Mark Richt reflects on the Grantham-Franklin exchange after last year’s Vanderbilt game.
(By the way, Coach, with regard to what was going through your head leading up to that doomed field goal attempt in the Outback Bowl, instead of reflecting on Walsh’s career point total then, I sure wish you’d have given all your attention to his stats on kicks of 40 or more yards.)
I’m not surprised but still discouraged that he doesn’t think he took the wrong approach by downing the ball like that in OT. Whatever.
“I still, maybe to a fault believed he was gonna knock it through. And so at the end, could I have been more aggressive as a head coach and as a play-caller to try to score a touchdown or be more aggressive to get it more close to the goal-post to do that. In hindsight that probably would have been a good idea.”
What about that quote doesn’t say he realizes he took the wrong approach? Because he didn’t issue you a personal apology and beg the forgiveness of the fanbase? I hate to break it to you, but that’s as strongly as he’s going to put it b/c he won’t risk sounding like he’s throwing a player under the bus. He’s not going to say “Blair was so bad last year, in retrospect I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
Nice try Newty. I notice you chose to leave out the rest of what he said.
“But also you throw the ball downfield and it gets picked, and you could’ve kicked to win the game, then everybody thinks you’re a dummy for that too. The bottom line is you win you’re smart, and you lose you’re not very smart. The bottom line is we didn’t finish.”
What about that quote doesn’t say he’s fine with the approach he took? And what about his last line isn’t holding Blair accountable? Did he throw him under the bus?
My response was long enough already without those lines. I left it out for the sake of brevity. I thought the part about risking the pick was just him going through his full thought process. And ultimately, his last statement is correct. It’s a throw-away question that doesn’t get talked about for more than 2 days if the kick goes through.
Don’t get me wrong, I was livid when it happened and I still don’t like it. I’m just weary of the constant griping about things that are just part of who he is (see below). That was my initial point – not to justify his decision in any way, shape or form. Just to say that this quote, which has pretty much been his line since the game ended, is as close as you’re going to get to him confessing this particular coaching sin. If you want him as our coach, accept this as part of the deal – because it ain’t gonna change.
You just contradicted a lot of what you wrote in your first response but I’ll abide by your wishes and be quiet.
“If you want him as our coach, accept this as part of the deal–because it ain’t gonna change.” Yep. that’s the problem. Failure to learn from mistakes and a pattern of making the same ones over and over. Some of us do NOT accept that as part of the deal. He does a lot of things right but he does things wrong, too and the team loses games because of it. When it happens too many times and enough people realize it, “If you want him as our coach…” then becomes a problematic question.
That’s true of all coaches, Mayor. Do we want to start the”Well then, name a replacement” where all those named didn’t fill the measure and those that were occupied as coaches weren’t available or not wanted by most of us? If some of Richt’s opponents would realize that his proponents are aware of the same events and have been disappointed with game outcomes as well, but don’t have the same personal responsibility allocation you wish to make of it, we would all go forward together into a pretty good looking Dawg playing year.
However, if we all want to get back to throwing and catching darts, I’m game for that crap as well. Just let me know in time to get a good mad on so as to attempt overtopping the over-the-top games we have played here before.
Personally, I just want to revel in all the good stuff and enjoy the sugar plums dancing.
I don’t want to “name a replacement.” I want CMR to stop f#cking up. I want him to learn from his mistakes and correct them. He has done that with the D. It remains to be seen if he can do it with the rest as well.
This yet again sums up Richt as a head coach. He would be a much better AD.
You guys are setting me up to look like the ultimate rose-colored glasses wearing Richt supporter, but the guy does have the best winning % in school history. Me personally? I blame Bobo.
Bobo is merely a reflection of Richt. You can not have a problem with one and not the other. This program will be stuck in 3rd gear as long as Richt is here. The downfall of Florida and Tennessee have bought Richt a few more years. Unfortunately.
Senator – See why “I blame Bobo” needs an entry in the Lexicon (or at least the UGA blog meme hall of fame)?
What bothers me is that this is supposed to be our time. Florida and UT are down. South Carolina is a pretender to the throne. This is when UGA should be dominating and instead we go 10-4 losing that last 2 games of the season and our coach gets a contract extension.
In case you weren’t watching, we won the SEC East in 2012. So, relative to USCe, Tenn, and Flroida, we did alright last season.
oh and we beat all 4 rivals in the same season is like 30 years..
Did you really expect better than SEC East Division champs last season? I don’t think a lot of other people did. It was a vast improvement from 6-7. “Losing the last two games of the season” – you mean losing in the SEC Championship to a team that ended up playing for the National Championship? I don’t find shame in that. We took a very good Michigan State team to triple overtime. And most importantly, we beat all of our major rivals in the same season for the first time in forever. Sure I would love to go undefeated every season, but I’ll take 10-4 with wins over Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and Tech too.
Newt, I wear my rose-colored glasses with pride. Not afraid to support a coach who has won games at a higher rate than any other coach in the history of my alma mater.
+1.
“The bottom line is you win you’re smart, and you lose you’re not very smart.” Jesus, I hate this response. It’s like someone living in denial. Sorry, coach–even though this might be an excusable analysis of game-strategy for an indifferent sorority pledge, it doesn’t really cut the mustard for a coach who is paid millions per year to make intelligent football decisions.
How about this: If you make dumb coaching decisions, you’ll end up losing more often than you should. And Georgia has losing in dumb ways down to a science at this point.
+1000
I blame Michael Adams.
Ouch.
I agree with your point though — that statement reflects a defeatist mentality.
Our leader looks at it like: “The bottom line is you win you’re smart, and you lose you’re not very smart.”
…which is very different from: You win *because* you’re smart, or you lose *because* you’re not very smart.
Be honest. When was the last time UGA beat a team that had better talent than the Dawgs? Compare that in your mind to games where UGA got beat by a team that had inferior talent. The answers are such a mismatch as to cause grave consternation.
Compare that to someone like Mark Dantonio who finds a way to beat teams who have talent superior to his all the time.
Not so fast sport fan. Dantonio is 1-5 in the bowls against superior talent since joining Michigan State. He is 1 and 1 against CMR. He took the Dawgs to a triple overtime. Georgia wore down. The same offensive line that played 99% of the snaps against UT were ineffective against Dantonio in the 4th quarter. Superior talent …… inferior depth. Georgia beat Georgia that day. Make no mistake about that. Don’t be so gloomy.
At what point do you give Mark Richt credit for VERY rarely playing teams with more talent?
With truck loads of talent in Athens, please explain LSU, SC, Boise State and Michigan State in 2011? Or SC, Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Central Florida and Colorado from 2010? Care to give Oklahoma State, LSU, Tennessee, Florida (yet again) and Kentucky from 2009 a go? What about Alabama, Florida and GT from 2008? I would love to hear about SC and Tennessee from 2007? Want 2006? Kentucky and Vandy are really all that you need to know! That is 25 losses from 2006 through 2011. You do the math over that 6 year span. I am sure you are happy with those number. I am not. I have seen enough of Richt to understand what well get from this man. I want better.
Explanation: Richt was guilty of being overly loyal, and he paid a price for it. He’s clearly made significant changes over the past few seasons to correct his mistakes and from the viewpoint of just about any rational college football fan, the changes seem to be working.
Additionally, EVERY team loses games. Even in that selective window you just threw out, which includes some of Richt’s absolute worst years and excludes some of his best, we STILL won 7 out of every 10 games. Think about that. You just cherry picked a window of years to fit your agenda, and Richt’s winning percentage in those years is still 70%. Think about that. Seriously. In our WORST window you just picked out, we averaged a 9-4 record.
We are coming off an SEC East title and are ranked in the top ten in just about every poll out there with possibly the nastiest defense in the country and rising stars at QB, RB, and WR. What’s there to complain about? A lousy transitional year in 2010? Seriously dude. Grab some perspective.
Not wanting to put words in SD’s mouth but…What bothers me is losing to teams with inferior talent because of (1) bad coaching, and (2) bad game decisions. CMR has moved to correct the bad coaching on D and I commend him for that. We still have some coaching issues on O IMHO and some “no coaching” issues on ST. Plus we still have the persistent brain fart decisions at the end of close games that snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I don’t see where anything is being done about those things. As for a winning percentage of 70%, that is a good winning percentage in the abstract. That is basically the same winning percentage that Dooley had, the same that Donnan had his last 4 years at UGA, the same that UGA has had historically over its history playing college football. The 10-4 season last year is a winning percentage of .714 which is pretty much an average season historically for UGA. We seem to now be accepting average seasons as “good” while others in our league are achieving greatness. (See Bama the last 3 years, Florida the 3 years before that and LSU before and during the Bama and Florida runs). If you can’t see that you simply aren’t looking.
Mayor, I can find this same rant here in several places last summer. I’m surprised you are on it. Getting less surprised when it begins to get old again. Every record and all of Dooley’s years have been laid out before for everyone to see Dooley’s down years as well as his good ones. Everything you go on about here has been rehashed to oblivion. It was pretty much shown to be dumassery. Guess you didn’t read or get the word.
Show me a single thing in the above post that is not factually accurate. The fact that you have no response beyond “you said that before” speaks volumes. I didn’t get any intelligent response when I said it before either.
Cojones, What I find interesting about these arguments is it seems to boil down to a short or long term perspective.
The short term perspective crowd emphasizes winning at all costs and seems to be willing to risk, if not sacrifice, other areas of importance in order to achieve that end. They seem to believe that college football is more like a science and if you approach recruiting, coaching, and in-game management in generally same way each time you will get the desired results of winning all the time. However, this seems to discount the many variables that go into a season such as recruiting, rule changes, injuries, a new team dynamic of 18-22 year old players, new coaching strategies, and the many other rival programs just as committed to winning as we are.
The long term perspective crowd tends to believe that winning is more of an art. The thought is that each season brings new challenges and there is much pride to be gained in being a very competitive program that generally goes about it the right way and does, historically, win championships at a good clip. I don’t think its a stretch to say that the ’78 wonderdogs, the ’83 team, and the 2007 squad (to name a few) were great points of pride for our school even though they didn’t go undefeated or win any championships. However, I wonder how many people around here bitched and moaned that we lost this game or that game.
A few quick thoughts come to mind…
- Short term thinking has the potential to bring in a Nick Saban to the program, but is very capable of bringing a Lane Kiffin or Gene Chizik to the program. Sorry Auburn… Cheeze-it’s got to prove he can win without professional players.
- When winning at all costs becomes the goal, similar events and the cover up that happened at Penn State start to become possible and that is the real tragedy to avoid at all costs.
Spike remembers the Vandy game. Spike will not forget it, it is abig deal. Spike will be at that game.
Exactly. I liked the part about the players not needing any extra motivation that week. I expect a good ole fashion ass whipping.
Don’t think the Vandy game is sold out. Spike may have a better memory than some other people.
And Spike got back to the original thread which registers with me. I think the entire team will have a yardon for Franklin and Vandy this year. Franklin has worked wonders at Vandy, getting them out of the “who cares” UGA category To the “kick their ass” UGA category. Yessir! He has brought them a long way for “another bowl of gruel”.