Georgia defense hopes to ‘get our swagger back’ over summer

For now, Georgia’s football team can take some time off and relax.

Soon enough, however, the players will reconvene for summer workouts and hit the grindstone once again. Coming out of the spring, there appear to be issues to improve on both sides of the ball.

As it pertains to intangibles, leadership and communication are areas the defense as a whole can get better at. Outside linebacker Davin Bellamy noted he’s hopeful the defense can get back to being a confident and formidable group as it was a season ago, even though seven key contributors have moved on via graduation or entering the NFL draft.

"As a defense we know we have to get our swagger back," Bellamy said. "We got to get our swagger back from last year. Our offense does a lot of things well to move people. It helps our defense in practice."

Statistically, Georgia posted one of the better defenses in all of college football in 2015. The Bulldogs finished seventh in total defense at 305.9 yards per game and first in passing defense at 156.5. This spring, however, showed some holes the current group has, especially in the front seven.

Head coach Kirby Smart has been critical of Georgia’s defense since spring practice began, stating the need to improve at the point of attack.

The summer provides a chance for the defense to continue growing as a unit in preparation for the upcoming season.

"We’re not as big as we need to be but we don’t play as tough or as physical as we need to do," Smart said. "The good news is we got good time to lift weights and get stronger during the summer program. We need to get them with (strength and conditioning coordinator Scott) Sinclair. I just issued a challenge to them. We have to make the same gains from January until now all the way up to September going forward."

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Georgia defense hopes to ‘get our swagger back’ over summer."