Spring Practice

CuseJacket

CuseJacket

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But now, Morgan appears to have found a home playing defensive tackle after having played on the offensive line his first three seasons with the Yellow Jackets. He was there in Saturday’s scrimmage, the first of the spring, his first day back after missing the previous four practices with an Achilles tendon injury.

“It’s fun,” Morgan said. “I still have a lot to learn, obviously, but that’s the challenge. And I plan to pursue it pretty well.”
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Morgan was one of 10 players that he named after the scrimmage who have switched sides like Morgan or been used on both offense and defense. The others – wide receivers Jalen Camp, Jair Hawkins-Anderson and Austin Nash, linebacker Bruce Jordan-Swilling, offensive lineman Jahaziel Lee, defensive linemen Quon Griffin and Antwan Owens, cornerback Ajani Kerr and safety Kaleb Oliver.
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Ibeeballin

Ibeeballin

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The same thing i hated about the anti-CPJ people is now full circle. This whole cut off GT nose to spite our face vibe is ridiculous!

So how is being boat raced by Clemson indicative of defense? Uh hello....
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MidtownJacket

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I think it is fair to say that as a consequence of the offense we ran, and the practice time demanded to get it right, the defense was prevented from getting the kind of looks they needed to be most successful. The line of distinction for me in this whole discussion has been that CPJ clearly did not intend to hurt the defense, but likely did as a consequence of his management of practice time. Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised to hear there were guys he kept on the O who might have believed they could have helped our team (or had more snaps) by being on the D side of the ball. I just don't see him holding kids he thought could help the team more by being on the D.

I don't, for a moment, believe he ever intentionally instructed the D Staff to do anything other than what he believed we needed to win. I can't know all the information he had at any given point when he may have limited installs, pushed for slow and steady bleeding against quick hit gamble defense or whatever else. I can; however, guarantee he did everything he could to win.

That said, I think there is a balance with any team. My suspicion is that CGC uses his organized chaos concepts of running tons of extra snaps to mitigate the idea that a Defense needs to see X play from the Offense and the Offense might need to see Y play from the defense and you can't always say that X = Y. That said, all actions have consequences and one could argue that the use of the throw as many snaps as we can at the kids will prevent them from being able ot get as hands-on teaching opportunities as a more steady pace at practice might afford.

The proof will be in the pudding for this staff over the coming months, but I am liking what we have seen so far (from coaches, players and all the commentary from past players / connected friends of the program.

I am excited for the spring game, to see the guys switching roles and schemes being installed, and look forward to the coming season as well.
 

GT14

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AE 87 said:
I think people need to be honest. If the D's lack of aggressiveness arose because of CPJ directives, which some on here are saying, then it follows that CPJ was either lying or ignorant when he complained about what was being done on D as if it wasn't by his direction.

I think those making the accusations should be clear about what they are suggesting.
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Is it really that surprising that the smartest guy in the room had a blind spot he wasn't aware of? He was probably either ignorant of how his offense affected the defense and prospective players, or was aware of how it affected these things, but decided running the offense still gave us the best chance of winning.

Also, why does clarity in suggestions matter? Is it so you know who likes the previous staff and who doesn't? People can say "the previous defenses sucked, and that correlated with our weird offense, therefore moving toward a more normal offense will give us a better defense" without caring about the coach being ignorant or lying.
 

YJMD

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takethepoints said:
You could easily be right; the argument makes sense. The big natural experiment to see if you are begins at Death Valley directly. Hope you're right.
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Begins but far from ends. And I'm not really arguing about our new defense except to say more complexity does not necessarily translate to worse execution. All the indicators we hear about point to improvement, but it seemed that way last year under Woody too. FWIW, I think Woody didn't have enough time to evaluate his system here. It was a proven winner elsewhere but took 1.5 years to show it, but that's no guarantee of success here. CGC and staff have a lot of proven track record defensively, too.
 
Milwaukee

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AE 87 said:
I think people need to be honest. If the D's lack of aggressiveness arose because of CPJ directives, which some on here are saying, then it follows that CPJ was either lying or ignorant when he complained about what was being done on D as if it wasn't by his direction.

I think those making the accusations should be clear about what they are suggesting.
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I think we see what you're trying to do but that's just not fair, or accurate. We have former players right here that have SAID Paul wouldn't let the DC be aggressive as he'd like. We've had Wes Friggin Durham speak on it on his radio show within the past 6 months; he flat out said Woody wasn't the only one that couldn't unleash the dogs all the way like he wanted either. He said the "guys before him" dealt with the same thing.

Now you can choose to believe these statements or not. I don't know why you wouldn't, hell some of it is coming from a PLAYER that played D under the man. There's no conspiracy here AE, I don't think there is anyways.

But for you to basically get mad because you don't believe it and draw this weird line in the sand about "If you don't agree then you're calling Paul Johnson a stupid idiot and a LIAR to boot" is a little nutty. Lol that's a little ridiculous wouldn't you say?
 
ATL1

ATL1

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gtg391z said:
If we lose to Clemson, we should fire CGC and shut down the program. CPJ was our only hope.
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Oh goodness Football Jesus retired oh what we gone do with no triple option to lean on. The program won’t survive. Don’t leave CPJ. Make love to me.
 
Whiskey_Clear

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33jacket said:
Let me take a stab. This comes directly from a staff member.

1) paul told him not to install too much, to be simple, to run a "few" packages. As a result you can correlate jordans comment. This was a verified fact from a staff member. Now he could be lying but why? He was a cpj protege.

2) he also made direct comment paul asked the dc to play off and wanted a more bend break style to shorten games, resulting in more passive look

3) he directly said the d did not practice certain drills others would to cater to the offense in practice. Gt runs such a diff O its why other dc say they throw out what they learn all year for gt. Well as I understand this limited what we did on d spring and fall drill work

I can only tell you what was said. I am not making this up. What i do know is when i watch what woody did on film to what he did at gt you can see a difference for sure.

Nothing else to say. It was his program. If he wanted less d installs and only a few packages thats what he got.

And. If u knew who said this you may even be surprised.
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Devils advocate. If we were already simple with very few packages....why did we always have to simplify? Why did players advocate to Roof pre bowl game to simplify the scheme?
 
jojatk

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stech81 said:
Sorry the past is the past can't change it. I look to the future and see a good group of coaches and a good group of players. We will be fine.
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AMEN!

As I've said before, thank you CPJ and company for representing us with class and dignity. I will forever be grateful to you for so many wonderful moments. And welcome CGC and company. I look forward to all the excitement being generated off the field to translate into on-field success (and I expect it will).
 

takethepoints

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YJMD said:
FWIW, I think Woody didn't have enough time to evaluate his system here. It was a proven winner elsewhere but took 1.5 years to show it, but that's no guarantee of success here. CGC and staff have a lot of proven track record defensively, too.
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Yes. Woody didn't have the time to put in what was actually a very complex D. And the players were not what he wanted either. But we all knew that and it was widely discussed before last season. Now, all of a sudden, these factors don't seem to make much difference to some here.

I suspect that we'll have some D problems this year too. I think that we'll at least equal last year's takeaway and negative play figures. Unfortunately, I don't expect us to be much better in terms of total yards allowed and <your favorite D stat here>. That should improve if our D recruiting - it's been pretty good lately - keeps up and the D matures in the new schemes. Coach being a D specialist should help.

But remember what the Feldmarshal said:

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
- von Moltke

We need to be ready to be patient.
 
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