Eagles Learning New Practice Routine
3/29/2014 9:55:00 PM | Football
Fundamentals emphasized with new schemes, techniques and terminology
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STATESBORO, Ga. – As rainy weather made itself comfortable in Statesboro Friday, the Georgia Southern Football team made contingency plans, moving its Saturday morning practice to the afternoon. While the Eagles were disappointed in the delay of their first day in shells, Coach Willie Fritz wanted to make sure they got the most out of practice and just weren't going through the motions.
"Learning how to practice and learning how to do things our way and then also having a tempo," said Coach Fritz about the importance of the first week. "I pride myself in organizing and having a great practice every single time. I told the guys before we went out that 'we have one today, that's it. Let's have a fantastic practice,' and if you do that every single day, you'll start to see that gradual improvement that you're looking for."
This first week of practice is critical to the foundation of Coach Fritz's coaching and teaching philosophy. Even though there are many similarities between what the Eagles have done before, there is still plenty of adapting and learning ahead. Georgia Southern has moved from studying playbooks and film study to on-field situations and players on both offense and defense are being immersed in the fundamentals.
The emphasis on fundamentals, evident in the attention from the coaches during individual and position drills, is one part of the productive practices. Some of the work is done before the Eagles hit the practice field, where Coach Fritz and his assistants are teaching the new schemes and techniques.
"Schemes, techniques and fundamentals, and also being able to speak our language," Coach Fritz said about what translates from meetings to the field. "There are a lot of things, there are probably a lot of similarities between last year and this year, but we might call things different. We want everybody to be on the same page and call everything the same as well."
Although Coach Fritz will review the film from today's 27-period session, his post-practice assessment of the first day in shells indicated he felt the Eagles were making progress.
"It was really good, we needed to do some big guys on big guys, and the offensive line and defensive line got a lot of work against each other," Coach Fritz said. "We try and pattern our practice routine and how we practice on how the NFL practices and the guys have done a super job of embracing these concepts that we are using."
FAST TEMPO: Coach Fritz spoke about the quick tempo of the Eagles' practices: "We are practicing a little longer than we normally will, because of inserting so many things, technique, fundamental-wise, especially scheme-wise, but in the future, we probably won't have many practices over two hours. We are trying to get in, we are trying to go as fast as we can, go with a fast tempo, and then get out."
FOOD, FOOTBALL & FUN: Georgia Southern will definitely be a winner in the Blue-White Spring Game, but it's a wide open contest to determine Eagle Nation's top tailgate chef. Prior to the spring game April 12th, Georgia Southern Athletics is sponsoring the inaugural Tailgate Cook-off with the chance to win bragging rights and great Eagle Football prizes. Entries for Georgia Southern's Tailgate Cook-off must be submitted by Monday, April 7th, giving Eagle fans, foodies and grillmasters time to think about their recipes for this inaugural contest. The entry link for contestants is here: http://gseagles.com/sb_ output.aspx?form=19.
UPDATED PRACTICE SCHEDULE: The Eagles return to the banks of "Beautiful Eagle Creek" Sunday afternoon for their 2:45 p.m. practice and will make up Friday's canceled practice Monday at 4:45 p.m.
Georgia Southern Athletics provides up-to-date information on all its sports through its official website, GSEagles.com, through social media channels facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics, iOS app Georgia Southern Eagles and Android app Eagles GATA.
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