Mark it down – it doesn’t happen often: the Bulldog Nation is in accord about not one but two points on the hiring of Jeremy Pruitt as Georgia’s defensive coordinator.

1 – It’s a fantastic hire. Everyone – from the players to the media to the crustiest “FIRE THEM ALL” fans – seems to love this news. About the only thing you can say to temper the enthusiasm is that expectations on the defense will be unfairly high right away.

2 – It’s too good to be true. Even after you parse the relationships involved, note the terms of the contract, and account for the fact that Mark Richt is a pretty good guy to work for, there’s near-universal bewilderment that the first-year coordinator of the national champion would make a lateral move to an 8-5 program stuck right in the middle of the nation’s toughest conference. Yes, the hot girl just dumped the quarterback and would rather be with you. Georgia fans, used to being played for salary increases by unserious candidates, couldn’t believe it until they saw the press conference.

But here we are. It’s official. Pruitt was introduced on Wednesday as the new defensive coordinator at an event that will leave Georgia fans with a smile that will last until September. The quotes are pure red meat to fans. It doesn’t sound as if it’ll take much to get the defensive players to buy in.

A lot of fans insitinctivly went for Kirby Smart when the position came open. I get the appeal, but I wasn’t as sold on the preference as much as a lot of people seemed to be. One of the concerns about Smart was the fact that he hadn’t proven himself apart from Saban. Pruitt had the opportunity to do that last year at FSU. With Jimbo Fisher’s background on offense, Pruitt’s defense was built in his image. While the personnel and opponents will be different in Athens, we at least have a better understanding with Pruitt of how he’ll go about things.

Pruitt will have a chance right away to make his mark on the Georgia program. Though Mark Richt left the door open for Georgia’s two remaining defensive position coaches to remain on the staff, it appears as if Kirk Olivadotti and Chris Wilson will take positions elsewhere. Those moves make Pruitt, in his second day on the job, the senior man on Georgia’s defensive staff. Pruitt will oversee defensive backs, so that leaves openings on the defensive line and at linebacker. With a 3-4 scheme, you’d expect one defensive line coach and then two linebackers coaches (for inside and outside.)

It didn’t take long for the giddiness over the arrival of Pruitt to turn to a more sober realization that the work starts right away. All of the advantages Richt counted on with the continuity he stressed when it looked as if the staff would remain intact are long gone, though at least the basic scheme won’t be changing much. The ability to assemble an ideal staff is a tremendous opportunity (it’s more or less what FSU had to do last year.) But with less than three weeks until Signing Day, there’s also a small bit of urgency to bring in a group of coaches that will not only bring about improvement on the defense but also finish the job of recruiting. Pruitt sounded as if he was already quite familiar with Georgia’s recruiting board, and he’ll take some time evaluating the current list of offers. This is a fairly light weekend for official visits, but things really ramp up over the next two weeks. We should expect to have a staff in place and on the ground by then.

• Georgia will remain a 3-4 defense. Pruitt noted the need to be multiple and versatile based on the varied offenses they’d face and the need to get the best people on the field. Different alignments and personnel groups out of the base 3-4 were common under Grantham as well.
• Though Pruitt offered to help with Georgia’s struggling special teams, Richt guessed that the staff would add someone with “a string special teams background.” That wouldn’t be a prerequisite for the job, but now with three openings Pruitt and Richt will have a little more flexibility to add a position coach with some special teams expertise.
• “If you can’t execute it, we’re not going to call it.”
• “We want be sound, we want to be aggressive, but we want to make the other team earn it.”
• “We’re gonna be simple enough where you’ll be able to turn it loose and play football.”

Only a few weeks ago, fans were not in a very good place after an 8-5 season. Sure, there were injuries to consider, and everyone expected that a new and inexperienced defense would struggle. It helps that those 8 wins included the opponents they did. But the whole “continuity” theme seemed to be stretching it, and it was hard to get excited about more of the same on defense when so many little things were slipping. The universal praise of Pruitt’s arrival seems to have jolted not only the fans but also the players out of their postseason doldrums. That excitement will have to turn into a great deal of hard work and tough decisions over the next seven months, but the first step has been taken, and it’s on very solid ground.