I believe I am going to spend time thinking about how I envision a game will play out, write it all down and then post the polar opposite opinion in hopes that I will be remotely close to looking like I know what I am talking about. The Okie State game turns into a defensive struggle and the South Carolina game turns into a track meet....who knew?!?!?
UGA vs. SC - The Good, the Bad and the Unknown.
It's tough to look at a win as anything other than what it is....a victory. However, if we don't go back and review what we did right, we can't expect to remember everything and find some "builds" to make those things even better. And if we don't go back and review what we did wrong, how can we expect to not to repeat the same mistakes? I saw some good, and I saw some bad (some VERY bad), but all-in-all, I finally realized that we have no idea who we are as a team. And that may be the most disturbing thing to find out after 8 years with (essentially) the same coaching staff.
Okay, the Good -
- Branden Smith was possibly the fastest person in the entire stadium on Saturday. When he broke through the first level of the defense EVERYBODY watching the game knew he was gone! He may have been running as fast as he could, but it looked like he had a sneaky 6th gear he could have engaged, if needed. That run was very fast, but looked effortless for him. Gotta love speed!
- Brandon Boykin has been anointed (by me) to be the kick returner for his entire tenure at UGA. Can we see him in the backfield? He seems to have the vision that Samuel lacks (more on that later).
- Joe Cox played just like I think we all expected him to play this year. He managed the game well and made the plays that needed to be made. His arm looked fine to me and seemed to have decent zip on it when he needed it.
- My youngest son has nicknamed A.J. Green "Shakespeare" because anytime he goes for the ball, it is a silky smooth masterpiece. I'm just glad NCAA rules dictate that he has to be with us next year (must be 3 years removed from high school to be NFL draft-eligible) because he is only going to get better.
- Orson Charles is a "special" player. Anyone watching him and not able to see that is lacking in any functional reasoning ability. (Mike Bobo...Bobo...?....).
- We got a sack, we got a sack!!
- Our defense is really strong against the run. (See "The Bad" below)
Okay, The Bad -
- If Branden Smith is going to field a kick 5 yards (or deeper) in the end zone, he really needs to take a knee. That's 3 of these that I have seen, and this last one (hopefully) was a turnover that should have never happened.
- Joe Cox has been in the system for 5 years, now. He should know the offense well enough to call audibles. There was one play when we were driving, trying to use some clock and he looked completely lost and had to call a timeout. Timeouts in tight games are like having Tic Tacs leaving the smoking section of an airport...they are valuable. Don't waste them. Call any kind of audible that rhymes with "Richard Samuel in the gap between right center and right guard". The fact that he looked lost in that situation is scary.
- Turnovers against better teams will "kill" us this year.
- We WILL have to play Florida, eventually.
- Yet another game where we forget how to call a running play. Why-oh-why are we calling an out route to the sideline with @ 13 minutes left in the game with our defense basically on life support? We need Coach Richt to take back the "first right of refusal" on Bobo's play-calling. If that's not evident by now, well...see below in the "Unknown" section.
- We only got 2 sacks. Although we got 2 sacks, we had a few chances, but Garcia proved as slippery on the field as he apparently is off the field.
- Our defense really sucks against the short pass. These little dink and dunk passes to receivers doing quick, button hooks and big tight ends crossing the middle of the field, 6 yards off the line of scrimmage, uncontested has to stop! Garcia's average yards per completion was 5.6 yards per completion on 53 pass attempts. Imagine Florida's speed across the middle of the defense in the open field....did I already mention that we DO have to play Florida later this season? Can we sneak a linebacker out or a safety into the middle to at least present a presence there? South Carolina ran the same couple of passing plays over and over last night with great success. Willie....one word.....ADJUST!
- I still see way too many shoulder bumps and arms flailing to feel comfortable about our tackling.
Okay, The unknown -
Are we a good team or not? NC State held South Carolina to 7 points. They scored 37 on us. South Carolina held NC State to 3 points, but allowed 41 to us. We only scored 10 points on an Oklahoma State team that allowed 45 points to Houston and only scored 11 more points than they did on us. I live in Raleigh...NC State nor Houston are the UGA that I have spent the majority of my life loving and following!!
See what I mean?
Coach Richt has enabled Georgia to, once again become relevant every year. We average 10 wins per year, and have been to numerous SEC Championship games and major bowl games. It's hard to throw stones at something like that. There are about 109 other D-1 programs in the nation that would love to have our success.
That said, we have top-10 recruiting classes every year. We recruit as well as anyone in the nation and bring in top level talent every year. Some of those recruits realize their potential while at UGA, but most do not. One thing is pretty obvious, at least to me. The other teams in the country seem to coach their players up to a higher level than our coaching staff is able to do. We look unprepared for games we should be prepared for (Alabama, GT last year and Ok. State this year). We have had, in prior years, the better team in the UGA/Florida "rivalry" over Richt's tenure, yet we hold a 2-6 losing record to the lizards. Why???
In some games, heck, in some series' within a single game we go from "world beater" to "second tier" in our performance. How we can march down the field in the first 7 minutes of a game, only to spend the next 53 minutes looking totally inept?It is beyond logical reasoning.
Coach Richt has spent the last 8 years turning UGA into a perennial top-15 team, but can he (and his current staff) consistently take us to a championship level, like other teams with similarly gifted players do? I'm not so sure. Folks, we are not playing Georgia football, lately. Many of our on-the-field actions come across to the casual observer as "afterthought", or someone tossing a lifeline just before we go under for the final time. We have no identity on offense. We have no identity on defense. We finally kick the ball into the end zone a few times, but then spend time using the ever-wasteful directional kick, as if the field is Skeletor's (Fabris') own lab experiment. We bend to the point of breaking on defense and allow teams to score, in one way or another on almost every drive. South Carolina had 90 plays of offense and punted (not counting the fake) 2 times. Our #1 running back is running hard and picking up nearly 5 yards per carry behind what was touted as our best O-line since 2002, yet he only carries the ball 15 times, is absent in the middle of the game and is forgotten when we need to use up the clock. We have play makers coming out of our ears who might be able to take some of the double and triple team off of A.J. Green, but we either forget about them, or we don't put them in until very late in a tight game.
Who are we and what have Richt, Bobo, Martinez and Fabris done with our Bulldogs??
Coach Richt needs to take off the blind loyalty glasses and make some tough decisions. If we are going to reach that next level, like we should be capable of, there has to be some changes made.
Don't you think some prominent boosters are sending a similar message to Damon Evans? I'll bet they are and probably using a lot more colorful language than I just did and several more $$ than I am capable of.
Arkansas prediction (reversed, spun around, tilted and squeezed for freshness) forthcoming...
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