The biggest takeaway players like defensive lineman Zion Logue has from the fact that Will Muschamp and Glenn Schumann are now co-defensive coordinators is that there’s not a lot that has honestly changed.
Head coach Kirby Smart appointed the pair to head up the Bulldogs’ defense after Dan Lanning took the head coaching job at Oregon, and according to Logue, the only thing different is their respective titles.
Georgia will still run essentially the same defense it always has in Smart’s previous six years, and whatever transition that’s occurred can only be described as smooth.
“All our coaches are very vocal,” Logue said. “Now that it’s not Coach Lanning, but Coach Muschamp and Coach Schu in our meetings, it’s given us more of a voice to hear and more of an opinion to take a run with.”
Besides experience, there’s one area Muschamp brings to the practice field every day in droves: energy.
For safety Christopher Smith, that energy makes everyone on the defense want to come to work and give it everything they have.
“It’s the way he attacks every day. He attacks every day with the same amount of energy and that rubs off on our defense,” Smith said. “I pick up on a lot of wisdom from him. He’s been in this game for a long time, he’s coached a lot of great players, and I’d be wrong not to listen to him. He’s one of the best coaches I’ve ever had.”
Smart’s relationship with both coaches has been well-documented.
Muschamp and Smart are longtime friends, having played together at Georgia before the latter gave the current Bulldog head coach his first job as an assistant at Valdosta State.
Smart’s relationship with Schumann goes back to their days at Alabama, where Schumann made so much of an impression that he was Smart’s first hire when he took the Georgia job.
“Will has been a tremendous asset for me as a head coach, because you value people who have been in your seat,” Smart said. “Todd Monken has been a head coach. Matt Luke was that way for us as well, he'd been a head coach. Mel Tucker had been in a lot of roles before he left us,” Smart said of Muschamp at SEC Media Days. “I value that experience he's had and understanding the dos and don'ts, ways to do things, how to practice, how you run your organization. Also, it gives you the ability to delegate, too, take some things off your hand. I can focus my attention in other areas if he's in charge of something,, because he's done it.”
The same can be said for Schumann.
“He’s always trying to grow and get better. He’s never satisfied,” Smart said earlier this spring. “I think a lot of times you can get complacent. It sets in on all of us—this is what we do. We don’t want to be complacent. That’s just not what I believe in. We’re always trying to find a different way to do it better. I think Glenn epitomizes that.”
