Intro: Todd Monken runs one of the efficient offenses in the country. His Bulldog offense excels in the most important areas: the country's No. 1 red zone offense, they are fifth in the country on third down percentage and second in the country on fourth down conversions. His offense, also one of the least penalized units in the country, and they hold the ball: eighth in the nation in time of possession. He believes in balance, and this season Georgia averaged 285 yards through the air and 200 on the ground, the eighth most productive offense in the country. In Todd Monken's three years running the Bulldog offense, Georgia is averaging 36 points a game. Today the Broyles Award committee honors a man who started putting up big offensive numbers over 30 years ago as a small college All-American quarterback at Knox College. Please welcome Broyles Award finalist, Georgia offensive coordinator, Todd Monken.
Monken: Well thank you, David, Jeff, Molly, Betsy and the foundation and committee for putting on this wonderful event. I can speak for all of us and my wife, but it's been awesome. Thank you for all you do for Alzheimer's and dementia. One thing I've realized with these guys, I'm going to talk about them in a second, but really I already knew I was older than the rest of them but when Alex came up and had his information on his phone and technology and my man Jessie had it written out, here I've got big fonts scribbled as a 56 year old just so I can read it. I'm going to have to start a foundation for eye sight as you get older and lose your reading glasses.
But thank you, and what an honor to be here with these guys. You talk about Garrett and TCU. I think people forget they just got there. Alex was talking about year two, that's year one. How impressive of a year they've had. And then Alex, the year that they've had. I'm so bullshit that Tennessee hired him and their staff because they're in our division. Hopefully him leaving will kick a leg out for how they were offensively. But what a great job they did, and he's right, Hendon Hooker had an unbelievable year. I'm just so happy for him and Alexis and getting the South Florida job. You're going to kill it, absolutely kill it. And then Ryan Walters, I grew up in Illinois and Illinois was my dream school. When I was a kid, my dad was a high school coach and his players went there. To see what they've done there defensively, and that's the reason they're killing it. We went against him when he was at Missouri during my first year at Georgia and they were hard to prepare for. Their kids played their rear ends off and they challenged you. Jesse who, showing my age, I was a graduate assistant for his dad Rick Minter and Rick was way ahead of his time. I said this last night to whoever was there, you talk about analytics these days, he was on the forefront of that in terms of defenses and formations and how you scheme people. Then he went to Cincinnati and won at Cincinnati when no one wanted to be at Cincinnati, not like now where Brian Kelly and Butch Jones and others guys won. Nobody won.
You know, a year ago I heard a coach make a statement of some people thinking they hit a triple and yet they basically just landed on third base. I thought about that for a second, and thought, you know, that's not always a bad thing. I was fortunate enough to be raised by two awesome parents. My dad was a coach, my mom was a second grade teacher, I have two brothers, they're in coaching and I landed on third base. Not everybody gets that opportunity. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be in a loving home with two parents, still together. I did. I landed on third base. And then a few years later, my wife Terry, we've been married 31 years, she felt sorry for me and agreed to marry me and I landed on third base. I didn't hit the triple. You can only imagine with us and our coaches' wives what they have to go through. My son, when he was born through the time he left for college, we moved eight times. Your wife is the one who keeps it together, and I appreciate that.
And then a chance to come to Georgia, I landed on third base. I wasn't like TCU, it wasn't like at Knoxville. I came into a culture that was already established. They had really good players, and all we had to do was fight like hell to make it better. And that doesn't mean my whole career I've landed on third base, for God's sakes. I worked my ass off, OK? Let's at least be honest here. But I am very appreciative of opportunities that I've gotten, and one thing about it is I'm just a byproduct of our players, Kirby Smart and the culture and our coaching staff. And I've been doing this a long time and been around a lot of great coaches and my whole family's in coaching, and there's nobody I trust more than Kirby Smart in terms of we're going to win, we're going to work, we're going to recruit. And that's over 56 years.
And I want to thank our staff. And — you know, when we played the other day, I always have believed this: that I see an offensive staff as like a rock band or a group that you need every piece of it. That you take the collective strength of the staff and give them pieces of it, and then you just coordinate it as best you can because it takes everybody. It takes songwriters, it takes the musicians. They're the ones that make it come to life. The first two touchdown passes we threw the other day, those were Mike Bobo's ideas. Those weren't mine. The third touchdown pass was Ryan Williams, an analyst. It wasn't my idea. It was someone else's idea. We just fought like hell during the week to see if we could make it right. So very, very lucky in that regard.
I do want to end with a few stories that along the way — one thing about being old is you have a bunch of stories of what made me as an assistant coach.
“My first job was at Grand Valley State University for Tom Beck. I was a coach's kid and thought I knew it all. Back in those days you had a bulletin board because you didn't have graphics. You had to put the day's event on the bulletin board. Rosters, the practice schedule, whatever. So he gave me Sports Illustrateds and asked me to cut out football pictures and put them in the corners and make the bulletin board really nice. And I thought this was a bullshit job for a big-time guy like me. So as you can imagine I did it and the next day I walk in and Tom Beck grabs me and says, 'Todd I want you to look at that bulletin board. And I looked at it and he said, 'It looks like shit and your name is all over it.' And he's right. Whatever you do, it's a job interview and your name is written on it. That was a reflection of me.
I ended up being lucky enough to go work for coach (Lou) Holtz at Notre Dame as a graduate assistant at Notre Dame, along with coach (Rick) Minter. One Sunday after we played, all the coaches want lunch. So I say you know what I'm going to cheese up to the head coach and see if he wants lunch.
So I said to coach, 'I'm going to Wendy's, would you like something for lunch?'
And he says 'Todd your ass is right. I want a chicken sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie.' I go to Wendy's, I get there, I bring it back and give him his bag. He looks in the bag and he's digging around. And when you're Lou Holtz, you're used to getting your way.
He's like, 'Todd, where is my chocolate chip cookie?'
I said, 'Coach, well they were out.'
He said, 'You mean the whole city?'
And he was right. He didn't ask for a chocolate chip cookie from that Wendy's. So from then on, I brought the son of a bitch six. At that point, he was going to get a bunch of cookies, I can promise you that.
And then my last story, working for Les Miles. If you're an Arkansas fan, you know that rivalry game. Les was from the Bo Schembechler era and he loved to practice. He loved to practice. Like it was 3 hours, 20-minute walk-through, 28 minutes of inside run. He thought fourth and four was toss it to Jacob Hester. I mean, neck rolls. This was long.
Again I wouldn't be where I'm at, but Les had a way where the players felt like we just worked too hard. And what we learned then, and I already knew it, is so important for assistant coaches. And that is, your number 1 job is to carry the message from the big room to the little room to your players. Whether you would completely do it that way or not, I didn't believe we needed 28 minutes of inside run. I didn't believe we needed to practice 3 hours. But I went into that room and said, 'Guys, we're going to be tougher than who we play. We're going to be better in the fourth quarter. And we're going to kick their ass when it matters.
Because if you don't and you roll your eyes like 'I don't know why we're practicing this long," your players won't believe in the direction you're headed. Your job as an assistant is to carry the message of the head coach to the big room to the little room. And that is how you're successful.
I appreciate it. Thank you very much, I'm honored to be here with these great coaches and those that have been honored before me. And Go Dawgs.
