insight Dan Lanning has to share…
On Jermaine Johnson:
“Football is football, right? Football is football in Missouri. Football is football in Kansas. Football is football in Georgia. And obviously, the SEC though is a different animal. I think it’s always hard to compare and contrast, but the field is still 100 yards. That stuff doesn’t change, but the difference in the way you prepare there and the way you prepare here, there is a difference.”
“You watch the Sugar Bowl?” Lanning asked a reporter. “It was obviously a great learning experience, but it left a sour taste in our mouth. But that was last year and the 2019 team is completely different from the 2018 team.”
… I don’t really think we’re gonna care whether he sees his shadow.
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UPDATE: Shoot, I didn’t mean to overlook James Coley’s contributions on the day.
“There are some good players, we play against really good players, we all understand the challenge is to be better,” Coley said Monday, speaking to reporters for the first time he was promoted on Jan. 11. “Going into this job, you know what’s ahead of you, you know what you have. Now, whether it’s offseason or in season, right now we’re getting in this training camp mode, we’re figuring out little by little where we’re at with some of the guys, how much they have to improve.”
“I think in the pro-style game you coordinate to your players,” Coley said. “Players not plays, right? It’s a little cliché in the coaching profession but it’s the truth. Players not plays. Coach Smart is all about players not plays. He definitely preaches that to us. Sometimes as coaches you forget and you’re like, ’Man, this scheme is really intriguing, but are your players touching the ball within the scheme?”
Hey, give him a little credit. At least he was willing to acknowledge he was dishing out pablum there.
Manning sounds like Nuke Laloosh.
Well done, Kirby/Crash.
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Lanning* – damn autocorrect
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Lol. That is probably more true than you might realize.
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This is music to my ears, though I’ll remain skeptical until I see Georgia’s offense employ this line of thinking with some consistency.
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Well, we all know how the fans will react if the hands he wants touching the ball aren’t tight ends fifteen times a game.
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Or if he refuses to block the defensive end 6 times in a row.
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Players not plays. Except when The plays called are stupid. Looking right at you Chaney.
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“Players not plays.”
That actually explains a lot, unfortunately. I guess Coley and Kirby haven’t watched the pros lately because they are all about designing plays that create mismatches with their best players. Kirby doesn’t care about creative offensive plays (look at the UF goal line series) because he assumes his guy will be bigger, faster, and tougher than his opponent. That will win the East. It won’t beat Bama and Clemson. I fear Kirby will be stubborn unlike Saban and we will get stuck with disappointment again. It’s players AND plays Kirby. Don’t settle for just players.
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I always heard that was the knock on Donnan when he arrived from Marshall with his great resume there. He just had the biggest, fastest, strongest team in 1-AA and overwhelmed you. if he didn’t have that, he didn’t have an answer. Wonder how many fake punts he called?
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That is the “secret” of coaching. You can draw up a play or two, to get the first down, get the 3 pointer, etc…But over the totality of the game, its players making plays.
These SEC coaches arent that different from HS coaches. However, the level of player is different.
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I watched the ’97 Mississippi State game recently, and I actually thought his offense was pretty dynamic. His offensive problems after that season largely come down to a lack of talent at wide receiver and running back (thanks to Pass and Sanks not panning out for whatever reason). He’d fixed those by 2000, but the Quincy Carter meltdown doomed that season, and he was gone. Donnan was a good OC and a bad program manager in my view.
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We haven’t seen the bubble screen since he left…
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Heh. That MSU game also reminded me how awesome Hines Ward was. One play, Bobo threw a crossing route behind him at his feet, and he slowed down a bit, reached down, caught it and managed to keep running to gain another five or six yards in traffic. Donnan also opened the game trying to get him the ball a half dozen different ways.
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If Kirby was really about individual players, he would draw up plays that take advantage of particular talents like Mecole Hardman or Nauta to create mismatches that can abuse opponents. Instead we just run vanilla plays and rely on our guy beating their guy which works until you face someone with equal talent.
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Except when Mecole ran right by the best CB on Bama for a TD?
Must suck dreading football season.
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Did we win or lose that game? If we had worked harder to scheme Mecole open, do you think we might have scored enough to win? Look at how the Chiefs use Tyreek Hill to devastating effect. That could have been us. Instead Kirby ran into the Bama wall over and over again in the second halves.
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What’s wrong with players AND plays.
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Players vs plays is a lot better than balance.
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