Georgia football may have lost Dan Lanning right before Early Signing Day, but the best thing about it is that Dawg’s defense will be in good hands when he leaves.
He did a great job with Georgia’s defense during the three years he was there, but there are coaches behind him that are just as qualified to keep this team on the rise.
Not long after the news broke, the second time, head coach Kirby Smart quickly announced that Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp would be the co-defensive coordinators.
Georgia football will still be elite moving forward without Dan Lanning.
The Dawgs will see some of its stars return, and others leave for the NFL Draft, but between those two coordinators, they know what it takes to put strong defenses on the field.
Muschamp is a proven defensive coordinator and coach. Of course, we know he was the head coach at Florida and then most recently South Carolina. He was also the defensive coordinator at Auburn before that. Muschamp was also on staff for the 2003 and 2009 LSU national title teams. He saw time in Texas, where the Gators poached him to be their coach.
As another Nick Saban assistant — he has a similar style to Smart, and they really seem to work well together. Muschamp is also one of the best recruiters in the game.
He understands what Smart wants out of this defense, and even though Muschamp has worked with the special teams all season, he got brought on as a senior defensive analyst. The way Muschamp gets fired up mimics that of Smart, and it works, so it’ll be fun to see him handle the defense for now.
Smart took a chance with Lanning, and it paid off, but it also paid off because Smart put a good support staff around him, including Schumann, a 31-year-old up-and-coming superstar coach.
He may be young, but Schumann understands the game at the same level as Smart and Lanning. Schumann works his tail off to get his inside linebackers ready for action, and a lot of the development throughout the last few seasons has come from him.
Smart was 33 when Saban made him the defensive coordinator at Alabama in 2008. He was 32 when Saban made him Assistant head coach and defensive backs coach in 2007. If Smart takes a chance on anyone is should be Schumann which tells us exactly why he is co-coordinators with Muschamp.
Old-school with new-school should be a fun mix to watch. Smart didn’t specify how long this co-defensive coordinator thing would go on, but it has for the last couple of seasons, and it hasn’t skipped a beat. Georgia will be fine because Smart trusts this staff to keep to his standards, plus these two are a couple of the best.