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.
Virginia (2-2, 0-1 ACC) is coming off a demoralizing 34-14 loss to Florida State that threw the first seeds of doubt into the rebuilding year being directed by Groh’s predecessor, Mike London, who had been a member of Groh’s staff before leaving for two seasons at Richmond in 2008 and 2009.
Georgia Tech (3-2, 1-1 ACC) is on the heels of an important come-from-behind 24-20 win at Wake Forest that for the moment at least saved the Yellow Jackets’ season.
Tech head coach Paul Johnson added Groh to his staff in the offseason to try to achieve a turnaround in the one part to the program that has struggled in Johnson’s tenure, which includes a trip to the Orange Bowl in January. The Tech D is still struggling, though, ranking eighth in the 12-team ACC in total defense (347.8 yards per game) and 10th in scoring defense (25.4 points per game).
johnson said this week that Groh is a “high-energy guy” who still has the fire needed to get the job done as a football coach. To listen to Groh, you get the sense that he clearly feels he has something to prove after his failed run at his alma mater, where his teams were 59-53 in nine seasons.
“That is what I do, that is who I am. It lets me be the person that I am,” said Groh, who told reporters this week that he spoke with his wife, Anne, after he was let go by Virginia, “and despite what many people were saying to me… they were really trying to give good advice, and were saying ‘you have had a lot of good times in your career, you have been to Super Bowls, you have been head coach in the NFL, you have been the head coach in college, and are well-set financially. Why don’t you take a little time off and see what you want to do? Go to Europe. Why go through all this some more?’ I very quickly said to Ann, ‘I appreciate that advice, I could probably retire from football right now, but I am just not ready to retire from me.”
Both Groh and London are doing what they can to keep their focus on the task at hand – the football game – and not on what the rest of us are focused on outside the lines.
“It’s not personally awkward,” London answered a question leading him down that path from a reporter at his press conference on Monday. “I’ve been coaching college ball for a long time now. And I know that he knows this is the reality of the profession of the business. It’s the storyline – if you say the fact that we were both here at the same time. But to me, I’ve told the players – this is a game where the University of Virginia is playing Georgia Tech, and it’s our second conference game. And that’s the way that we’re going to approach it, and that’s the way we look at it.”
In terms of x’s and o’s, you have to assume that London has whatever advantage there might be, as Groh conceded. Not that London is claiming any advantage going in.
“The 3-4 won’t be a mystery, but at the same time they’re allowed to do different things with their schemes, and I’m quite sure that Coach Groh is doing some things different with the schemes,” London said.
Groh does have one thing working to his advantage – an intimate knowledge of the personnel that he will be game-planning against. A key difference – how they’re being utilized by new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor. Groh tried to sell reporters this week on how Lazor’s schemes are similar to what his UVa. teams used, but Lazor’s offense is more a throwback to what Tom O’Brien did as offensive coordinator under George Welsh than anything that Groh’s myriad coordinators did in his tenure.
As to the outside-the-lines stuff …
“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,” Groh offered by way of soliloquy familiar to the Virginia faithful from over the years.
“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.”
Translation: Expect a season-best performance from that Georgia Tech D.
Column by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at [email protected].
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