Spring Practice

Em_Jae20

Helluva Engineer
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Very little info getting out about who’s standing out at practice. By now we should be hearing things more specific but everything is pretty general. The “above the line” mantra is all we get.
One name I keep hearing as standing out is Adonicas Sanders. Also if you follow some of the team's twitter handles they recognize individuals who make plays at practice and are doing well in workouts
 

CuseJacket

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Staff member
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19,554

1. Comparing schemes
“Way more aggressive,” defensive end Jordan Domineck said. “We have so many different stunts and blitz packages that I can’t even talk about right now because we’re still installing things.”
3. Trying out new positions
The Jackets have a short-yardage package on offense in which defensive end Justice Dingle is at tight end and defensive tackle Quon Griffin is playing fullback.
 

AE 87

Helluva Engineer
Messages
13,026
So why are they more aggressive now than...

You know what... nvm

Here's what the players said:
“It’s just a different scheme type,” safety Kaleb Oliver said. “We still have the attacking mentality as we had in past years, we’re just emphasizing it this year.”

“Way more aggressive,” defensive end Jordan Domineck said. “We have so many different stunts and blitz packages that I can’t even talk about right now because we’re still installing things.”
In the earlier interviews players talked about having eight installs already on D rather than 2 last year. Are you suggesting that was part of CPJ's master plan to blame the D?

It's a serious question. CPJ has a reputation of being really competitive and wanting to win. He also has a reputation of being a high integrity guy whose staff is being praised for bringing in high character guys. Are you suggesting that really he's a low character guy who undermined his own D because he'd rather his O shine than win games with D and of this while he was saying the opposite publicly? Or are you suggesting that he doesn't understand football so he didn't know that his directives were undermining the D? What are you trying to communicate?
 

33jacket

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Georgia
Here's what the players said:
“It’s just a different scheme type,” safety Kaleb Oliver said. “We still have the attacking mentality as we had in past years, we’re just emphasizing it this year.”

“Way more aggressive,” defensive end Jordan Domineck said. “We have so many different stunts and blitz packages that I can’t even talk about right now because we’re still installing things.”
In the earlier interviews players talked about having eight installs already on D rather than 2 last year. Are you suggesting that was part of CPJ's master plan to blame the D?

It's a serious question. CPJ has a reputation of being really competitive and wanting to win. He also has a reputation of being a high integrity guy whose staff is being praised for bringing in high character guys. Are you suggesting that really he's a low character guy who undermined his own D because he'd rather his O shine than win games with D and of this while he was saying the opposite publicly? Or are you suggesting that he doesn't understand football so he didn't know that his directives were undermining the D? What are you trying to communicate?

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.
 

AE 87

Helluva Engineer
Messages
13,026
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

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.

You already said it was Tevin.
 

smokey_wasp

Helluva Engineer
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5,486
Here's what the players said:
“It’s just a different scheme type,” safety Kaleb Oliver said. “We still have the attacking mentality as we had in past years, we’re just emphasizing it this year.”

“Way more aggressive,” defensive end Jordan Domineck said. “We have so many different stunts and blitz packages that I can’t even talk about right now because we’re still installing things.”
In the earlier interviews players talked about having eight installs already on D rather than 2 last year. Are you suggesting that was part of CPJ's master plan to blame the D?

It's a serious question. CPJ has a reputation of being really competitive and wanting to win. He also has a reputation of being a high integrity guy whose staff is being praised for bringing in high character guys. Are you suggesting that really he's a low character guy who undermined his own D because he'd rather his O shine than win games with D and of this while he was saying the opposite publicly? Or are you suggesting that he doesn't understand football so he didn't know that his directives were undermining the D? What are you trying to communicate?

No one is attacking CPJ's character or intelligence. The fact is, even the smartest guys can have blind spots in certain areas. Maybe defense was his blind spot where he thought what he was doing was helping, but it really wasn't. The results we got on defense indicate that this is not an outlandish possibility (I have no inside info). You guys gotta quit taking everything as some sort of personal attack. Also, mods go ahead and move this and the few above it to the hamstrung defense thread. lol. We done did it again.
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
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6,095
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 believe #1 and it isn't incompatible with having a more aggressive D. The old football adage on D is that you don't want those people thinking, you want them reacting. The fewer the schemes they have to execute, the better. Complexity got Groh fired.

I might believe #2, depending on the experience of the D. An inexperienced D should play bend/break because they are less likely to make coverage mistakes with it. Oth, this contradicts what we know about Paul's interventions on D; those were always to increase aggressiveness. I get the feeling that this might have been a situational rather then a strategic comment; you want to give some teams enough rope to hang themselves.

I also believe #3. The O was the center piece of the team; no doubt about that. If it was cooking, then the D wasn't on the field much. Still, I doubt this would make that big a difference. All teams use option looks and there was a scout team. (I know, "They weren't very good." They never are, except at top 10 teams.) Still, running what other teams would try to stop us makes good sense.

Does all this, even if we believed all of it, add up to "hamstringing" the D? Doesn't look like it to me. I think our main problem has already been mentioned: we have had very few really good players on the DL recently. If you can rush consistently - think the teams with Gotsis and Attouchou (sp?) - then Ds look a lot more aggressive. If you can't, then all the drills in the world won't make that much difference.
 

YJMD

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1,622
I believe #1 and it isn't incompatible with having a more aggressive D. The old football adage on D is that you don't want those people thinking, you want them reacting. The fewer the schemes they have to execute, the better. Complexity got Groh fired.

Number of schemes is not a fair bar of complexity, nor is complexity a problem in absolute. I do agree that, when it comes to game time, we need people reacting and not thinking during the play. That doesn't mean they can't put a lot of thinking into understanding the offense, making checks, and recognizing their individual assignment and reads ahead of the ball being snapped. Volume of assignments and reads is not a perfect determiner of actual execution. Complex things can be taught in an accessible way and practice with clarity of intention to encode the muscle memory needed to execute on the field. Good coaching can make an enormous difference here. So far we are seeing a lot more activity in practice to get reps for more guys for more depth. We are seeing more drills being run to help encode that muscle memory, and we're seeing much more scheme being installed. Thus far, what's been reported is the guys are picking it up. That's what really matters. We can't get ahead of ourselves installing schemes we can't execute or can't retain or leave people at all confused about what their responsibilities are on a given play. Those problems can occur even if the schemes are simple and there aren't very many of them.
 

AE 87

Helluva Engineer
Messages
13,026
No one is attacking CPJ's character or intelligence. The fact is, even the smartest guys can have blind spots in certain areas. Maybe defense was his blind spot where he thought what he was doing was helping, but it really wasn't. The results we got on defense indicate that this is not an outlandish possibility (I have no inside info). You guys gotta quit taking everything as some sort of personal attack. Also, mods go ahead and move this and the few above it to the hamstrung defense thread. lol. We done did it again.

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.
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,095
Number of schemes is not a fair bar of complexity, nor is complexity a problem in absolute. I do agree that, when it comes to game time, we need people reacting and not thinking during the play. That doesn't mean they can't put a lot of thinking into understanding the offense, making checks, and recognizing their individual assignment and reads ahead of the ball being snapped. Volume of assignments and reads is not a perfect determiner of actual execution. Complex things can be taught in an accessible way and practice with clarity of intention to encode the muscle memory needed to execute on the field. Good coaching can make an enormous difference here. So far we are seeing a lot more activity in practice to get reps for more guys for more depth. We are seeing more drills being run to help encode that muscle memory, and we're seeing much more scheme being installed. Thus far, what's been reported is the guys are picking it up. That's what really matters. We can't get ahead of ourselves installing schemes we can't execute or can't retain or leave people at all confused about what their responsibilities are on a given play. Those problems can occur even if the schemes are simple and there aren't very many of them.
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.
 

jchens_GT

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573
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Georgia

I have no idea if CPJ intentionally hamstrung the D. I hope not, but I wasn’t on the inside of his program. I do think the quote below (from Staples’ article) was a real issue and did hamstring us.

“Meanwhile, defensive linemen are told during recruiting that they’ll get cut blocked every day at practice if they sign with the option team. Even if this isn’t true, it makes it difficult to sign defensive linemen of prototypical size.”
 

Ibeeballin

Im a 3*
Messages
6,081
I believe #1 and it isn't incompatible with having a more aggressive D. The old football adage on D is that you don't want those people thinking, you want them reacting. The fewer the schemes they have to execute, the better. Complexity got Groh fired.

I might believe #2, depending on the experience of the D. An inexperienced D should play bend/break because they are less likely to make coverage mistakes with it. Oth, this contradicts what we know about Paul's interventions on D; those were always to increase aggressiveness. I get the feeling that this might have been a situational rather then a strategic comment; you want to give some teams enough rope to hang themselves.

I also believe #3. The O was the center piece of the team; no doubt about that. If it was cooking, then the D wasn't on the field much. Still, I doubt this would make that big a difference. All teams use option looks and there was a scout team. (I know, "They weren't very good." They never are, except at top 10 teams.) Still, running what other teams would try to stop us makes good sense.

Does all this, even if we believed all of it, add up to "hamstringing" the D? Doesn't look like it to me. I think our main problem has already been mentioned: we have had very few really good players on the DL recently. If you can rush consistently - think the teams with Gotsis and Attouchou (sp?) - then Ds look a lot more aggressive. If you can't, then all the drills in the world won't make that much difference.

@33jacket thank you finally coming in. We were told the same by different people with the same conclusion.


So you deem about 70-80% of this true, yet come to the conclusion that it was DL talent is the problem?!?! Do you not remember we were bad on defense even with Gotsis and Attaochu.

You don’t think drills on reading keys and gap fits won’t help then expect more of the same
 
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