I haven’t had the stomach to watch a replay of Saturday’s game yet (rest assured, gentle readers, that I will, just for you), but I’ve read the comments here in response to my two posts of yesterday, read some astute comments from other bloggers and seen a few quotes, all of which made me want to respond with a few more observations.
- Nobody’s talking about mediocrity here, guys. I think it’s more than likely that Georgia wins its three remaining regular season games and probably gets a shot to mop up a Big Ten team in a New Years Day bowl game. If Georgia finishes 11-2, that’s more than respectable. But it doesn’t change the fact that the Dawgs were outscored 66-7 in two halves against Alabama and Florida, and I’ll bet right now there won’t be another team in the final top ten that will have a similar blot on its resume.
- And I don’t need to be reminded about my history. I’m not making the point about the disappearing act because I’ve forgotten what things were like for the program in the nineties. But I am remembering what things were like a few years ago under this same head coach. Something’s missing, like it or not.
- All that being said, if Mark Richt thinks the lesson to be learned is that “When the season is over, history might prove they are the two very best teams in the country — at least two of the top five, anyway…”, this isn’t going to get better any time soon. The two recent similar losses to Tennessee weren’t against dominant teams. Nor was the close call against Vandy in 2006. Richt needs to face the fact that for some reason his teams don’t show up on a random basis during the regular season to play four quarters of football. And he’s being paid to figure out what that reason is.
- When I say random, I mean exactly that. It’s not just the quality of the opponent that varies; it’s the nature of what goes missing, too. Saturday, it was the offense. Against ‘Bama, it was more on both sides of the ball. Such was also the case against UT in ’07. But the UT ’06 debacle was primarily fueled by a defensive collapse that actually started at the very end of the first half. There’s simply no consistent rhyme or reason as to why it happens. It just does.
- I can’t argue with a single point Michael Elkon makes in this post – except for the fact that Florida was +4 in turnover margin.
- Sorry, but I’m not getting this home grown talent argument made by some of the commenters in my first post yesterday. You think Percy Harvin is somewhat of a lesser player for Florida because he’s from Virginia? Don’t be silly. Every major program, from Southern Cal on down, chases talent from outside its home state. Stafford didn’t play the way he did against Florida because he’s from Texas; he did because he still relies on his arm strength more than anything else.
- I’ll probably be chastised by KG and some of the other Gator bloggers for saying this, but I didn’t leave the game feeling that the Gators’ secondary was significantly better than what I had thought before the game. (And, yes, I remember that Stafford threw three picks.) Bobo (with some assistance from Stafford, probably) for some inexplicable reason elected not to challenge it as much as he should have. And could have.
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