Richt said he has done his best to soak in some new ideas that Grantham and fellow first-year assistants Scott Lakatos and Warren Belin have brought to the table, too.
"It’s a healthy exchange of ideas," Richt said. "A lot of times you spend a lot of money to fly around to different schools to get details of what’s going on, but how much can you get in a one- or two-day period compared to a guy just being there, living there."
Richt has already decided to implement two suggestions of his new staff.
First, he’ll be going back to a Monday through Thursday practice schedule, with walk-throughs on Fridays. Last season he had the team practice on Sunday and gave the players Monday off, but he’s since reconsidered the plan in light of some input from his new assistants.
Grantham also suggested revamping the daily meeting schedules, so rather than open with special teams work, Richt will address the entire team first, then break off into special teams and segment meetings. Richt said it’s a schedule used in the NFL and makes organizing meetings much simpler.
—
David Hale on the changes in the Georgia football program.
One of the most frustrating aspects of practicing law for most attorneys is the frequency with which clients choose not to heed the good advice given them by their lawyers. Not only do such situations often end badly, they leave attorneys wondering why their clients bothered to hire them if the clients weren't going to listen to them.
Well, Mark Richt hired new assistant coaches because changes were needed . . . and he is listening to his new assistant coaches. It's one thing for, say, Tommy Tuberville to hire a spread guru as his offensive coordinator yet saddle him with existing assistants and refuse to allow him to implement his system; it's quite another for Mark Richt to put his pride aside and say, "Todd, I'm hiring you because you know what you're doing. Now tell me who you want me to hire to help you, and I'll hire them, too. Then the three of you can put your heads together, study some film, and tell me what we need to do to improve, and that's what we'll do."
I don't know that it was
hubris that caused Coach Richt to retain Willie Martinez at least one season (and arguably more) too long, but it was humility that caused him to hire Coach Grantham and let the Bulldogs' new defensive coordinator do his job.
Leadership involves accepting the responsibility for decisionmaking that necessarily accompanies having the power to decide, but leadership also involves identifying and hiring competent subordinates, delegating to them, letting them do their jobs, and heeding the input they were hired to provide.
All the usual crap about how
the team is working harder than ever and is more unified than before and is hungrier than it was a year ago is just so much meaningless noise; every player on every team says that every spring. The immediate impact of the new defensive coaching staff, though, is a big deal and it says a lot about the capability of the man leading the Georgia football program.
Go 'Dawgs!
