Todd Monken not buying narrative of offense having to carry defense
The nation-wide notion surrounding Georgia Football entering the 2022 season goes something like this: “The defense is losing a lot of players and is going to take a step back. The offense returns the starting quarterback from a National Championship winning team along with the majority of his weapons from that team. Therefore, the offense is going to have to carry the defense in 2022.” Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken doesn’t buy into that.
“I really don’t know what that means. In fact, we’ve got good players on defense. Sure, we lost a lot of really good players, but I don’t think that changes for us,” Monken said on Thursday, meeting with media members. “I don’t think last year we thought of it that way other than, ‘All we control is how often we get the ball, and how many times we score when we have it. Points per possession, that’s all we control.’ Obviously last year there were scenarios where it made no sense to continue to put ourselves at risk. That may not be the case this year. It may be the case this year. I don’t know. That is to be determined. But to carry, that is ridiculous at a place like Georgia. We have good players on both sides of the ball just like last year.”
Monken kept referring to last year. Well, last year the narrative around the Bulldogs was quite different. Instead of the offense having to pick up the slack for the defense, it was the opposite. “Georgia has a former walk on at quarterback that’s limited in what he can do. The Dawgs’ defense is generationally good, full of future first round picks. It sure is a good thing that they do their job so well because that offense needs the help.” Again, Monken wasn’t buying it.
“To say the defense needed to carry us is probably unfair,” Monken said. “We were tremendous on defense, I get what you’re saying. I don’t mean to be rude. But in general, I think we get carried away with overall points and overall statistics, carrying things over. Ultimately, each game is where you have to continue to score points and stop people. If you get into averages, it’s not any good if you score 50 one week and 20 the next. You’d like to be more consistent, somewhere in the middle there that you can count on that, just like what happened last year has nothing to do with this year.”
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Ultimately, it goes back to one of the first things that Monken said, and it’s something that we’ve all heard head coach Kirby Smart say before. He’s only worried about controlling what he can control. And for him, that’s the offensive said of the football. He gets paid to score points, and that’s what he plans on doing, no matter what kind of defense Georgia has in 2022.
“Actually it’s not really a rhetorical question. It’s fair in the fact that I do like to throw it. I think people think that I don’t like to throw it. I’m paid to score, I’m not paid to win. I’m paid to add as part of that, but to score. But I’m also paid to be responsible for winning,” Monken said. “Again there is a big part of that where they think that Kirby (Smart) dictates what we do on offense. No, he dictates that we play smart. That we be explosive and we utilize our personnel. Do everything in our power to win games for the University of Georgia. That’s what we should do.”
