Experience Is Key For Georgia Bulldog Inside Linebackers

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ATHENS - One of the biggest question marks coming into the 2022 season was Georgia’s inside linebacker unit.

After losing Nakobe Dean, Quay Walker, and Channing Tindall to the NFL this year, everyone knew we would see some new faces leading the way for Glenn Schumann at inside linebacker.

It’s an extremely talented group, but they’re inexperienced. They’ve played well for the first two games of the season, but head coach Kirby Smart said that as a whole, they still need more experience in order to play to the standard that the previous group set.

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"The first thing they've gained is experience”, Smart said.  “I think gained experience is invaluable. They could've played in 15 or 16 more practices and gone against a really good team in ours, but they need to play. They need to get under the lights, make calls, and make things happen unexpected to them and react to those things. Schumann does a good job of coaching those guys to handle things they haven't seen before. They have to be able to handle things on principle.”

Smart knows that opposing offense are going to throw different things at them each week. Nobody is going to run the same thing over and over. Schumann’s group has to learn to correct their mistakes on the fly and make in-game adjustments as they see better offenses throughout the season. 

Of course, the only way to do that is to get more experience under their belt.

“There is not an offense this year that we are going to play that is going to run the plays the way they did the week before”, Smart added.  “They're going to move people around, and then tweak and hides things. You have to play on principle. I think those two guys [Smael Mondon and Jamon Dumas-Johnson] and even the others in Rian and Trezman have played well to spell those guys."