Georgia Bulldogs OC Todd Monken: "Stetson Has a Fantastic Football Mind"
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ATLANTA - Georgia Bulldogs and offensive coordinator Todd Monken are getting ready to take on Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes in the 2022 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in the College Football Playoffs.
TODD MONKEN: I would think what affects preparation probably the most is just the time in between when we played last. I don't know how many days that's been, but you're never really used to having almost a full month off from the last time you played, guys finishing up finals, getting them going again, then you have a break for Christmas, which was well-deserved by our players and then getting them going again. But we're excited to get back after it. We've had really good three weeks of preparation and a great start to this week.
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Q. Coach, I'm just curious, we can all see Brock's extremely versatile, but could you talk to the mental bandwidth it requires to know that many different positions and play that many different positions in your offense?
TODD MONKEN: Well, we've had this conversation since I've been here about Brock, and what kind of worker he is, attention to detail, mental toughness that he has. And he's really developed in a lot of areas. And it's a credit to him. It's a credit to his upbringing, his family. And like I said, there's a lot of things you can do with him. He's outstanding with the ball in his hands. He's got an elite catch radius, ability to compete to go get the football. And so, again, he's meant a lot to us in terms of this year in terms of having an AD out and his ability to make plays.
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Q. What has allowed the offensive line to develop and really seem like play some of its best football over the last month, month and a half of the season?
TODD MONKEN: First of all, it's having good players. You gotta have good players. If you have good players that work their butts off every day, have elite attention to detail, they're going to continue to get better. And I think we have to remember that Broderick hadn't played a lot of football until this year. Sed was a one-year starter. Tate was out all last year. Amarius Mims hadn't played a lot of football. Xavier Truss was not a starter before. Devin Willock had not played a lot of football. So I think if you've got the right guys that have talent that are elite in terms of attention to detail and try to play physical every week, they're going to continue to improve.
Q. The Ohio State players who were in here before y'all were asked what advantages they think they might have against the offense, and they said, we have advantages across the board. And I want to see if y'all wanted to respond to that.
TODD MONKEN: Well, I mean, they should have confidence. They have a good football team. I'm not going to sit here and say that we think in terms of this X, Y and Z. We have advantages. We have a good football team. Our tape proves that. Their tape proves it. So at the end of the day, we got good football players. They got good football players. At this point, it's going to come down to execution. It's going to come down to our preparation that leads up to this, and it's not going to come down to whether we think we have advantages or we don't think we have advantages because at the end of the day, both teams have good players. It's going to come down to doing the little things well in execution.
Q. Coach Monken, how have you seen your offense grow and develop over the course of the season to now put you guys in the position you're in today?
TODD MONKEN: I don't -- you know, we went through last year, we lost George, and it forces you to adapt, and then you lose AD early in the year, and you're forced to adapt, and luckily we've got other good players. Probably the most constant we've had is these two guys right here because the epicenter of what you do is your center and your quarterback. They make it go. They're the ones that communicate upfront. So those two guys have been the reason we've been where we're at along with everybody else and the continued improvement of the O line, the consistency there. But it's hard for me to pinpoint, because in my mind, averages just make you feel good. At the end of the year, what's going to matter most Saturday is that we score, we don't turn it over. It won't matter what we've done really up to this point other than our execution, how we practice this week and be able to put it on the field Saturday night.
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Q. Todd, when your all's, for lack of a better term, benched Stetson after the Jacksonville game a couple years ago, what was his sort of journey like that you saw in that almost ten months before he really took back over?
TODD MONKEN: Well, it's a complete credit to him, and really nothing to do with me. All we did was try to bury him for the couple of years he was here, and all he did was continue to fight and compete and had every reason to say, you know what, I'm gone in today's day and age in the portal and guys leaving. He didn't do that. He wanted to be a Georgia Bulldog, wanted to be the quarterback for the Georgia Bulldogs. You know, I think that we've come out the other side probably better collectively. He's very prideful, and we wouldn't be where we're at without him. And collectively we've improved. I've done a better job of coaching him. He's done a better job of accepting that part of it. He always had talent, always had ability. We talked about it last year getting ready for Michigan.
You know, there was a back and forth about Stetson and J.T., and all I said was just look at the film. Just look at the film and the plays he's made. And even this year, look at the plays that he's made to get us where we're at. And sometimes you don't always make the right decision. You know, we're human, too, in terms of who we play. And then you gotta reverse course and say you know what, we're wrong, this is the guy.
Q. Todd, to follow up again on Stetson, he's often self-critical, but when he says that when he started with you that he was a guy who didn't understand football, what would you say about that, and where would you say he's made the most growth?
TODD MONKEN: Well, I think he's overplaying that way, way, way too much because I'm sitting here. The reality is Stetson is a very, very football-smart player. Maybe I had one too many verys. But Stetson is a very smart player. He loves football. I mean, he sits in there, studies it, will be in there late. He wants to know everything about what we're doing, how to do it better. He's one of the rarer guys at this level that you can be quarterback controlled, and he can run it. He can get us in and out of plays. He can see it. Has a fantastic football mind.
So to say that, like I said, that's unfair to himself. It's unfair to his preparation and what he's done. You know, I do think there's a point in a player's progression where maybe -- and this is a guess. We've never talked about that. Okay, Stetson comes in, he leaves, comes back, what vision does he have of himself, you know, that, sure, he'd love to be the starter at Georgia. But deep down is he really thinking like, okay, I'm going to be the starter at Georgia.
I think once you get a chance to play in meaningful games and you realize like I always believed I could play, because we played Arkansas my first year here, and thank God he came in the game and rescued our ass, because he played his rear end off and right there, maybe to him and us, we're like this guy's a really good football player.
So I think there's a little too much he's putting on that about me and the fact that maybe it's a combination of two things of like, okay, man, I can do this, and how do I maximize my measurable skill set. How do I get better, this that I've worked on gets better. And then for us, how do we try to find ways to maximize what he does well to give us the best chance to win.
Q. Todd, how was Michigan able to create so many explosive plays and now this sort of chess match comes where you think Ohio State's defense will react this way so we have to do this, et cetera?
TODD MONKEN: Oh, you know, a couple of the plays at the end of the game came when they were trying to stop the run. So it's kind of hard. The game was kind of at the point where they had to get a stop and they had a couple of long runs, but early in the game. They went zero and missed a tackle on hitch route. They were a second away from getting a sack, and they missed a tackle and he went the distance. And they had defenders run into each other one time on a wheel route. They caught him in a cloud coverage and hit across the field raised route. So they were able to take advantage of, you know, I guess you call sometimes a miss cue by the defense or some play action, but again, the game is really simple. I mean, it's really, you know, how do we be explosive, how do we not turn it over. How do we get third downs. Do we score touchdowns in the red zone and how do we not lose our place and put you behind the chains. And they did those things.
They were able to be explosive. They didn't turn it over. They held Ohio State at times. So it gave them a chance to continue to plug ahead. So like any -- they're no different than any other team you play, is if you're not able to be explosive, you're going to have a hard time scoring. It just worked out in that game that Michigan hit some plays that gave them a chance to be explosive. And that's in games we've had success against unless we've been significantly better if you don't find ways to be explosive, you're going to have a hard time scoring points.
Q. Ohio State has a lot of depth upfront at the defensive line. They have a lot of talent on the edge. What do you see from their edge rushers on film that stands out?
TODD MONKEN: Well, they're long and rangy. And I think the one thing they're twitchy inside. I know you're talking about their outside guys. They create issues with their looks. So you have to be careful and not chase ghosts, but you have to be prepared because they're not afraid to pressure you. As these guys said earlier, from the field, from the boundary, different players pressuring you. So you have to be dialed in to what looks they're giving you, but definitely their edge guys can create issues. Again, like any team that we've played in the past that have had really good players upfront, the best way to be able to negate that is to be able to run the football, be able to get the ball out of your hands, be able to protect, chip when you can. And if we're able to do that and not be in long yard situations or get behind, then it doesn't eliminate really good players, but it limits their ability to affect the game. That happened last year against Michigan. We got ahead early. We were able to run the football. We got it out of our hands. Against LSU with their edge guys, that's the key to it. Otherwise those guys can really disrupt the game.
Q. Coach Monken, a lot has been made of these Georgia practices over the past few years, but the bottom line is that there's a work ethic and player empowerment that is kind of unrivaled across the college football landscape. In a week like this where emotions can be heightened, what sense of comfort do you take as a coaching staff knowing these players are going to come out and be accountable for each other in that practice setting?
TODD MONKEN: Well, I think the biggest comfort you take is watching your guys work. You know, we can only go by what we see. You recruit good players. You have a structure and a system. And then you go to work. And like I tell the offensive staff, you know, I can't call plays that I don't see during the week work. I mean, that's a rarity. So the looks that we get by the scout group and our execution gives you confidence to call it. And the exact same thing is true with your players is anybody that says, well, I'm not really a practice player doesn't play. That makes no sense to me, because I can only go by in our staff by what you do every day and how you work and gain the trust of your teammates and the coaches as to when you put him on the field. And when that occurs, then you have a lot of faith of what the product will look like, because you've seen it every day and the work they've put in, because when you have talent and they play their rear ends off and they work and have attention to detail, the game is just a byproduct of that.
Q. Coach, and I guess you can answer this too, Sed, being an offensive lineman. When they have edge rushers like that that are so prone to get on field and get after the quarterback, I guess how much does a play action impact that and maybe how do you attack that in the run game, take advantage of it rather?
TODD MONKEN: Yeah, I mean they got good players. We got good players, they got good players. Let's go. You know, I mean it is what it is. We've played teams that have good players. They've played teams that have good players, and it comes down to, you know, how we prepare and the plan that we put together for our guys to give them the best chance to be successful. And like I said, they've got good players.