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Georgia linebacker duo gaining confidence through experience together

by:Jack Mathison•09/16/22
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Tony Walsh/UGA Sports Communications

Entering the 2022 season, one of the Bulldogs’ biggest question marks was at the inside linebacker position. While Georgia had gone on a tear in recruiting over the last few cycles, pulling in an abundance of talent from all over the southeast, the Bulldogs did not have any inside linebackers with a significant amount of in-game experience. That’s because last year’s leadership core of Nakobe Dean, Channing Tindall and Quay Walker were all picked in the first three rounds of the 2022 NFL Draft.

With two games under their belt in the 2022 season, Georgia’s two starting inside linebackers, Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Smael Mondon have learned a lot about the defense and each other. If you were to look purely at the box score, the Georgia defense did not look that different from Week One to Week Two. It’s hard to really compare holding Oregon to three points compared to holding Samford to nothing. However, if you were to ask Mondon, he would tell you that there was a different mentality that the Bulldogs played with this last time out.

“I think we played with more confidence this week,” Mondon explained. “I feel like that was one of the major things that I could tell was from playing in the game that carried over.”

Although they’re seen as the two new kids on the block, Dumas-Johnson and Mondon spent the majority of the 2021 season learning the Georgia defense and getting comfortable playing with each other. Watching Dean, Tindall and Walker will certainly help do that, as will getting late-game opportunities because of their efforts to create Bulldog blowouts. Earlier this week, Dumas-Johnson explained what makes Mondon such a good linebacker and why the duo is so good playing alongside each other.

“You know, big, fast, physical. Smael is a 6-3 linebacker, runs sideline to sideline. He’s smart, we have chemistry since we played together. This is our second year, came in at the same time, So I feel like we’re very confident with each other,” Dumas-Johnson added. “We have chemistry. We’ve built it up since last year rocking with the twos. And then we’re ones now or whatever people say. Smael is a smart linebacker that’s gonna do big things in the future.”

Kirby Smart is used to the highest level of inside linebacker play throughout his coaching career. While the Bulldogs’ room is still easing into their roles, Smart seems excited about the potential of the group.

“Well, the first thing they gained is experience,” Smart said. “I think game experience is invaluable. They could have played in 15 or 16 more practices, scrimmages and gone against a really good offense in ours, but they need to play. They need to get under the lights and make calls and have things happen unexpected to them and react to those things. And Schumann does a good job coaching those guys to handle things that they haven’t seen before. You know, got to handle something on principle. There’s not an offense we’re going to play this year that’s going to run the same play they ran the week before. They just don’t do that. They move people around. They tweak them. They hide things and you got to do things on principle, and I think those two guys and even the other guys, Rian (Davis) and Trezmen (Marshall) have played well.”

Georgia goes on the road this week to open SEC play against South Carolina at 12:00 p.m. ET on ESPN. The Bulldogs are 24.5-point favorites over the Gamecocks.

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