Ask a coordinator whether he's dialed things back and you usually get a coach-speak yes or a no. Glenn Schumann gave a better answer than either when recently asked.
Georgia's defensive coordinator was asked this week whether the defense had been simplified this season, after some players said as much and that it had allowed them to play faster this year, and he pushed back gently on the premise. The defense isn't smaller. The players are just faster in their heads.
"I think the defense becomes simpler like the older guys get, the simpler it feels," Schumann said. "People always use this expression about, well, the game's going to slow down."
"Well, that's kind of an unfair statement, because then guys just sit around and wait for it to slow down for them, and then they feel like, if the game's not slowing down to them, they're like, well, is something wrong with me? It's a coach's job to speed the players up so that they're playing faster. The game's moving the same speed. They're playing faster. So in some ways I think when it feels simpler, they have now sped up in terms of their processing."
That's a distinction that often gets blurred. Schumann puts the responsibility on the staff, not the calendar.
The part coaches will find especially interesting came next. Every year in Athens, the self-scout goes past the numbers and data, and they dig deeper into the terminology they're using.
"When we go and do self-scout, we don't just evaluate, hey, this call gave up this many yards per rush and this many yards per pass, and it created this much havoc and gave up this many explosives. That's the hard data," Schumann said. "But we look at it from a standpoint of, what about this terminology? It might be the same call, and when we're talking as a staff, there is an inconsistency in how we're verbalizing what we're teaching. So it's the same call, but we've changed names of calls from year to year to make it more digestible for the next guy."
Same defense. Same rules. Different words and therefore different associations in the minds of players. Schumann said the staff tries to "compartmentalize the vocabulary into families so that it's digestible," always in service of letting players cut it loose.
For high school and college staffs, the takeaway is certainly worth an off-season meeting. You can audit your playbook the way you audit your third-down calls. If a good player keeps busting the same check, the problem might be found in the name, not the scheme.
Schumann has earned the right to talk teaching. He's been on Kirby Smart's staff since 2016 after seven years at Alabama under Nick Saban, and his inside linebacker room has produced three Butkus Award winners in Roquan Smith (2017), Nakobe Dean (2021) and Jalon Walker (2024). Georgia's defense ranked fourth nationally against the run in 2025 and helped the Bulldogs claim a second straight SEC title, with CJ Allen earning consensus All-America honors and KJ Bolden landing second-team recognition.
The vocabulary keeps changing in Athens. The results haven't. Stay tuned to The Scoop for more.