On Wednesday, there’ll be the anticipation about which guys Popovich will get to develop in the future. He’s looking forward to seeing what the Yellow Jackets net on National Signing Day.
He said the experience of recruiting Georgia and the Southeast was a little different than last year, when he was working the state of Idaho.
“We’re not sending like 10 coaches up there to blitz the state,” he said, with a laugh. “But there obviously are some really, really good football players that come out of there. There are football players everywhere. If there’s a guy, we’ll go after him. We won’t turn anyone down that’s a good football player.”
He also won’t turn down good players that may not have been recruited at all. He can relate well to them.
“Having walked on and played at the University of Miami definitely brings some credibility and the inspiration piece, I hope so,” he said. “I hope kids that walk on and want to come play here realize and begin to believe in themselves, ‘Hey, if he can do it I can do it.’
“I’m not prototypical. I’m not 6-2, I’m not long,’” said Popovich, who was listed at Miami as 5-11, 190, with a laugh. “But I hope it does inspire people and I try to give people hope and encourage them and kind of help them believe in themselves and realize who they can become and what they can become. I hope that drives people.”
Popovich’s hope for the season is that his corners will drive people, too — as in drive them crazy. He plans to implement an aggressive, “in-your-face” approach.
“Just getting up on wide receivers and eliminating free-access throws, forcing quarterbacks to throw the ball down the field, force them to try and throw on time and receivers to try and run routes on time,” he said. “Any time you can disrupt and allow your front guys to get after quarterbacks and buy them a split second helps create chaos. Anytime you can make a quarterback think is good. So if you start press, maybe right before the snap you get off and play off or you bail or you press. Just giving them different looks and not allowing them to walk out, get under center and look around and know exactly what he’s getting. We’ve got long corners, so I think that will tailor well to their abilities.
“(Special Teams) will be similar,” he said. “Schematically, we’ll do what we need to do to be successful, put our guys in position to be successful. We’re going to play extremely hard, we’re going to play physical, we’re going to play tough and we’ll be multiple-scheme, just like defense.”
Popovich hopes the transition to the new systems will be as smooth and seamless as the transition he and wife, Lara, and daughters, Sayle and Copeleigh have made to their new city.
He credits Lara for the latter. In fact, he tips his hat to the entire staff’s significant others for the recruiting success the Jackets hope to see come to fruition on Wednesday.
“The wives deserve so much credit,” he said. “We come ahead and we start working with these players and we start recruiting. They’re left to kind of manage everything else around the house, in terms of, ‘Okay, let’s get the house ready to sell, let’s start packing things up, let’s figure out where the kids are going to school.’ It’s tough.
“For the kids, at this point, it’s fun,” he added, with a laugh. “It is hard when they start to develop relationships and friends at school but, at the same time, I had my kids watching videos of Buzz and getting them excited about that. So they love that part of it and they love the aspect of football itself.”
He believes the common ground of taking root in Atlanta has brought the staff even closer.
“We have a great staff and the families are just really, really good people,” he said. “It creates a tight bond among the staff and the families when you have to do those things, because everybody understands the tribulations of picking up your whole life and moving it to another city. It makes it easier when you’re doing it with other people and going through it at the same time with others. It’s pretty cool.”
