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Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Odds and ends with Wommack, Monken
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Greetings-
I think we’re going to take a break from basketball. I don’t know if you saw the story we ran in Tuesday’s paper about the football team’s objectives over the offseason, but I spoke with Dave Wommack (defensive coordinator) and Jeff Monken (A-backs, special teams coordinator) for the story. Unfortunately, I could only catch up with Monken after I filed the story. I thought I’d share a few things both said that didn’t make it into the story.
First, Monken: Naturally, he was not at all satisfied with how special teams played.
“I think that the kicking game has got to improve in general. We didn’t cover kicks good enough, we didn’t return kicks far enough, we didn’t kick the ball good enough. Overall, the kicking game’s got to get a lot better. We need to have plays out of the kicking game to help us win games and hopefully win some of those games we lost.”
He explained something about the coaching of special teams that I knew - that all coaches are involved - but didn’t know the specifics of (sorry to end a sentence on a preposition). He said that Charles Kelly (cornerbacks) coaches the punt team, Brian Jean-Mary (linebackers) coaches punt return, Buzz Preston (wide receivers) coaches kickoff return, Mike Sewak (offensive line) coaches the extra point and field goal teams and Wommack coaches the extra point and field goal block units.
It makes sense, as Monken also coaches A-backs. He said that he’s just the one with the title.
“Everybody’s involved and everybody’s got a vested interest in special teams,” he said.
I wanted to ask him about the kicking game specifically, but we had to cut it short. He did say, though, that Paul Johnson’s procedure has been to open all positions, not just special teams, but on all three units.
“It’s all up to who performs the best and who we think gives us the best chance to win,” he said. “That job (kicker) will be up for competition, as it was every week.”
I asked Wommack about a few things, like how players have to get stronger and needing to develop the defensive line, some of which went into the story. He said, too, that the secondary and linebackers are going to have to get better to become a strength in the way the defensive line was this year.
While he didn’t want to make excuses, he noted, as Johnson did during the season, that depth was a major factor, in that Tech didn’t have much of it, in part because of scholarship restrictions. It was particularly the case at linebacker with so many guys, such as Brad Jefferson and Shane Bowen, getting hurt.
I asked about the Chick-fil-A Bowl again. He said immediately after the game that he thought the team lacked a mental edge, perhaps because of the high it had been on after beating Georgia. I wondered if maybe he’d reconsidered, given some time to think more about the game. But he hadn’t.
“That’s my responsibility on defense and our responsibility as coaches to do that, but you have to be ready to play every game,” he said. “Mental discipline is just as important as physical discipline. … I think they learned a lot from this game. It’s too late. We can’t go back and re-play that game, but it’ll only be good for us if we can learn from it.”
Lastly, he said that with the relative down time, coaches will look back at film and analyze the scheme to make sure it fits the personnel, make sure players are in the right places, look for weaknesses, etc. Tech also has a recruiting weekend coming up.
“You know how that is,” he said. “You’ve got to stay on top.”
He also said that he planned to go visit with coaches at other schools. He declined to say where he thinks he’d like to go.
Not sure if I have a specific question, but you’re free to comment on any of it, obviously - What do you want to see happen with special teams? What players are you anxious to see develop? What do you hope the defense can do better? What schools would you suggest that Tech’s coaches visit?
