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A brief conversation with John Lilly

Posted on Jun 30, 2009 by Andrew Miller  | 

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Every once in a while, in the midst of my Bulldawg Illustrated sales duties, I stumble into the opportunity to chat with one of the Georgia coaching staff. The fortunate situation happened to me again earlier this week when I had the chance to briefly talk to John Lilly, Tight Ends coach for our Georgia Bulldogs. Coach Lilly was in Macon to participate in a coaches clinic for middle Georgia high school coaches, and he was joined by representatives of Georgia Southern, Georgia Tech and others. Two of Macon’s finest businesses, OrthoGeorgia, and Coliseum Health System, sponsored the event at the Healy Point Country Club in Macon.

Here are a few of the nuggets:

Coach Lilly on how the adjustment to life in Athens has been since he accepted the job in January of 2008 after 10 years at Florida State: I think its been good, but it was beyond just changing jobs. Since I was hired, my wife and I got married and now we are expecting our first child (a baby girl). We have invited change. Its been good. The second year is a lot nicer. For one thing, it takes a while to just to get a feel for the way the schedule (day to day routine) is set up.

Coach Lilly on the talent level at tight end in Athens: Its hard to judge the talent right now, because as a whole there hasn’t been a lot of playing time. There is not a senior in the group. Bruce Figgins has had to play through injury. Aron White has not gotten a whole lot of snaps. Bryce Ros was a redshirt. Derek Rich is a walk on, and then we have the true freshmen. (He acknowledged that there is talent amongst that group, but then he said) You are always hesitant to go overboard before they have laced them up. Yet, as Coach Bowden liked to say, “we are inexperienced but talented, and I’d rather have inexperience and talent than an experienced group that has no talent.”

Coach Lilly on why we only had 11 catches from the TE position last year: First and foremost, we had excellent wide receivers like AJ Green and Mohamed Massaquoi, and of course, Knowshon, taking up so much of the offense.

Coach Lilly on the schedule and on Florida in particular: When you play the type of schedule that we play, there is an awful lot of football before we ever see those guys. The total focus is on Okahoma State and that is the way it has to be. I saw teams while I was at Florida State that would focus their whole year on beating us and then go something like 5-7. You don’t want to do that. We are eager to play that game, but you can’t put all of your energy into it. There are 7 teams before we play them that are capable of beating us.

Coach Lilly on UGA fans: You really notice the passion of the fanbase and how broad the fanbase is. My wife and I just got back from Destin. The first day when we were there we talked about counting up all of the SEC gear that we saw on the trip, really to see what SEC logo we would see the most. Almost immediately on that first day, we saw one of those big tailgating tents with the Georgia “G” set up on the beach, and then we saw another, a different one, later in the week. If you count up all of the t-shirts, license plate holders, etc. that we saw all week, I’m certain that Georgia was represented better than any other team. It makes you want to put out a really great product on the field for the fanbase. The passion at Georgia is about unmatched, really. And with that, expectations are high, but as a coach you so much like to be somewhere where the expectations are high because it means you have a chance to win it all and I’m happy for that opportunity to be at Georgia.”

And with that I went back to my sales role. But I was glad to have met Coach Lilly and I will most certainly add him to the list of Georgia coaches who represent our school with tremendous class. He is another of the genuine people that are moulding our young men into upstanding citizens. I know that he really wants to win the SEC east, SEC title and national championship. And I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he purposely tempered the excitement and talent that he has at Tight End. Good luck to you coach; I look forward to seeing who emerges from your guidance to lead our Dawgs this year, and it won’t surprise me one bit when the TE becomes more of a weapon than it has been in recent years.

Tagged: john lilly, uga fans, georgia bulldogs tight ends coach