If Georgia’s coaching staff were listed on a depth chart, Kirby Smart would have Will Muschamp and Glenn Schumann “bracketed” at defensive coordinator.
The first day of Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl news conferences Tuesday afforded the opportunity to get a glance at any hierarchy, if there truly is one. When Dan Lanning and Schumann succeeded Mel Tucker as co-coordinators for the 2019 Sugar Bowl, the two coaches were listed as co-coordinators. But only Lanning showed up at what’s deemed the “defensive press conference.”
That proved very revealing.
On Tuesday, Muschamp and Schumann were present. Not that there is anything to read into it, but Muschamp was the first up on the podium in the formal interview area, along with three players. Schumann went first in the “break-out” area, then they switched.
Didn’t matter. They could have been side-by-side because they were espousing the same messages.
“It’s been outstanding,” Muschamp said of the working dynamic with Schumann in the defensive team meeting room. “Glenn has done a phenomenal job this year, does a great job relating with our players, sending the message through our head football coach to our players. … He’s a really good football coach. We take turns as far as the installation process is concerned, but there are a lot of voices in the defensive room, starting with coach Smart and myself, and we have an outstanding defensive staff.”
Said Schumann: “All of our voices are heard. I think that’s important. Coach Smart listens to anybody in the building, whether it’s a (graduate assistant), an analyst, somebody in nutrition or the training room. It doesn’t matter your role. Obviously, there’s a hierarchy for decision-making. You see his personality (on the field), but I think he does a great job of listening to everybody on the staff.”
Credit: Jason Parkhurst/Abell Images
Credit: Jason Parkhurst/Abell Images
Whatever the dynamic, it’s working. The Bulldogs’ defense has picked up where it left off last season, when it was described as a “generational” collection of talent. As has been well-chronicled, Georgia had eight players off the 2021 defense taken in the 2022 NFL draft, five of those players going in the first round.
Simultaneous to that was Lanning leaving to become head coach at Oregon. The Bulldogs also saw defensive backfield coach Jahmile Addae accept a job at Miami. So, there has been a whirlwind of change on the defense.
Yet, here are the Bulldogs back in the College Football Playoff, undefeated, No. 1 in the CFP ranking and No. 2 in the nation in scoring defense (12.77 ppg). They’re expected to be put to the ultimate test in Saturday’s semifinal against No. 4 Ohio State, which happens to be coming in with the nation’s No. 2 scoring offense (44.5 ppg).
Thanks to Smart and those co-coordinators, Georgia is confident it will have a well-conceived plan for slowing the Buckeyes’ Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback C.J. Stroud and 1,000-yard-plus receivers Marvin Harrison and Emeka Egbuka.
“At the beginning of the year, we kind of didn’t know how it was going to work,” senior safety Christopher Smith said of having two DCs. “But that’s what you’ve got the season for. You’re able to tweak things and experience different things and go from there. And I love coach Muschamp to death, man. I feel like he was a great addition to our staff. Coach Schumann, I’ve learned a ton from him, too, over the years.”
Schumann and Muschamp couldn’t be more different when it comes to their professional profiles. Schumann is young, only 32, and he looks younger. Though he has been involved in the game at the Power Five level for 14 years, Schumann’s first seven were as either a student assistant or a graduate assistant. He never played the game in college.
Muschamp, in contrast, is the consummate “grizzled veteran.” He’s 51 years old and has coached college football for 25 years, 22 of them as either a defensive coordinator or a head coach.
And, lest we forget, Muschamp is the one who earned the moniker “Coach Boom” for his sometimes volcanic outbursts on the sidelines. That seems to have mellowed some since he reemerged on Georgia’s sideline. Perhaps it’s because he’s down there beside Schumann, who is relatively calm when it comes to his general in-game demeanor.
Perhaps it’s having a more democratic overall defensive braintrust. There simply is no room for tyranny.
“We have an outstanding defensive staff,” said Muschamp, who has been a head coach at Florida and South Carolina. “It’s not anybody running a one-man show. It’s a lot of people involved in what we’re trying to do, and obviously the expectation we understand on defense at Georgia is to be elite.”
When it comes to his specific role on the team – and in the Bulldogs’ sometimes intense coaches’ meetings – Schumann said he simply takes the same approach he tells the players in his position group to take.
He’s an inside linebackers coach by trade. That’s where Schumann broke in as a defensive analyst for Smart when Smart was DC and linebackers coach at Alabama.
Though he still was an off-field analyst for the Crimson Tide when Smart accepted the Georgia job, Schumann was the first full-time assistant to get on the private jet to Athens from Phoenix after Alabama won the 2015 national championship.
If there ever was a coach who worked his way through the ranks, it’s Schumann.
“From the day I got here, I’ve always tried to prepare myself for whatever opportunities came after that,” Schumann said. “You don’t wait. You always preach that to the players. You prepare like a starter even when you’re a backup. Now that’s easier said than done sometimes. But there’s a huge track record of guys here that maybe y’all didn’t see then become the players they were until they got on the big stage. But we saw their habits every single day that told us, this guy’s going to be successful when it’s his time. Anything you preach to the players you try to emulate yourself.”
Of course, the setup being what it is makes for a lot of cooks in the kitchen. As anybody who ever has laid eyes on a Georgia game or practice can attest, Smart very much remains intimately involved in the down-to-down action on defense. That’s especially true with the secondary, where he played the same safety position with the Bulldogs as did Muschamp.
Georgia brought in Fran Brown from Rutgers to coach the secondary this season, and those DBs are in his positional meeting room. So, there are a lot of voices coming at these players from a lot of directions.
“I hear from all of them,” said Smith, a senior who became a consensus first-team All-American this season. “But they all mix pretty well. They all do a good job of helping us when needed. Coach Fran was another great addition to the team, and I have a great relationship with all those guys.”
It seems to be working out.
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