Todd Monken on opening up the Georgia football offense: 'I'm here to score points'

[Music] i will just go straight to questions and be sure to raise your hand we'll get one of these floor mic studios raise your hands questions that's it raise your hand perfect first time i get in front of you guys in two and a half years todd back in the spring when we had a chance to talk to stetson he talked about how valuable that spring could be for him getting first team reps kind of building relationships with the receivers even going back to then to right now how do you think he is capitalized or if he has capitalized on this time he's had getting all these first-team reps for sure i mean um you know being with the first group being expected to be the starter so it's invaluable i think his confidence level is raised with our confidence in him i think it's probably the most important thing coach have you ever run an offense before tight end on the field at one time and what what could that look like if that happened well if you run it if you run it too often you get every white out the portal so you can so uh we do have good players at that position you do have to utilize our skill set um but it also you have to balance that because there's a there's a cost to that um because it's one thing to say we're going to utilize 13 personnel 14 personnel and it's like okay well what all can we do out of it and execute that's probably the toughest thing it's how do you get through practice and execute you know how you want it to look once you get to the game and uh you know that happens a lot in offense and defensive meetings where a defensive coach will say boy that really gives us problems it only gives you problems if we can execute it if it gives us problems as well that's it's really not worth anything so but we do have good players there we do have to find a way to get them on the field and i use all of our talented players yeah todd um stetson has said that he feels more comfortable now that he's the guy in terms of telling receivers how he wants them to run routes and things like that i was wondering between you and sets and how much did that relationship develop in terms of y'all discussing the finer points of the offense how you want him to run things all that kind of stuff now that he's kind of the unquestioned starter well he's always been in there so he's always heard how we want to do it so now it's a matter of i think he's doing a much better job of in between his reps of carrying the message that we talk about and to make sure we're on the same page i think that's the biggest thing it's not him talking to the receivers in terms of how he would do it it's that we're all on the same page carrying the message from our meeting room to on the field i think that's a sign of leadership is going over there how did you see it well this is how i saw it that's how we talk about it let's get it right it's one of the i guess story lines out there whether it's right along i got no idea but uh some people suggested the offense is going to need i guess carry the team while the defense until the defense all these young players kind of get put in a little bit is that something you would necessarily in fact we got good players on defense sure we lost a lot of really good players but i don't think that changes for us 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 the ball points per possession that's all we control obviously last year there were scenarios where it made no sense to continue uh to put ourselves at risk and that may not be the case this year that may be the case this year i don't know that is to be determined but carry that that's that's ridiculous in a place like georgia we have good players on both sides well just like last year to say that the defense needed to carry us is uh probably unfair but they were tremendous on defense i get what you're saying i don't mean to be rude i'm just saying in general i think you uh just i think we get carried away with overall points and overall statistics or carrying things over ultimately each game is where you have to continue to score points and stop people you get into averages it's not any good if you score 50 one week and 25 the next if you'd like to be more consistent right there in the middle every week that you can count on that just like whatever happened last year has nothing to do with this year hey last year you guys seemed really hamstrung by injuries out there at the wide receiver position now that you have a little bit of an older group and as of right now it seems relatively healthy how do you envision going about incorporating them in the office and getting the most out of them with seemingly a more healthy room this year well i mean you know we lost george last year and maybe in some ways that made us better you know in some ways in the once george went down we had to figure okay we don't have we don't have an ex we don't have somebody that you can just say okay we go three by one and they kick their coverage we can throw it there so you have to get into more tightening sets condensed sets how we gonna run the ball better how are we gonna use our tight ends not knowing exactly at the time what we had brock powers or any mitchell or whoever you have but at the end of the day uh you figured out the puzzle is probably the number one thing we're paid to do is and no one really cares who you have we do have more options at receiver probably in some spots um but at the end of the day whether it's using using our backs using our tight ends using our receivers i mean that's what you're paid to do and figure out a way to score and not turn it over [Music] coach just talking about wide receivers aaron smith it's incredible i think three of his career five receptions are for touchdowns and long ones uh is is that a i assume a lot of that has a function of health and not being able to stay healthy to this point but where have you seen development in him and did and can you just talk about where he might fit in uh in the grand scheme of things within the wider procedure yeah i think the biggest thing is uh staying healthy for aryan you know he's you know he just hasn't been on the field long enough as a developmental player he is fast he is athletic he is a great kid but not being healthy and being out there to develop so what what that does is that restricts you from a player being ever in every down player you know as a player to get on the field more often because you can't trust them in everything that you're asking them to do so they have to be um how do i say the situational players if that makes sense you have situational players you have every down players and and because there's more that goes into it okay you go fast right players got to know what to do okay so we're looking to bridge that gap from being a situational player to a player we can trust to be out there and more than just when you want to use his explosiveness and to threaten the defense and it comes with that in the run game you put him out there it's like you know are they going to play too shell they're going to play an extra safety back that allows you to run the ball more effectively if they don't want to put you know a number of guys in the box and allow him more space hey coach after losing a guy like james cook as electric as he is i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you uh see the running backs you currently have contributing in the past catching game kenny's going to take more of that slack it was nice having both of those guys a year ago or their versatility i think our other guys have improved dramatically in terms of their fall skills and route running ability getting the ball to them down the field um and their ability to track it that's probably as much i think james james can really track it but you can put him out there and feel good that if we threw it 40 yards down phil it's completely different than most of the balls that running backs catch which is right in front of them intermediate short so kenny dejean's really improved so that is an area where we don't have as much depth you know when you had james you didn't have to worry about in a given game plan if one guy went down that would be kenny now you know the other guys have gotten better at it but you're you've shrunk the margin for error you'd hate to go into a game with all kinds of things you like for kenny and then all of a sudden something happens and you're stuck so before we we you know when kenny was healthy we would have the luxury of having both of them and todd i know these overarching offensive philosophy storylines can be annoying but obviously when you came here george's reputation was run your reputation could play well he's coming in to open up the offense and everything what do you think about that and where do you think you are entering year three in terms of melding what made georgia before you got here and what the offense looks like under you now actually it's not a really rhetorical question it 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 it's and i'm paid to score i'm not paid to win i'm part i paid to add as part of that but to score but i'm also paid to be responsible to winning and so there's a big part of that where uh they think that kirby dictates what we do on offense knowing dictates that we'd be smart he dictates that we'd be explosive and then we utilize our personnel do everything in our power to win games for the university of georgia and that's what we should be doing and believe me when i'm thinking game plan wise i'm thinking about how we can be explosive and yet how we can run the ball to help us be explosive it all fits together and you can't control the game if you can't run the ball comfortably you can't you cannot control the game you can have a bunch of statistics that make it look better make you feel better but if you can't run the ball comfortably you can't win the game and that's from a guy who likes to throw it and my background's wide out some quarterbacks so i do want to throw it i enjoy throwing it two years ago against mississippi state here we couldn't run it we didn't run it very good at all that was on me we threw for 400 yards thank god and we won the game uh cincinnati we turned it over a bunch and didn't run it nearly as well luckily we could throw it i think the biggest thing is are you able to when you're not having success at one or the other you're not just one dimensional you're not just a running team where okay we get behind we're having trouble throwing it or a passing team when we have to run it we can't um but you know it's out there it's part of it it's unfair because you have to do whatever you need to do to win the game and that's be explosive and not turn it over so what's uh like bobo's value to what you guys are doing offensively kind of what's the give and take with the guy that that's obviously has some success as an offensive play caller as well you know how is he adding to your knowledge base and vice versa well first of all he's an unbelievable sounding board like any experienced coach that you bring in whether it was last year defensively with will musk champ or with us buster faulkner anybody that you bring in is a sounding board okay what have you done are we doing everything in our power to be successful our walkthroughs i asked him today all right we're working on uh pressures and how we're going to adjust to it i'm like i walked right over to them like okay what are we missing is there anything that you guys did that was different is there any way how you walked through in the past are we utilizing every opportunity to be successful and he's been great because i'm sure you know just like with buster or anybody that's done it for as long as he's done it that in some ways i'm sure he's enjoying being back here there's other ways it's like okay well maybe i wouldn't do it that way maybe i wouldn't but he's been awesome you know he's been awesome as a sounding board and i want to continue that he's going to have a big part in what we do offensively and adding to that we had a little bit of a shorter off season with guys coming in so we haven't had probably as much time to be like okay let's really dive in to certain aspects of it but uh i think those spots where someone everybody you have in your organization has to have value well where is their value where's where is their unique value whether it's recruiting whether it's player development whether it's offensive game planning whatever that is if they don't have an elite trait that adds to it they got to go so somewhere in that they've got to have some reason why they're in their building and i didn't mean to kind of end on that with mike bobo and i'm just saying he adds tremendous value in terms of like just in terms of being a sounding board for us hey coach i just kind of wanted to know through your eyes dominick waylon's progression getting back to full health getting him back involved what what he's looked like to you and how much his perseverance has meant to both himself in the you know that i can't imagine you know i can't imagine getting hurt getting re-injured two years probably a lot of times question whether or not what if i do all this again what if i do all this and it happens again and i'm sure every day if anybody's ever played basketball you roll your ankle you don't jump for a month imagine tearing your acl and then you do it again like how long that's going to take from the mental side forget the physical side of being able to just get out there and go um over time he's gotten to the point where i think he feels more and more comfortable and he's always been a crafty wrapper he's probably more crafty than he is like fast or taller just he has a knack some guys just have a knack of getting open making plays contested catches and you can see that every day that he's out there i know it's only been six or seven practices but what's your evaluation of these freshman running backs andrew paul and branson robinson so far i think they're going to be really good players it always hurts what's interesting is whenever this started 10 15 years ago when players came in mid-semester at one point there was four or five of them and you had 18 or 20 that didn't come well now it's the reverse of that you have most of your class comes in mid-semester so you're so used to freshmen being up to speed a little bit more but missing the spring takes its toll on any player that's not here because you're asking a lot of them i think they're both going to be tremendous players they're working awfully hard at their craft but every day we install summer's not the same uh it's really not because you're not the physical part every day we install the defense installs and as you keep going it just compounds the looks it's one thing if we kept the same plays and they changed or vice versa right but now they're changing looks we're changing plays it's like holy cow you can become overwhelmed and it's hard then at that point to really see their true skill set because they're processing they're not playing fast but i think they're both going to be tremendous players coach can you tell us when last year if you knew that you could win a title with stetson vetted and then secondly when what have you seen from governor stockton and brock van der griff we don't see a whole lot of them can he tell us about their development so i think that's you know as we got going in the year it's funny when you i've been on teams where we struggled we weren't where we needed to be and when you're going up against the same guys you have no way of knowing like really how good you are like you may think you're really good you think you're really bad you have no idea because it's the same dudes and then after a while you're like oh really not very good or then you're going a while you're like okay like some of those days of practice last year i'm going i don't think we're very good i don't know if we're very good you know you're just like it and for a while when we play other people you're like no actually we're really good and i mean that collectively as a team i think there's a moment irrespective of the quarterback where you're like okay we're really good on defense and we can be really good at offense now that when that happened that was a few games in there sure as hell wasn't after clemson but after a few games you started feeling that you know you started feeling i think we'd be pretty good you know and um irrespective of the quarterback was because both of them were good players it was never like where you thought boy it's this much or the other so you know as we kept going along we thought that you know stetson's mobility gave us gave us a chance you know a little bit different in terms of uh who we were going with um but at some point i thought now we can win it with either one of those quarterback okay you're asking about brock and gutter where you asked about cars we asked which one the the two younger ones okay both are tremendous players um brock obviously he's been here longer but his play-making ability is is tremendous i mean he's he's got a chance just like gunner does i think both of them had a chance to be a tremendous tremendous players here i really do uh they're different in the way they go about it and their personalities which is normal you're never going to have you could have three kids and they have different personalities all of them so you have the same thing quarterback like they but they but you love them all you know it's kind of that way like this one's a little more quiet this one goes about it you know and this one's a little more outgoing and you know uh but both of them going to be tremendous parts just stinks because we have i think we have a really good quarterback roommate people look at it and think like well they don't have a good quarterback room because stetson bennett is facebook no stetson's a really good player those guys are really good players and i think they're going to continue to get better we ask a lot of them we do a lot of quarterback controls here so there's there's a lot that we ask them to do which makes it hard initially hey coach over here yeah back to the tight ends again you know it's a fascinating position group of guys you got in there and last year you pretty much warned us what brock powers was and how many different ways you could you know use this guy now we see eric gilbert out there you know darnell is obviously healthy i mean how different i mean i know it's called tight end but it sure does look like you've got different positions within the positions and how does gilbert shake out we saw red zone usage in g-day but outside of that what do you see ahead for him well eric a lot like brock is a unique talent you know their their skill set eric's a little bit different in that eric has wide receiver background and route running good with the ball in his hands run under catch or brock's background is more get the ball in his hands h back full back run after catch is probably the difference so as brock needs to continue to develop his route running he's one of those guys just get in his hands and he's got better catch radius than i thought where eric is more of a route runner he's been in that i mean in terms of what he's developed almost like an air raid why you know so that that's been a part of that both of that unique skill set um we didn't know exactly when with brock we knew he was we knew he was rare and how he worked and how every day he came how that developed and kept going you know um just kind of kind of fell into it you know she just kept going like you know like uh we knew he was fast and then also that uab catching runway i don't know that's that's different you know the gps says one thing in the field i feel like wow that's pretty good we got to keep trying that you know i'm just an idiot so and not having darnell because darnell's a unique tale but he has the foot issue and you can't use him and he's a unique talent and keeping him healthy keeping all those guys healthy because they're different you know that that's probably the best way to put it is uh you know who are your unique skill sets that you can take advantage of match-ups that wes welker one time was an ex for the for the for the dolphins and trading him to the patriots turned him into a hall of famer play in the f position you know certain guys certain backs if you utilize our skill set you're going to enable them to excel and that's what we're paid to do take two more questions hey i want to ask you about the offensive guard position how do you see both the left and right guard spots sort of working out and how is tate ratlich especially just come back from this foot progressing at that right well i'll start with take is that tate obviously missing other than like four plays at the clemson game for a whole year that that's going to take its toll from the mental standing he was still a young player it's not like he's jabari sawyer and older players so mentally he's got to work back into it he has all of the attributes you want he's just got to get himself back going again because i don't care how much you're in meetings i don't care how much you're watching you're not actually executing you know you you know if you're an elite rifleman you can't watch people shoot the damn gun you got to shoot it you know and he's got to get out there and do it and so getting out there i think helps that we have a lot of depth at guard and tackle i mean we we can be lead up front we have we have a lot of really really good players up front and um now we're just working through it i don't want to mention it because i'll miss somebody in saying it but we have a lot of really really talented football players up front now it's piecing that together uh where we can really function as one todd that's been made about not having 1 000 yard receivers is it just kind of inevitable and do you like it that the ball gets distributed a lot of different places even if that kind of quashes some individual um i really don't go into it that way but i get it you know um i i get skilled players i've coached them all my life uh if you're in basketball you want to store if you walk your baseball you want to hit and if you're a skill guy you want to touch the football i mean i i get that and um i understand certain skill guys frustrations when they don't um because that's their value um you know when i when i was open state 2011 justin blackman won the health you know he had like 1700 yards and then the next year we had josh stewart a thousand yards so now different offenses you know more air raid like mike evans has a few more games but it doesn't come with that i would have i would have guessed if we had george we would have had a thousand yard receiver right we had him all year because he's a unique skill set you know when you get into run play action and utilizing matchups like we had a number of guys that way it's almost inevitable you're not gonna have somebody do that it's like um i'm gonna compare it to one thing before we have to break here is that i find it really intriguing because it's the same there because it's easy to pick on it's like um um no matter which way you go i found this in the nfl like you create this with quarterbacks where the touchdown to interception ratio exists and yet everybody knows that if you get in the red zone your best red zone teams are able to run the football in it's like well how does that make any sense if you're really good at running it and you run for touchdowns and yet the quarterback only throws for 17 touchdowns but 10 picks well he could add 10 more we just didn't need to and i know i'm just kind of like we it is what it is that the idea is that uh for us and it's frustrating for our players is to score as much as we can be explosive utilize the skill sets we have we get in the red zone scoring touchdowns whether we have to throw it or run it and the rest of it is for talk um not really in terms of the value of what what it really means and i get i get what you're saying that i really do um and you'd love to have somebody you know that you can count on that okay this guy's gonna win if they single and you know we'll have to we had to be creative last year with who that is is that brock is that av just like this so we'd love to have my last year selling this we have 4 000 yard passer and two thousand rushers that's elite but you'd love to have that but sometimes it just doesn't work itself out that way thank you everybody keep your seats um