Jeff Jagodzinski, formerly the coach of Boston College, was hired by Trent Miles as offensive coordinator in December.
Jagodzinski helped develop Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan.
While he wouldn't say if there's another Ryan on Georgia State's roster, he did take a few minutes to provide his thoughts on the offense. The unit struggled last year, averaging just 17.4 points per game.
Q: What have you learned so far about your players?
A: Right now, we are just trying to get a base set with really learning how to finish things and how to do things the right way all the time. Really, it’s not even football specific, it’s about working together as a team. If one guys does it wrong, it’s wrong.
We’ve been working together on team-stuff so that you have to do it right all the time.
Q: What are you focusing on in the film room?
A: We took every game last year and every snap and evaluated every player. We didn’t’ want to be skewed by anyone’s comments or experiences with the kids. That was really valuable.
We got a chance to evaluate. We have an idea of where we are at but we really won’t know until we get the pads on.
Q: What was the good and bad that caught your eye after breaking down every play?
A: I think that anytime you beat yourselves with turnovers and you beat yourself with penalties, that has nothing to do with talent. That has everything to do with a guy doing it the right way, which is what we were just talking about.
You can’t jump offsides and you can’t get penalties in the red zone jumping offsides. You can’t do stupid things. You can’t turn the ball over. You don’t turn the ball over and you have a chance to win.
You turn it over and you’ve got nothing.
Q: Who are the potential impact players? Who stood out on film?
A: Our tackles are pretty good. Grant’s (King) pretty good. (Ulrick) John did a decent job. They were just so hit-and-miss, the whole team. One guy would do it right and one guy would do it wrong and blow up the whole play.
We are doing a lot of things and talking about things that don’t take talent, not turning over the ball and not jumping offsides, going the right way, right or left. It’s a building project.
Q: What drills can you do to re-enforce not making those errors?
A: We do everything as a team as to how we do drill work. Everybody’s got to do it exactly the way we are teaching them. If one guy does it wrong they are all wrong. We stop and start all over again.
Trent’s set up 10 stations in winter conditioning and everyone has to do each station correctly. If one does it wrong, everybody has to go back and start all over again.
Q: How would you describe the depth, or talent, or what you need from the current quarterbacks?
A: They played a lot of quarterbacks last year. We’ve evaluated all of them and we are going to try to take what their strengths are and try to build on it.
The negatives or weaknesses … not so much. We have to build on what these guys can do and how they can perform.
We need to settle on one quarterback. It’s going to be a great competition. It’s an open competition because we don’t know anything about these guys. There’s no preconceived notions.
Q: So there’s no No. 1 right now?
A: No. Everything’s wide open for every position. No guy owns that. You’ve got to earn that stuff.
Q: Can you give readers an idea of the type of offense you are going to run? What will the focus be?
A: Until we get out there to see what we’ve got, we are going to have to tailor our offense around what our talent is. Schematically, we’d like to throw the ball. We just don’t know what we’ve got yet.
We will put in our base offense. We’d like to be two-back but we don’t have the personnel to do a lot of that right now. There are some things on the team, personnel-wise, that we need to get.
Q: Recruiting-wise?
A: Right. We are doing that. We’ve been really well-received in recruiting. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to get kids from around here to go Georgia State and be competitive. No reason.
Q: How long might you be here?
A: I’ll be here as long as Trent will have me. I’ve known Trent for a long time. I trust Trent and Trent trusts me. I’ll do the very best job for Trent I can to help Georgia State win.
Q: Any aspirations to be a head coach again?
A: Oh, I think I will be. It’s just a matter of what opportunity will come by. All I’m concerned about right now is what I’ve got. I can’t worry about what I don’t have. I have the best job in the world because this is the one I’ve got.
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