Sometimes life really is like a Larry Munson monologue about the Dawgs’ prospects.
Georgia junior cornerback Asher Allen is still looking for his first interception of the season after getting three last year.
Here’s one contributing factor that has been kept under wraps: Allen has played with a broken hand during the final third of the regular season.
Defensive coordinator Willie Martinez revealed Allen’s injury today, he said, because the hand will be healed by the time Georgia plays Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1. He previously didn’t want opponents to know.
Martinez calls Allen’s season “pretty good,” considering the injury.
Allen hasn’t been able to “catch a ball, not been able to grab and tackle. We kind of held that out of the media. He’ll have the full use of it in the bowl game. That’s pretty hard to do and also play. We’ve had to, at times, been conscious of that in certain schemes and what side of the ball he’s on because of the use of his hand. That’s pretty good.”
Maybe that explains some (but not all) of the tackling issues we’ve seen.
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UPDATE: On a related front, if you’ve been waiting for Martinez’ mea culpa, here ’tis.
Get The Picture 
Well damn, I guess Reshad Jones has a broken collarbone and CJ Byrd has gone blind? That would almost explain everything.
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“Sometimes you get returners back, but it doesn’t really give you success,” he said. “You’d like to think that, you’ve got more experience, but how hungry are you coming back?
People will get complacent with their position if there is no competition or fear of losing that position. So to get that hunger back how ’bout telling the defense that only Rennie has a secured starting position. The rest are wide open. Whoever proves on the practice field that they should start starts. Then let’s see what kind of hunger, intensity and desire the defense gets. It may not accomplish anything but it damn sure can’t hurt.
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Some mea culpa. There’s nothing he says that we didn’t already know. What he doesn’t seem to get or won’t admit is that many of our problems could’ve and should’ve been fixed months ago, hell YEARS ago, and he’s just incapable of doing so.
The truth is Willie, as they say, “out-kicked his coverage” in landing a job as a DC for a top tier SEC program. He confirms that for me when he admits that next year’s secondary (his specialty btw) probably won’t perform much better.
Merry Christmas Bulldawg Nation!
Then I read in the abh where CMR revealed Coach Dantonio pursued Willie in late 2003 for the DC job when he coached at Cincinnati. Quite frankly, I could’ve done without that little gem today.
I’m beginning to think that Lewis Grizzard was wrong. God isn’t a bulldawg afterall. And Willie Martinez is the plague that was sent to punish us for some past indiscretion.
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Ally – who was our DC from 2005 through 2007? VanGorder’s ghost?
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93 – you thought those were great years for Defense? Compare the stats from those years and Van Gorder’s years. Better yet, look at how he’s fared with his own recruits vs those leftover from BVG. Have you completely ignored 4 years of a downward trend in defense at Georgia?
I can keep going and will if you need me to. Surely this isn’t breaking news to you.
Seriously, are you new to the concept that Martinez sucks as a DC and he’s not at all the best Georgia can do?
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“Great” years? Maybe not, but they were “very good” years, IMO. The point is that you belittle Martinez as if he can’t even diagram a Cover-2 defense. I’m all for intelligent debate over the performance of our coaching staff, but your comments on Martinez are ridiculously uninformed and sound more emotionally charged than anything else.
Yes, Martinez is not VanGorder, I get that. We all get that. But is he that much worse, as you say? Clearly 2008 has been a rough year, especially the last half of the season. Frankly I think a lot of it has to do with discipline issues that are pretty evident, injuries, and the lack of a decent pass rush. I can understand if you think he should be fired for what occurred on the field THIS season. But the last 3 seasons? No way. Go back and look at the 8 seasons prior to this one, in terms of our defensive rankings (total and scoring D). I included the 8 prior to this one because it includes the Martinez’ first 3 yrs, BVG’s 4 yrs, and Gary Gibbs’ 1 season as DC under Donnan. Here are our nat’l rankings:
total scoring
2007 14th 18th
2006 8th 20th
2005 18th 8th
2004 8th 9th
2003 4th 3rd
2002 15th 4th
2001 49th 17th
2000 19th 12th
In the conference, which frankly I consider more important, here are the numbers:
total scoring
2007 3rd 3rd
2006 3rd 4th
2005 5th 4th
2004 4th 3rd
2003 2nd 2nd
2002 4th 1st
2001 6th 3rd
2000 5th 2nd
Look, I’m obviously concerned about some of the notorious “WTH?” type of games that have occurred on Martinez’ watch and the performances we had this year. But don’t stick your nose up at what he accomplished from 2005 – 2007. I try to avoid the “talent” card but look at the players we’ve put into the NFL on defense the last 3 yrs versus what we did under BVG. There’s just no one on our roster from the last 4 seasons that come close to the talent level of Pollack, Thurman, Davis, and S. Jones.
You want to get rid of Martinez? Fine, I understand and respect that sentiment based on what’s taken place this year. But don’t act like those 2005 – 2007 defenses were good simply because of BVG’s legacy.
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Oh snap. I’m getting out of here.
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I’m willing to wait see how the bowl game plays out. Given the current environment, the players and coaches must know what is at stake. CWM has some time to show he can fix the problems. Let’s see if he does.
If not….
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Those are some good points, 93. I agree, Ally, VG was a better coordinator but with success there comes other opportunities and so now he’s gone. I don’t suscribe to the notion that coaches benefit from other coaches recruits. Were all of the superstars VG coached his recruits or did they come from the previous staff? I’ve never followed the logic there. You’re either a good coach or not. Let’s not let 1 bad year define Willie. Yeah, he stunk it up big time this year. But if he comes back strong next year I hope the nay sayers will give him his props. If he stinks it up again I’ll swallow my words and help him pack his bags.
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“Let’s not let 1 bad year define Willie.”
Holy Hell, between PNW and 93 I feel like I’ve stepped into the twilight zone. One bad year? Seriously?
The point (as I said previously and as have MANY other Dawg fans) is that Martinez has continually gotten worse the past 4 years – not better but WORSE. Those are the facts.
More importanly, he is not the best we can do.
Good Lord.
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I agree the defense has been going down hill before the West Virginia game. It has become worse because as other teams catch on that we will run a certain defense and only make certain adjustments or predictable adjustments, they know what to do. How many times has our defense just failed to stop a drive late in a game.
Willie works best when they have not seen him before or their offense sucks. I think he would make a fine Central Michigan DC but not for a team who wants to win SEC conferences.
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Ally, I will acknowledge there are stats that suggest his defense has gotten worse. And I will say it again – he stunk it up big time this year. But yeah, seriously (as in I’m for real) I think he’s had 1 bad year. Which year was bad other than the current? And please quantify or define what constitues bad. Were you ready to fire him after the Sugar Bowl last year? And who is the best we can do? And will that person stay?
I’ll be the first to admit I was questioning his abilities before we played our first game this year. But I decided to let our head coach inspire me and convince me it’s worth sticking with your people and giving them a chance to correct things. We’ve had some bad defensive games in the past but not seasons under Willie. We finished number 2 last year and could have played with any team. I think he may have been our defensive coordinator. And let’s remember that he’s not the only poor performer this year. It took a team effort to screw up this year.
But after looking at your blog you were right about one thing, Ally. We ain’t Army!
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Ally – what “facts” are you referring to? What you speak of are your opinions, not facts. Look, no denying that our defense had a bad year. If this was CWM’s first year as DC, I would’ve agreed with you that he needs to go. But he fielded very good defenses his first 3 yrs. The rankings back that up. Has there been a dropoff from BVG? Sure, but this is the first year where that dropoff was dramatic. If he can’t fix this next year, then he should be gone.
As for the BVG comparisons, unless he’s walking thru that door (he ain’t), then it seems silly to constantly compare CWM to BVG. Why, you ask? Because BVG was clearly a special DC that is difficult to find on the college level. He’s already one of the better DC’s in the NFL.
A better analysis for your argument that we could hire a better DC than CWM would be to compare his results as DC to other DC’s results since those are the guys who would possibly replace him.
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If you need facts Kyle King breaks it down pretty well in his article after the Tech game. Check it out.
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Dawg93 and PNWdawg…seriously? Do you honestly believe what you are typing or are you saying these things hoping that they might come true next year?
Willie’s defenses have gotten progressively worse over the last 3 seasons. Go check out Kyle’s breakdown for all of the stats, but suffice it to say that the numbers don’t lie.
I don’t believe that the entire defensive failure this year falls on Willie’s shoulders. Let’s face it the team as a whole and the defense in particular played completely uninspired football the entire season. Having said that Stacy Searles was able to take a patchwork line of underclassmen and make them pretty darn good, the key being that the O line got BETTER as the season went on and the defense went from bad to putrid by the end of the year. All those guys on D had to do was tighten up the jockstrap and make one, ONE stop against the NATS and we win our 8th straight. Instead we get to listen to the delusional Nerds for an entire year.
Willie gets one more chance in the Bowl game, but if the defense comes out and looks like it took 3 weeks off (see Sugar Bowl ’05) then he needs to have the movers standing by when they return from Orlando.
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kinda odd now these days but there seems to be a new math problem for willie’s defence
injuries=excuses
CSS should tell WM to kiss his ass
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Van Gorder had the best defensive player in UGA history.
He also never had to deal with:
-Your pre-season AA DT goes down.
-Your MLB goes down early in the season and is never the same.
-Your 5* SS is a total bust
-Your FS having to cover your SS’s ass all season
-Your best CB plays most of the season with a broken hand.
-Your best run-stuffing DE is hurt all year.
-Your special teams continually hamstrings you.
Willie ain’t the problem, folks.
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My gut tells me that Willie is indeed a major problem.
However, I lean towards the camp that says 1 terrible year is not enough to send him packing.
Yes, he has been on a steady decline. That is disturbing. But decline or no, our D under him was pretty good before this year. The troubling part, of course, are the “games off” or “halfs off.” Those are particularly what seem to be coaching problems, but I digress.
Yes, BVG was light years better. Well, that’s why he is a DC in the NFL right now, and doing a great job.
This was a tough year all around. A lot of guys let the expectations go to their heads, and on top of that we had a zillion injuries. We still should have, and could have done better than we did. But 1 failure of a year does not mean it is time to clean house.
Stability is very important for a football team. It is better to err on the side of caution and stability.
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I’m not a Willie fan. I agree with Ally that, by all appearances, he is out of his depth and that UGA can certainly do better. So there’s that.
However, he may be the most glaring problem, but he is not the only problem, or even the fundamental problem. The big games we lost this year are due to failures in all three phases of the game.
We gave up unanswered scoring runs of 31, *42* and 22 in our three loses. That’s 5, 6, and 4 scores by the other team without any production from our offense. The most consecutive scores by opponents in games we won were the two touchdowns before and after halftime by Central Michigan.
This team won the games it was in, not matter how many points the opponent scored. But when it let the opponent get a hint of momentum, it rolled over and died. That’s an issue of team culture, of overall coaching, and that is what needs to laid at the feet of our head coach, not the coordinator we all love to bash.
Is Willie a problem? Yes. Will he lose us games in the future? Maybe. But if you want to call for his head, make sure you aren’t basing it off an emotional reaction to the games we lost this year, because he’s not the sole, or even the most important, reason that we lost them.
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Kyle King’s breakdown: http://www.dawgsports.com/2008/12/4/679390/the-case-against-willie-ma
One issue I have is that Willie goes on this long diatribe when all he should have said was, “It is all on me.” Period. Or that after the games this season he’d continually throw the players under the bus with “Well, we just didn’t execute today.” I’m not saying the players didn’t play with a passion this season, but they should be the only ones saying it was the players fault.
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Is our secondary depth so terrible that we’d rather play an Asher Allen who can’t “catch a ball” and is unable to “grab and tackle” than to play any of our able-bodied backups? Those skills are rather integral to the game of football.
If that’s actually true – that a 50% Allen is better than anyone else we’ve got – that may be the best argument for a new defensive staff that I’ve seen.
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Two things:
1) Give that ’03 team just a half-decent OL and a half-decent running game, and boom. National champions. Oh well.
2) It’s these complete meltdowns that bother me about Willie’s D. Taken as a whole, the defensive output isn’t terrible…but there will be these handful-minute stretches of absolutely indefensible failure. That’s what bugs the hell out of me.
3) Our training staff is lousy. There, I said it.
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How about this one, our coaches are too wussy to tell a player they don’t have what it takes at the position they are playing and that they are being moved to another position. Brandon Miller languished for 4 years at linebacker before being moved to D end for his final 2 games. Waste. Bryan Evans didn’t have what it took to play corner, but looks like he might make a decent safety. Waste. Everybody and their brother knows Richard Samuel is not going to be a great running back. He should be playing alongside Rennie next year. His year at RB was a waste. Does anyone know what Kiante Tripp is supposed to be doing?
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Ok, for the second time – yeah, I’m serious (as in I both believe and hope what I’m writing is correct). I believe Willie M. is not THE reason we are not making the cut. I hope Richt’s loyalty pays off but I wouldn’t guarantee it. Yes, Willie has had some really bad meltdowns that have put us in a bad situation. Do we consider the first half against Alabama one of those meltdowns? Because I noticed the score was 31-0. Do those 0 points for us all fall on Willie’s shoulders? That WVU game in the Sugar Bowl? Did Willie stop us from putting points on the board before they got way ahead of us? And yeah, numbers don’t lie. But the people who interpret them sometimes do. Yeah, I see that the avg. points we give up per game have increased. And yeah, the coaches should pay attention to those. But is it possible the opposition has gotten tougher each year? Maybe our defense was forced to be on the field longer. Read the next sentence carefully please. I’m not saying any of this is the case but something like avg. points given up per year by itself is not conclusive evidence the defense or coaching has gotten worse. It’s kind of like looking at OU’s points per game. How many points were scored when they still had their starters in the game in the 4th quarter against a team that had already quit. Believe me, I’m a statistician and I can make the numbers say what I want. So at the end of the day what matters are wins and losses and that all falls on Richt. And I don’t think he wants us hiring his coordinators or he would have asked.
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You think offense was the problem in the Alabama game? I would like some of what you’re smoking.
Alabama is 6th in the conference in total offense, but 1st in total defense. I don’t expect a good defense to let a middle of the road SEC offense light them up for 31 in a half.
I’m not saying our offense didn’t struggle in that first half, but we did put up 30 points. That only 1 less than the GPOOE in the SECCG. And the UF offense is 1st in the SEC.
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I think I’m addicted to conflict because I keep coming back to this discussion. (I’ll be checking this post until I retire if I’m not careful.) First of all I don’t smoke anything so you’re out of luck, Hack. Second, where in my post did I say the Alabama game was on the offense? Please point that out. Can’t do it? Then please pass the bong to someone else. I thought I made it abundantly clear that the halftime score of 31-0 shows failure on both sides of the ball. I don’t think I said anywhere that the defense did an admirable job. I’ve just noticed (in the absence of smoking anything) that we have an offensive team, a defensive team and special teams. Notice my brilliant use of the word team in each of those areas (while avoiding the influence of any impairing substance). It was a TEAM failure. And yeah, we put up 30 points in the second half while only giving up 10. And our team (and gasp, coaches) deserve a lot of credit. Here I go again (whoops, now I’m hearing Whitesnake) – Martinez stunk it up big time this year. So did Fabris. They all report to Mark Richt. He’s done an awesome job overall since coming here. But the stats that really matter are wins and losses and those are on him. Do we want to fire him too?
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Hackerdog, the issue I see is that all of those 30 points you mentioned came in the second half. The defense which you’re maligning also gave up only 10 points in the second half. If you want to say that’s because the Alabama offense backed up because the game was already won, then you have to also say that one and probably two of our second half touchdowns happened for the same reason.
The thing is, we had a great effort from the entire team in the second half, offense and defense. But it was the entire team that got trampled in the first half. It’s one thing to let another team score 31 points on you in a half. It’s quite another for your offense not put a single score on the board in that entire half. The Bama game wasn’t “on the offense,” but it wasn’t “on the defense,” either. It was simply “on the team.”
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The fact is that our offense was playing against the best defense in the SEC, 3rd best in the country. And it was early in the year when our patchwork OL hadn’t been really tested. Remember how stunned we all were that Jones held his own against Cody?
Now let’s contrast that against our defense playing against the 6th best offense in the SEC, 56th in the country.
Now I never said that 100% of the blame for the loss lies with the defense. But I’m sure as hell not going to put much blame on our offense that ended up putting 30 points on the 3rd best defense in the country.
So, if y’all want to blame Bobo or Fabris for the fact that the 56th best offense in the country took us behind the woodshed, then I repeat my belief that you are smoking some good stuff.
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Hack,
I tried to restate my argument, but I don’t think I could have been clearer than what I wrote above. We can talk again when you’re more intent on discussion and less on accusing me of “smoking something.”
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Ben,
Don’t be so touchy. My stating that you are smoking something is not meant literally. It’s simply a way of stating that you are wrong. I didn’t mean to upset you.
Having an offense that struggles to score against a superb defense is less of a problem than having a defense that allows a mediocre offense to score at will. That is simply an inarguable fact.
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I do think some of the blame for our defensive meltdown does in fact belong to Bobo and Fabris. Poor offensive execution means we allow their offense back on the field and with good field position. Turnovers? Giving up the ball never helps your defense. Special teams? That affects field position too. But the majority of the defensive suckage does fall on Martinez. I think Bobo showed improvement and the offense was pretty solid overall. I don’t buy into rankings very much but I do agree that Alabama is an excellent defensive team. But I don’t think they were so great that 0 points before halftime is acceptable. As for Searles, well he is a VanGorder caliber of a coach and I worry he will not be here much longer. I want to emphasize that I’m not a huge Martinez fan. I just think he’s been dealt a crappy hand of cards. He certainly could have played that hand better but I think he deserves another year after what he did for us last year. If he can’t handle it next year then he need to apologize to Richt and pack his bags. And as much as I hate to admit it T. Moore at the AJC had a good point. We would have fired Dooley.
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