“It’s not about what we as coaches know. It’s about what the players know,” said Pruitt. “You can’t play fast if you’re not in shape and you know what you’re doing.”
This season there are a lot of little things I’m looking forward to not missing – the frantic handwaving, Herrera chewing out a DB after a touchdown for missing a signal, a substitution penalty after a timeout, etc. And the towel. Always the towel.
Filed under Georgia Football
Let’s hope Pruitt’s emphasis on creating turnovers pays off.
Moore said Pruitt is doing a great job with individuals breaking down what they need to do with the ball in the air.
It can be seen on the practice field at Georgia this preseason.
“Go attack the ball! Go attack the ball!” Pruitt called out to the defensive backs in a recent practice drill. “Hands on top. Go get it!”
Freshman cornerback Shaq Jones has heard a lot of that: “Basically, what Coach Pruitt is telling us is just to attack. Just attack every play.”
That didn’t translate to any interceptions in Georgia’s first scrimmage, but there was a forced fumble recovered by the defense.
“We’re stripping at the ball when we’re going against the offense, we’re ripping it out,” cornerback Damian Swann said. “We’re trying to make it habits where we can create turnovers, where we can get the offense the ball back so they can go score or we can take the ball and go score with it. That’s one of the keys to winning in this league, you’ve got to be in that top bunch when it comes to takeaways.”
What I like about Pruitt’s approach is that it’s not just about stripping the ball. It starts with players doing their fundamentals properly.
“If you want to create turnovers you have to practice turnovers,” Pruitt said on the day he was introduced as Georgia’s defensive coordinator. “There’s more to it. You can put yourself in position to finish on an interception but you’ve got to actually catch the ball, you’ve got to watch it all the way to the tub. When the ball is on the ground you’ve got to secure it, you’ve got to get your hands underneath the ball and you’ve got to recover a fumble. There are a lot of details to it that I think get overlooked.”
Those details are being taught in practice by Pruitt on a daily basis.
“That’s something he really emphasizes playing the ball, but right now we’re just really focusing on getting lined up and following through with our assignment,” walk-on safety Lucas Redd said. “The rest will take care of itself. We’ll be able to play the ball because we’re going to be in the right spots once we have a better idea where we’re supposed to be lined up.”
And even at Florida State, where Pruitt inherited a talented defense, his emphasis on takeaways had an immediate impact: “In Pruitt’s one season at Florida State, the Seminoles tied for second in the nation with 35 turnovers gained a year after they ranked 66th with 21.”
If nothing else, it’s hard to see how things could be any worse in that department than they were last season, when Georgia ranked second to last in the SEC in turnovers gained.
Speaking of last season, they’re keeping it real in Louisville. (h/t CardDawg)
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
If Dawg porn were a magazine, it’s a fair bet that Jeremy Pruitt would be the centerfold in the August, 2014 edition.
Filed under Georgia Football
When Mark Richt hired Todd Grantham, that NFL experience looked pretty good to him.
“I’m excited the search is over, we have our man, and look forward to what Todd will bring to our defense, our team, and our University,” said Richt. “I think it is particularly valuable that he has a wealth of experience on the defensive side of the ball at both the NFL and collegiate levels…”
But he’s singing a different tune these days.
“Coach Pruitt, Coach Rocker, Coach Ekeler and Coach Sherrer, they all coached high school ball and I think it’s good when you have that,” he said. “These guys are used to taking young guys, taking them from ground zero fundamentally and really showing them how to tackle, showing them how to defeat blocks and how to do things fundamentally sound. They’re really good teachers here and they were teachers as well at their earlier schools. And everyone of them was also on a national championship team in college so they all know what it takes to win and because of that I think they have developed a standard of how we’re to operate. This is what we consider maximum effort and we expect that every single play and if you don’t we’ll put somebody else in there…”
Now I don’t think that high school coaches are better as a class at teaching fundamentals than NFL coaches are. But I do think they’re more familiar with teaching fundamentals in a time-constrained setting. There’s less you can do coaching in college than in the pros and that’s a lesson I’m not sure Grantham fully accepted. And that may be what gives me the most hope for an improvement on the defensive side of the ball this season.
“One thing Coach Pruitt said to me in the interview process… that I fell in love with was, ‘If we can’t execute it, I won’t call it in the game.’ So sometimes I think some coaches think the scheme is going to win the game. We’re going to out-scheme everybody. But it’s really the fundamentals that count. You may call the best defense for that situation but if your defense can’t execute it properly, we’ve got issues.
“And so Coach Pruitt is like, ‘Coach, I’m just telling you right now, I’m a pretty simple ball coach and we can do as many things schematically as anybody else in the nation but as we’re installing things and getting the guys used to what we’re doing, if we go into game one and I think there’s something in the game plan that I don’t think we can execute, we just won’t call it. We’ll make sure they know what they’re doing when they’re out there.’ And that will be a big deal for us,” said Richt.
It’s going to be interesting comparing the progression of the Georgia and Louisville defenses this season.
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
This is pretty amusing:
New Georgia defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt was unhappy with the play calling. He had just finished watching his father’s team at Plainville (Ala.) High lose a game in which it unsuccessfully ran the same deep pass play a half dozen or so times.
So when his father and staff met after the game to discuss what they could have done differently, Pruitt sarcastically spoke up. “If you ran that play one more time,” Pruitt said, “it might have had a chance.”
That’s hardly what the elder Pruitt wanted to hear from his then-fourth-grade son, who he proceeded to spank with a belt in front of his coaching staff.
“I guess I’ve always had a passion for football,” Pruitt said with a laugh.
There’s no truth to the rumor that Paul Johnson runs his coaches meetings the same way.
Filed under Georgia Football
Get The Picture 