Sounds like these Dawgs have short memories.
… Still, the season-shaping halves were as much about Georgia’s self-destruction as about their opponents’ dominance.
Said receiver Mohamed Massaquoi: “Part of it was us turning the ball over. Part of it was us having penalties. Part of it was not being disciplined. And whenever you play teams of that caliber [Emphasis added} and you do things like that, those teams are going to make sure they capitalize on it.”
Except we’ve seen Georgia do the very same thing against teams not of “that caliber”. And while nobody can put his finger on why, the head coach sees no reason to delve too deeply into it, either.
… Coach Mark Richt seems to have as much trouble as anyone else making sense of it.
And he doesn’t want to spend too much time pondering what might be an insolvable mystery.
“Well, you got to look at it and study it to see why, but you also can’t dwell on it,” Richt said. “When things don’t go well in a season or things don’t go well in your life, it’s not real healthy to dwell on those things too long.
“You want to study them enough to try to learn from it and not let it happen again, but the bottom line is if you dwell on it too long, it’s going to keep you from moving forward and progressing and trying to win the next game or trying to have your next experience in life be a positive one.
“There’s a fine line in there.”
I’m not sure where that fine line is exactly, but I feel fairly certain that Richt hasn’t brushed up against it yet.
Look, I don’t want to get into some sort of “the program is at a crossroads” diatribe here, because, frankly, I don’t think it is. There are three winnable regular season games left to play – the last of which in particular has enough at stake to make it a point of pride to win – a bowl game to win and another eleven win season to chalk up. Those are all important goals and right now that’s where the focus needs to be.
But over the long haul, I don’t see how the program’s collective psyche can continue to survive these one half blowouts every season without some permanent damage. There’s one significant thing in common running through these last three seasons that have featured the Dawgs’ disappearing act: no SECCG appearance. Coincidence? You tell me.
I have no insider connections to the team or the coaches, so I can’t speak as to what’s inside their heads. I do note, though, that the reasons pointed to in the article for the problems aren’t new ones by any means. Yes, I know the team is young and yes, I know the players have suffered significant injuries, but shouldn’t a program with the kind of stability in its coaching staff that Georgia boasts have this whole execution thing mastered to a much greater extent than it appears it does?
