What hurts the most…

It’s not watching the team blow a chance to tie the win streak record.

It’s not losing to Tech.

It’s not being subjected to another disappearing act (hell, I’m afraid I’m starting to get numb to them) against a mediocre team.

It’s seeing Massaquoi in his last regular season game leave his guts all over the field of play and Moreno’s magnificent touchdown run when I knew once he hit the corner he simply would not be denied the score… and knowing that the defense would use it all as a crutch instead of an inspiration to step up its play.

If that was their last regular season game in red and black, it was a sad way to go out.  Both deserved better.

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You’ve got your outrage, I’ve got mine.

I know that most of the Dawgnation’s anger is directed in Coach Martinez’ direction tonight, but can someone explain to me how a team can be as godawful in the kickoff game after 12 games as Georgia is now?  Richard Samuel has absolutely no instinct for running back kicks, yet he keeps getting trotted out for returns.  His teammates can’t form a reliable blocking wall to save their lives.

Most maddening of all, Blair Walsh can’t directionally kick.  He just can’t.  Multiple out of bounds kickoffs in the twelfth game of the season are inexcusable, yet the coaches keep setting the kid up to fail.

And the best Richt can come up with on this is a joke.

After Georgia struggled on kickoffs yet again, Richt joked that he might have to scour Europe in hopes of finding a kicker with a strong enough leg to help Georgia win some field-position battles.

“We might have to go to Poland or something to find a guy who can kick it out of the end zone,” Richt said. “We’ll give him two scholarships.”

I bet he wouldn’t have to travel nearly so far to find a competent special teams coach.

I hate to be snide about a coach with a winning percentage near 80%, but, crap, there’s no excuse for how shoddy this has been all year.

In a nutshell

If this isn’t the quintessential comment about this Georgia team’s state of mind, I don’t know what is:

“We lost our edge in the second half,” senior defensive tackle Corvey Irvin said. “In the first half, we were all over the field having fun and I guess we kind of lost our composure. I guess we thought we had the game wrapped up in our pocket but we really didn’t.”

This is a team that’s been enamored with itself, with its depth and talent, for some time now.  Unfortunately, as we keep seeing demonstrated, there’s more to being a great football team than simply being talented.