Let’s roll.

OK, the first official Mumme Poll ballots will be cast starting Sunday morning.

I’ve got just a few rules of voting etiquette that I ask everyone to be mindful of:

1. Be kind to your host and use the reply chain we started last week to cast your ballot.  I’ve got enough on my plate with this and really don’t want to have to add to it by going back and verifying 59 separate e-mail addresses.
2. This only got messed up on two or three ballots, but again, remember that you’re voting for twelve schools and designating the five best of those twelve.  Don’t worry if you screw up your ballot, though.  I’ll give you a chance to fix it.
3. Don’t try to game the system.
4. In addition to giving me your lists, I’d also like to know how much time you spent composing your ballot.  There is no wrong answer on this.  I’m simply interested in seeing if we justify a premise that I made about how this would seem to be a method that would make it easier for the coaches to put sufficient thought into their rankings.
5. Also, feel free to include your thoughts about why you ranked the schools they way you did.  Unless you object, I’ll publish some of the more interesting ones.

I’ll post my ballot on Monday and the results on Tuesday.  As always, your suggestions are more than welcome.

Let the defensive post-mortems begin.

If what Jeremy Lomax and Mark Richt had to say to David Hale is any indication, it sounds like the Dawg defense was woefully unprepared to handle what Alabama was running in the first half of last week’s game.

“You’ve just got to do more film study,” Lomax said. “That’s what it’s going to take. Get in the film room, watch more film, and I feel like us as a whole have been slacking at that. We need to be able to read stances more and know whether it s run or pass.”

Now whether that’s something to hang on the coaches, players or both, I can’t say.  But you have to hope it’s fixable.  It better be by the LSU game, because you’d expect that the Tigers are equipped to run much of the same stuff that ‘Bama did.

Along the same lines, here’s a quote Martinez gave the AB-H about one particular thing that Alabama was able to run quite successfully:

Martinez said Georgia was stung particularly by Alabama’s play-action passes on first and second down when the defense was geared up to stop a Crimson Tide running game that entered 14th in the nation in rushing.

“When you’re sitting there committed to the run and you run play-action, that hurt us,” Martinez said. “We’ve got to play better with the play-action because that’s what he hurt us with. They did a nice job of boots and screens and kept us off balance…”

Yes they did.  And everyone in the stadium kept wishing that the defense would adjust to it.  The play that stuck the final knife into Georgia was a fourth quarter screen pass that set up the field goal to put ‘Bama up 34-17, so you’d have to say that was a problem that never got solved.

Again, though, flawed schemes can be fixed.  We’ll get an indication soon enough of whether that’s happening.

Bizarre thought of the morning

I don’t know what’s weirder – that Auburn’s only a four point favorite over Vandy tomorrow, or, considering Vandy’s turnover margin and Auburn’s proclivity for turning the ball over, that I can easily see a scenario where that point spread is justified.