Groh being Groh: Former UVa. coach preps for pitched battle
Any advantage that there might be had related to the familiarity between the UVa. and Georgia Tech football coaching staffs should go to the ‘Hoos, former Virginia coach Al Groh is saying.
“I say that because one, I taught our defense what we are doing here to the head coach and to the secondary coach. They have all my playbooks and all my cutups. Those two coaches and the linebackers coach have sat through endless hours with me discussing defense, making game plans, and analyzing our performance. There is no dilemma or no secret analyzing how Al Groh thinks,” said Groh, now the defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, which hosts UVa. on Saturday in a key ACC matchup for both schools.
Read the rest of this column at VaSportsOnline.com.
Groh being Groh: Former UVa. coach preps for pitched battle
Any advantage that there might be had related to the familiarity between the UVa. and Georgia Tech football coaching staffs should go to the ‘Hoos, former Virginia coach Al Groh is saying.
“I say that because one, I taught our defense what we are doing here to the head coach and to the secondary coach. They have all my playbooks and all my cutups. Those two coaches and the linebackers coach have sat through endless hours with me discussing defense, making game plans, and analyzing our performance. There is no dilemma or no secret analyzing how Al Groh thinks,” said Groh, now the defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, which hosts UVa. on Saturday in a key ACC matchup for both schools. Read more
Press Conference: Al Groh
Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Al Groh talks with the media in advance of the team’s game with Virginia on Saturday.
On how Saturday’s game will be different
“Every Saturday night, there are only two ways you can feel in your competition. You can feel a sense of satisfaction from accomplishment you get because the result was in your favor, or you can have that haunting feeling of loss that everything you did all week brought you no satisfaction. So if you are in competition, or if you are a veteran of competition, then it really does not make a difference what color jersey the team you are coaching wears, all that counts is the result. That is what I work for every week. I try to work toward the satisfaction of our team accomplishing something, and avoid that haunting feeling that causes sleepless Saturday nights. This will be the same for me as it has been for 41 years.”
Read the rest of the story on VaSportsOnline.com.
Press Conference: Al Groh
Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Al Groh talks with the media in advance of the team’s game with Virginia on Saturday.
On how Saturday’s game will be different
“Every Saturday night, there are only two ways you can feel in your competition. You can feel a sense of satisfaction from accomplishment you get because the result was in your favor, or you can have that haunting feeling of loss that everything you did all week brought you no satisfaction. So if you are in competition, or if you are a veteran of competition, then it really does not make a difference what color jersey the team you are coaching wears, all that counts is the result. That is what I work for every week. I try to work toward the satisfaction of our team accomplishing something, and avoid that haunting feeling that causes sleepless Saturday nights. This will be the same for me as it has been for 41 years.” Read more
Will UVa. D be better in 4-3?
Depending on how you account for things, around half of the NFL uses a 3-4 defensive front – featuring three down linemen and four linebackers. The scheme is popular with pro coaches looking for ways to slow down West Coast offenses that rely on timing in the passing game and quick hitters on the ground. Teams employing the 3-4 need to have guys with size to play in the front seven, and especially on the line, where the three down linemen need to be able to take on blocks that free up linebackers and safeties to make plays behind them.
The problem with trying to use the 3-4 in college, as former Virginia coach Al Groh found out, comes in recruiting players to fit the scheme.
“I like the 3-4. I think it is a great defense, but it is a little harder to recruit to because of the size of the guys that you’ve got to get,” said Anthony Poindexter, a former All-America at safety and holdover from the Groh regime now on staff with new UVa. coach Mike London. Read more
Saying something nice about ol’ Al
The guy could prepare kids for the NFL, even if he had a hard time winning games
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Ambivalent about college athletics as I am, I’ve wondered over the years about whether or not we might not want to expect college coaches to think, you know, about things other than wins and losses. The thinking on that line being, well, college teams are attached, at least in name, to a college, i.e. a learning institution, so why not teach ‘em something, too, along the way?
Regular readers of my columns know how critical I was over the years of Al Groh and his failed tenure at his (and our) alma mater – how he couldn’t beat Tech, heck, couldn’t beat anybody consistently other than Duke, and even couldn’t do that at the end, that sort of thing.
Turns out he was taking care of business behind the scenes in one way that I would like to see more coaches emulate.
“I think a lot of people wonder, How does UVa. have so many players playing in the NFL when the team wasn’t doing well at the college level? I think one of the reasons is that Coach Groh ran an NFL system, so the transition and the learning curve for us wasn’t as steep as it was for some other college players,” four-year NFL veteran and 2006 UVa. alum Brad Butler told me recently.
Butler had just spoken to a group at a local high school about civic participation, a key interest of his dating back to his days on Grounds at the University. I admitted to him later that I hadn’t been following his NFL career as closely as I had some of our fellow alums. You can tend to forget the O linemen, especially when they play in obscurity in Buffalo, aka the team in the AFC East that never makes the playoffs. Read more
The World According To ChrisGraham.com: The team that revived Wahoo Nation
Posted by afp on June 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment
That’s counter to our nature as UVa. sports fans. We’re so used to losing the big game that the question isn’t whether we’re going to win or lose, it’s how are we going to blow it this time. O’Connor had everybody but the OU fans in attendance last night convinced that Game 3 of the Super Regional was going to be little more than a coronation that was going to end with a dogpile of orange and blue.
Link to column on TheWorldAccordingToChrisGraham.com.
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