UGA Football DC Glenn Schumann Gives Bold Statements About Georgia's Defense
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ATHENS – Georgia Bulldog defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann met with the media Wednesday afternoon to discuss the team's progression in fall camp and preview the upcoming season.
Opening Statement…
“I just wanted to acknowledge, we challenge the players all off season in terms of passion, fire and energy. I think through the first six days, that's been outstanding. Obviously, it's early, there's still things that need to improve in terms of execution. It's built that way on purpose. The first six days are heavy insulation on both sides of the ball. Philosophically, you do that because over time, you get more reps. The best way to add to knowledge and add to execution is by getting reps doing it. The earlier you put it in, the sooner that they can make mistakes and get that corrected. There's still a way to go in terms of that, that's what camp's for. The passion, fire and energy has been great. It's a credit to them. I told the defense the other day, it's kind of like marriage. Everybody's happy on their wedding day. Everybody has a lot of passion and energy in the first five or six days. What separates teams from others is what happens from day six to day 15. Then the consistency over the course of the season can keep that going. I'm really pleased with where that is at the start of this.”
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On consolidating calls to fewer words and recruiting players based on their recall abilities…
“When you go through the recruiting process, the more time you spend with people, the more you can tell guys that really love ball and that are going to be invested in it. It's our job to teach them, and it's their job to put in the work to learn. We're a team in that manner. It's not necessarily just a war quizzing and seeing who has the best recall, and they're the guys that need to be here. Obviously, that's beneficial. The guys that really love it, they're going to be determined to work through it. Ultimately, learning comes from their own personal investment in it. I think you're gauging guys' levels of investment and love for the game of football. Then, do they want to just play or they want to talk about it? If they want it to be part of every aspect of their life, that translates.”
On size, shape, athletically comparing this team to previous teams…
“I'm really pleased with where this group is. I think they had a great off-season. I think that we have size. I think we have speed. I don't think comparisons are fair to the guys here or the guys before. I'm really pleased with where they're at. The conditioning level that we have, you're continuing to build up stamina to play. You build from playing a four-play drive to a six-play drive to an eight-play drive. There's nothing like playing football to get in football shape. We're still doing that. I think comparisons are not fair to the past or the present.”
On CJ Allen and Raylen Wilson’s growth on the field and as leaders…
“It's honestly really crazy to think about. I constantly refer to them as the old heads now. I think that reality for them of, hey, time's running out a little bit. It feels like you have forever when you first get here, and the next thing you know, you're a junior. Their maturity level has always been high. I think their outward confidence, their leadership, how vocal they are and how that translates to them playing the game. They're playing faster, they're communicating faster. The reps allow you to see, people don't like the game slowing down. The more you play, the more it slows down, right? Because now you're anticipating, you're not reacting. I think you saw a little bit of that last year in spurts, where, at times, they were playing really fast. I think the more they play, the more confident they are, both in terms of communicating defense and commanding from a leadership standpoint. Speeding up their run fits what they do in coverage and what they do with blitzers. I think all of that is part of natural progression. Those guys work really hard in all aspects of their game.”
On someone taking on the same “uncomfortable” role that Jalon Walker took on last season…
“Within saying, make us uncomfortable, you ask the players to be uncomfortable because that's where growth comes from. I think it's important in camp you assess, who are our best players? What do they do well? Obviously, there is a blueprint for what the Georgia defense is. There's a standard there, but that's more about how to play the game than it is about, are we going to be more quarters or three deep zone? Are we going to be more five man front or four man front? Are we going to play more base defense, like number of linebackers on the field? Are we going to get in dime on third down? All those variables are really based on who you have and what they do best. That's part of what you find out in camp. You teach the defense, and then as you get closer to games, you mold it to the guys. We're not asking anybody to go replace Jalen Walker in that way. It might be three different guys replace what he did. It might be relative to their strengths. It might be a little bit from the outside linebacker room, something from the inside linebacker room. We're not going to ask somebody to fill exactly what he did because that might not be the best interest of this team.”
On Christen Miller’s role on the defensive line…
“There's times that he's been at a really high level. The challenge there is sustaining it, because his level of intensity, effort and his level of communication. His urgency is at an all-time high, which is what it needs to be. We need him to be a guy that can both anchor in the middle and also be really disruptive. When you're playing, we always talk about that you're playing base mode. Let's say we're playing technique up front — the gaps are very clear in front of you. Linebackers have to fill those gaps. We need him to be strong at the point of attack. We need mount back. Then when we move, he's a really good athlete. He needs to add value in terms of disrupting plays when we do move him There’s ways to navigate edge pass rush on offense. It's really difficult to deal with the dominant pass rusher in the middle, in terms of pocket push and winning matchups on guard and centers. The more he can do that, we need that from our interior defensive line, not just the run-stopping ability, but pass rush ability and ability to disrupt plays and push the pocket. That's what we need from that.”
On factors contributing to the change in run defense stats the last two seasons compared to seasons prior…
“Stats always tell you something. Stats are what they are. You start rationalizing stats, then you're just making excuses for a performance that wasn't up to our standard. The number one thing we need to do better in run defense is tackle better. In fact, we did not tackle to our standard last year. If you tackle better, you eliminate yards after contact, and we need to leverage football better, specifically, on the perimeter, where the ball bounced out too much. That goes back to trust and playing together as a unit. So one thing we’ve just been really harping on is the right way to tackle, which we always do. That's not like this is some unique thing, but our guys are very aware of where we need to improve. They know to play Georgia football on both sides of the ball, we need to run the ball and stop the run. They've taken great pride in trying to improve in those areas. But we need to tackle better, leverage the football better, and then ultimately, we talk about changing the math. Like on an offensive playbook page, everybody's blocked except for the middle field safety. Let's not act like there's no blocked guys, no matter what you do on defense. Every once in a while, you might trick them. The way to change the math is to either take two blockers or beat your blocker. So that goes back to striking blockers, getting off block, technique, tech blocks, technique and fundamentals. And the more guys we have that don't trade, we call trading one for one. Like, if you block me and I stay in my gap, but I don't do anything else to affect the play, I trade one for one. The offense won on that play. So, tackling and leveraging the football. And then we had got to do a great job of not going one for one in terms of dealing with blockers, and that's what it is. We don't do that well, at least the results we saw. So we're not worried about that. We're just worried about the future. The guys are taking pride in doing those things every day.”
On managing the abrupt movement pre snap rule with his players…
“I think Kirby had a quote about defining what abrupt is. That's really important, educating your players on what's seen as abrupt and not seen as abrupt. Any time there's rules, whether it's roughing the passer or abrupt movements, you educate your players on what the right way is and you coach them how to do that. It's not gonna be our job to officiate it. It's our job to present the rules and the information to our players, coach them the right way, and make sure we do it that way.”
On the status of Elo Modozie, Joseph Jonah-Ajonye, and Quintavius Johnson…
“Elo’s a bright kid, I just love you wouldn't know that he hasn't been here his whole career, just watching him. From a standpoint of seeing him fit in with the guys, he has meshed with our unit exceptionally well. When you bring in a transfer, there's always an element of, how are they gonna fit in with our people? When we bring people in, do we think they fit our culture? And he's done a great job of that. He's still learning. This is really six practices into it for him, but he's an athlete. The things you saw on tape that made us interested in him coming here, you see those. And I think as he gets more and more reps, he'll continue to see more and more of what he can do from an edge rusher standpoint and setting. He's also a really good athlete. This guy played wide out in high school. So when he does need to drop and do those things, he's unique in that sense. But we're six practices in, it's his first six practices. So even though he's an older guy, he's out there adjusting like some of the other new players. So he's only gonna get better from here. Joseph is a great athlete for his size. He has the length we look for in the defensive end position. He has some natural power to him. And I think that for him, you're looking at that Mykel [Williams] role, where you want to be a guy that can go from playing inside the tackle to outside the tackle, and that's really what we need from him. With him not getting as many reps, it's saying that every day he's getting better, and I'm really excited about what he's gonna do this year. We had high hopes for him at the beginning of last year. Q is the guy who you think about athletically. This guy was a high school quarterback, he played on his feet. So some of the things that marry up with what I said about Elo's skill set. That balances out. Q's really bright. The guy really cares at a high level, he's a good athlete. And as an outside linebacker, there's a lot asked of you, more than just setting the edge, and he's able to do all those things. And so he's had a good camp, he had a good spring, and we need more out of him than what we've seen so far. But with the way he works, we're confident we'll get it out of him.”
On what he’s seen from Kris Jones in switching positions and Elijah Griffin…
“Kris Jones is a selfless guy. When we told him when we had those losses at outside linebacker, and we were looking at the spring. With his body type,he has a naturally bulkier frame. So he's a guy who played inside and outside in high school. But with his frame, he had the ability to put on more weight to be able to be an edge setter. He was all for helping the team. It's like starting over. He spends a whole year learning a position, at one position, and hey, these are my alignments, these are my fits, these are my coverage responsibilities, and then you start over. So I think you saw that in the spring. I've been pleased with the growth I've seen this fall. He's improved as a rusher, which he didn't get to do as much last year. I think I've really seen him flash there. He's a heavy handed guy. So he needs to keep developing, but he has a skill set that can help us out there. EG's doing great. You always want to temper expectations on young players, but he has a maturity to him, a work ethic to him. He's obviously a big guy with a lot of athleticism. So we hope that Elijah's able to help us this year. The capacity with which he'll be able to help us is really about how he continues to grow in advance, but he's had a good start to camp.”
On the defensive meeting the standard overall last season…
“I don’t think we were consistent enough to meet the standard. That's just the reality. You can't have games against five playoff opponents, teams that made the 12 team playoff, and play really well there, and then have four other games where you give up 28 points more, point blank period. We know that it has to be better, and you can't be up and down. Consistency is a mark of great defense. We talk about being a leader or not, to be a leader, you have to be consistent. That's what makes something elite. So we can't have up and down performances. Everybody in that room knows that when they came to Georgia, they came to Georgia to play championship level defense, coaches, players included, and so anything short of that isn't the standard.”
On the importance of a football coach being a teacher and how to become a better teacher…
“Well, as a teacher, you teach your students. You have to have the ability to teach to different learning styles, if you're trying to reach the whole room. So there are times that you have to teach at a pace that's exciting enough to keep the attention of the guys that have been here and have a high level of understanding. You have to challenge them for their growth, but you also have to teach at a pace that still reaches the guys that are learning. That's what I think makes a great teacher, is the ability to get through to all levels of understanding. You got some guys that came and played single-A football, and some guys that came from an IMG academy. The level of football they've been exposed to is different. So you can't just coach to one guy. I told the line manager this morning it's hard for some guys to learn in a lecture hall. There's 100 students in there. When we have meetings, it's interactive. So part of teaching is interacting. I don't want to sit up here and be like Charlie Brown, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. That's not good. They need to interact, they need to ask questions. So part of that is making sure they understand that communication from them matters, and if they're not giving it back to us, we can't help them. We can't know when they don't understand. But then part of it on our end is making an effort to reach each individual. How you explain something to one person might not make sense to the next person. So you can't just teach it one way. You have to find a way to reach each individual, because that's our job as coaches.”