Glenn Schumann understands importance of instilling confidence for youth on Georgia defense
Entering the 2022 season, Georgia’s youth and inexperience on defense have nearly become their identity on the national stage, with many people citing it as the reason the Bulldogs won’t be able to repeat. To a certain degree, they’re absolutely right. While returning some statistical production and plenty of talent, the Bulldogs lost leaders, connection, and most importantly, experience, on the defensive side of the ball.
When co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann spoke to the media last week, he emphasized the value of communication and trust in his younger players, using Kelee Ringo’s redshirt freshman season as an example.
“It’s important for me to believe in your players,” Schumann explained. “I think showing belief in your players no matter their age, no matter their experience is extremely important as a coach because if you don’t believe in them, they won’t believe in themselves. Starting with that, we want to instill confidence in every player. You have to build them up, you have to challenge them when they’re wrong. Sometimes the best thing to do after a guy makes a mistake is to love them, you can correct them in the meeting room.”
On September 4th, 2021, Ringo made his first career appearance in college football against the Clemson Tigers. By the end of the game, he had been targeted two times and was flagged for pass interference on both. Fast-forward four months and six days later, Ringo was returning an interception 79-yards to the end zone to end Georgia’s National Championship drought.
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“In terms of building any player’s confidence, it starts with us,” Schumann continued. “Believe in them, coach them, lead them, challenge them when they need it. They need to know a coach is believing in them and their teammates believe in them. That goes back to how the team is really built. The more we’re a team, the more we’re united, guys will believe in themselves.”
After losing Channing Tindall, Quay Walker, and Nakobe Dean to the NFL draft, no position group on the Bulldogs’ defense will be more inexperienced than Schumann’s inside linebackers. The names that have popped up as options during camp include Jamon Dumas-Johnson, Trezmen Marshall, Smael Mondon, Rian Davis and Xavian Sorey. Combined, they’ve played in 63 career games. They also have fewer combined tackles than each of those three players had individually last season.
“We’ve been saying for a long time now, ‘If you’re good enough, you’re old enough.’ Camp is about figuring out who our best players are and that doesn’t have a birthdate on it,” Schumann said. “We need to figure out who are best players are and challenge them early across the board, whether they’re old or young and see what they can learn, what can they handle, what do we need to work on them with, what do they do best. Then as you go in and go through our scrimmage one, what kind of lessons will we get. Now you’re fine-tuning it and you’re saying who performed and who didn’t. As you see guys perform, the coach’s job is to coach, we’re teachers. So, when you look at it, you identify a guy who can help you in terms of talent, no matter how old he is, then let’s figure out how we can coach that guy to help us, create a role for him as a guy who plays a lot or in a certain package. I think once you identify who those guys are, you make sure you can get him at that line in terms of ability on the field to help us.”
