Want to hear Kirby Smart “wax poetic?” Ask him about co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann.

When Smart was lured from Alabama to be the Bulldogs’ head coach, the first person he asked to join him in Athens was Schumann, a young up-and-coming defensive whiz cut from a similar coaching cloth almost two decades before.

“First off, Glenn Schumann is an incredible man and person. He's a graduate of Alabama. He came there on the Bear Bryant Scholarship. His dad played football at Alabama. He is the son of a football coach,” said Smart, whose father Sonny was a long-time high school coach in Georgia. “He is extremely bright, extremely passionate. I rely heavily on Glenn for input on practice schedules, defensive design, and thinking outside the box.”

Georgia’s defense certainly did not miss a beat last year after Schumann and fellow co-defensive coordinator Will Muschamp took over for Dan Lanning after taking the head coaching job at Oregon.

The Bulldogs’ defense picked right up where the 2021 defense left off, ranking first in both scoring defense (12.77) and total defense (292.08).

Other teams took notice.

Schumann’s name was mentioned with both Miami and Alabama, before he interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL.

He said no, obviously, and to reward his loyalty, Schumann saw his raise bumped from $805,000 to $1,900,000.

Schumann talked about the Bulldogs’ secret sauce on defense prior to the national championship against TCU.

“The first thing we do on Sunday, no matter what the scoreboard says, is to be extremely critical in our write-up of what we did in the game,” Schumann said. “We go from things we did well to things we did poorly to preparation errors to personnel errors. Maybe we weren't in the right personnel grouping, or we mismanaged a substitution, whatever it was. Then other comments on the game, things that you would do the next time you played that opponent. If you were playing the game tomorrow, what would you have changed?”

Opponents matter not.

It’s all about correcting the mistakes from the previous week.

“The list of things we did well, no matter if we're playing Samford or Ohio State, is always much shorter than the list of things we did poorly in our preparation errors because we try to be as critical as possible of what we do, no matter what the scoreboard says,” Schumann said. “I think you approach things the same way. Let's be really critical of what we need to fix, look at it, assess whether it was schematic, whether it was coaching-based, whether it was excuse-based, or whether it was technique-based.”

It’s answers like this which have endeared Schumann to Smart.

“There's not a time when I think of who can I ask on my staff that understands what we want and what we need; Glenn Schumann is that guy. He's very talented. Glenn Schumann will be the first to admit he came to the University of Georgia without even getting an on-the-field coaching position, and I was very confident in his role to do that,” Smart said. “What has he done with that? He has produced one of the most productive inside linebacker rooms in the country, and he's one of the people that really believes in growth being a part of his process, and he continues to grow to this day.”