Football - D-Rich on the option

Daryl Richard and Cory Earls attended the Peachstate Pigskin Preview in Macon and talked with reporters. Here are some interesting quotes from D-Rich that came from various media stories:

On Paul Johnson's "3 yards and a cloud of dust" critics on the triple option:
"It's more like 8 yards," Richard said. "It's fast -- that's the biggest thing about it. You've got guys that will burn you if you can't get to them for the tackle. It's physical, smash-mouth football, and if you're not ready for it, you're going to be embarrassed."

On attitudes:
"Things are definitely different than things in the past," said Richard, a fifth-year senior. "The bar has been raised. It's the level of intensity and the expectations."

On first playing against the TO in spring:
“When we first started this spring, the offense actually got the best of us,” he said. “It was a new offense; we were not familiar with it at all. I had the mentality that every now and then I got to go make a play. (Johnson) is going to find those type of people. That is who he is going to attack, the most productive guy on defense can actually become a weakness because he wasn’t playing team defense. It forces you to play football that way. That was real big.”

On Paul Johnson:
“You are talking about bringing in one of the best minds in football,” he said. “I don’t live my life in a vacuum. I watch a lot of football. I have seen what his Navy teams did. I have seen some of the Georgia Southern clips in the past. You watch some of his football games in the past, the way he is attacking people … you can actually see there is a method to the madness. That is really important. When you do those types of things, you can help build something that is big.”

On defensive changes:
“Our front four has been freed up to make plays,” he said, almost singing. “In the past, we pressured by scheme, not by winning personal battles.”

“In the past, you had teams that set up their blocking schemes for that [hells bells pressure, non-stop]. When you have a Boston College — and we took a lot of criticism for this — that said, ‘Let’s do some max protection, and hold in seven or eight guys, and run two-man or three-man routes … that doesn’t happen a lot in college football.’ Now, we’re going to tell a team if you do that to us, we’re going to have five or six guys back there waiting on you to throw the ball.”

“Now, instead of only offenses attacking us different ways, changing to see what works or doesn’t, we’re going to change what we do, change the way we attack you as we go.”

"pretty much running two shell. You know, last year we got into cover three action and our former defense, we zone blitzed a lot. One thing our defensive coordinator Dave Womack does, he adds that. Also he likes to do some dropback coverage. So in terms of how we're gonna play every down, they don't know.

"No question. In Coach Tenuta's system, I pretty much played the nose guard, and I had a responsibility every play of crossing the center's face," Richard said. "I didn't get many chances to do what I thought I do best, which a lot of times is work from the guard position, get in their heads with different styles."

On leadership on the line:
“I think when you have a unit that has three seniors who have played a lot of football (Michael Johnson, Darryl and Vance Walker), you can show these younger guys how to play the game. It’s almost an expectation. It’s not, can you get it done?”