New linebackers coach's personality to brighten up dull UGA special teams
Nick Suss Feb 20, 2014
Mike Ekeler likes to tell jokes. It's hard to miss.
However, one group of people hasn't quite acclimated itself to the University of Georgia's new inside linebackers coach: his linebackers.
"As far as the linebackers go, I think they're still trying to figure me out," Ekeler said. "Who's this tall good looking guy coaching me now?"
"That's what I tell them too. If they don't laugh at my jokes they're not going to play."
Formerly a co-defensive coordinator for Indiana and most recently a linebackers coach at Southern California, Ekeler brings more to UGA than just the one-liners and "Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker" references littered throughout his press conference Thursday. Not only bringing guidance to the inside linebacker positions, Ekeler also assumes the daunting task of overseeing the Bulldogs' defensive special teams units.
Ekeler will be in charge of three special teams units: kickoff coverage, punt return and extra point block. Though he has never directly coordinated special teams at the collegiate level, Ekeler insists that he has coached every single special teams unit in some manner and has already devised certain strategies to fix the Bulldogs' more inconsistent units, especially the punt return team.
"We're going to do some different things," Ekeler said of the much-maligned punt return team that garnered significant criticism last season. "I told coach [Mark] Richt in our interview, 'Jesus, coach, you set an NCAA record for being on punt safe.' He laughed. We'll do some different things and we'll get after it."
Though Richt understood that Ekeler's comments were in jest, he agreed the team did take a conservative approach to returning punts considerably more than most teams.
"You call punt safe for a reason, that's to make sure at the end of the play you get the ball back…" Richt said. "So you call, and obviously I wasn't calling the punt safes but I did chuckle because I knew I did call punt safe a bunch."
Outside of punt returning philosophy, one reason why Ekeler is confident in his ability to coach special teams is his experience as a player. While Ekeler goes as far as to joke that he "set the NCAA record for having the most fun of anyone who ever played" while he was a player at Kansas State, he acknowledges that the first couple years of that fun was exclusively on special teams.
"It's something as a player I loved," Ekeler said. "I think it's a little bit easier to coach it actually if you did it. It's something I can relate to and I think these players, you have to get them to buy into it."
Ekeler extended that idea of "buying in" to the idea of reaching the next level. As Ekeler contends, 95 percent of players drafted into the NFL have to first break into the game on special teams. For young players, Ekeler said he believes special teams should be a number one priority.
Using young players in special teams is a high priority for Ekeler himself too. Specifically in the punt return game, Ekeler said he believes that many true freshmen, including return specialist Isaiah McKenzie, can make an immediate impact.
"He's very dynamic," Ekeler said of McKenzie. "Very electric."
Going even younger, Ekeler said another one of his goals as a coach at UGA is to learn the name of every high school player in the state of Georgia, saying that in-state recruiting is where the team "is going to kill it."
When asked what kind of player Ekeler wants to recruit to the university, he responded with two words: trained killer.
Then he paused for a second. "That's supposed to be funny."
