Some quick observations from the loss:
- Give Martinez some credit – for the most part, his kids played their assignments very well. Tackling was noticeably improved from last year.
- The most troubling thing on defense was the absence of a pass rush from the defensive ends, but some of that was due to a very apparent attempt to avoid losing containment on Robinson.
- Evans is bi-polar: he’s hell on wheels as long as the play is in front of him (like that fantastic play on Bryant where he separated the ball after the catch), but has all kinds of problems when he’s in coverage trying to keep up with the pass play (Bryant’s TD catch in the second quarter).
- The biggest disappointment on offense wasn’t the absence of a receiving threat to take some pressure off of A.J. and it wasn’t Joe’s lack of sharpness after the first drive. It was how ordinary the offensive line looked.
- And whatever happened to wide receivers who can block downfield?
- I didn’t see the intangibles out of Cox that we’ve been assured are the biggest part of his game. If that’s the result of being ill, that’s one thing. But if what we saw today is all he’s got, he’s not going to make it through the season as the starter.
- This wasn’t Bobo’s finest hour.
- Nor was it Fabris’.
- I’m having trouble understanding why the coaches can’t settle on return men and let them play.
- Drew Butler was a pleasant surprise.
- This team isn’t special enough to survive going -3 in turnover margin against a quality opponent. (Duh.)
- I appreciate the fact that there’s “increased emphasis” on protecting exposed receivers, but if this game and a call I saw in the Missouri-Illinois game are any examples, the refs are really going to struggle with that personal foul call this year.
That’s enough for now. I’ll try to get a post up tomorrow or Monday on some bigger things to take from the loss.
Get The Picture 
I agree with your observations. There were some positives but overall, it looked as if our offense was playing in sand. We seemed slow and tentative. We also quit using the quarterback combos and direct snaps that gave some variety to our offense. We just went dormant for too long and that seems to be a trend.
Oh, by the way, Crompton has now been dubbed GPOOE(2) and Lane Kiffin has been named SEC coach of the year by ESPN. Rocky top in Atlanta in December. What a turnaround.
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Well said.. the biggest surprise to me was our offensive line.. its supposed to be our biggest strength…
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What was wrong with it? I thought it looked great.
I was thinking the whole game how sad it is Stafford/Moreno never got to play behind an OL like that.
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Yeah, I’m with the Senator. It didn’t look terrible; it just looked…ordinary.
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They beat us at our own game, dropped passes, dropped int’s, turnovers and questionable calls notwithstanding:
OSU: 46 rushes, 172 yards.
UGA: 30 rushes, 95 yards.
Where’s the defensive fire we were promised?
Unbelievable.
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Couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen a lot of comments praising the D. I guess, by Big 12 standards, it could have been a lot worse, but I don’t feel that great about how our defense looked today and I’m not sure what solace people are taking out of our performance.
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Give me the 9-4 (5-3) Peach/Outback Bowl season, and move on to the Murray Era and good times again.
Just don’t let this be an Auburn/Tennessee ’08 program derailing meltdown year.
Chip out, take your bogey, move on. Don’t do something stupid and make a 9.
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Well said.
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1) I will give WM credit. The D hit hard, they gang-tackled, and they kept Robinson and Bryant pretty well-contained. One ugly play that jumps to mind was when OSU hit the TE in the soft spot of our D in the middle of the field. That can’t happen. Ever.
2) Agreed; when there was pressure on Robinson at all, though, they generally got to him pretty good.
3) Didn’t really notice, but I’ll take your word for it.
4) Absolutely. I thought at one point that I hadn’t seen the O look so conservative and generic in a long time. What was so frustrating is this was after the lights-out first drive that had creativity, pace, and execution.
5) Again, I’ll have to check that out if I care to watch a replay. Hopefully Coach Ball will straighten that out. Otherwise, the recievers and TEs looked good when they caught the ball…
6) I’m holding out a blind hope.
7) No, it wasn’t.
8, 9, 10) Why, oh, why is this guy still on the sidelines after the preseason questioning of Coach Richt’s desires for the special teams? He needs to be somewhere else, and we need a renewed and intense focus on all things related to kick coverage and kick returns. Also, blessings be upon the Butler house!
11) No, not yet it’s not.
12) The PF that was called off was closer to legitimate than the one that hosed us there near the end.
On a side note, thanks for posting tonight. Wife and M.i.L. just are good for talking to about this kind of stuff!
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I imagine the first drive used scripted plays that were planned out in advance – most likely with a lot of Richt’s influence.
Some people forget that Richt is actually an offensive genius. His offenses at FSU in the 90s and 2000s were things of brilliance.
I think Richt needs to take over the play calling and offensive planning. Bobo can’t get it done. He’s not bad. But he’s just boring, uninteresting, and uncreative.
Special Teams: Seriously. Pathetic. The same problems.
I’m not completely freaking out after one game, but unless the next game is hugely different, then its time to do like 2006, not like 2005 as far as the QB situation.
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ALSO:
How come OKSt could repeatedly kick the crap out of the ball on kick offs, deep or out of the end zone, but we’re still kicking it to the 10-15. WTH?
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I thought the same thing.
After reading multiple times on this and other blogs about how recent rule changes almost make kicking the ball deep into the endzone an impossibility, I wondered how OKst had no problem kicking the ball eight yards deep each time.
And what made it worse was the fact we tried to return kickoffs that deep.
Special teams…..blah…..
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Ditto. Someone needs to explain to Branden Smith what “taking a knee” is.
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You won’t believe this, but our coaches don’t want our kickers to kick the ball deep. They prefer the strategy of kicking to the 10, give up a 25 yard return, and put your defense in a whole.
Strange, but true.
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The well covered kicks yesterday landed around the 10. The big return was kicked to the 2.
And OKST was 110th in kick coverage last year kicking it deep.
Believe it or not, the coaches that have produced the 6th winningest CFB program this decade aren’t idiots. I know… go figure.
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Trust me. I’m not making this stuff up. Look up our special teams stats from last year. They were horrible.
Do you remember how many balls Walsh kicked out of bounds last year? Did you know that the coaches were instructing him to kick to the sidelines (sometimes in very windy conditions)?
Go check out Rex Robinson’s blog (remember our All-American kicker) about how insane our kick off strategy is. And Kevin Butler agrees with him. They know what they’re talking about.
You simply can’t make the argument that, in the last five years, special teams have contributed to our win total.
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Do you know who else knows how to win football games? Urban Meyer and Pete Carroll. And they kick the ball deep. I hope they never figure out our secret strategy of kicking the ball out of bounds or they may just become unbeatable.
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Florida’s average kickoff last year was 62.06 yards… to the 8 yard line. Less than 2.5 yards longer than Georgia’s average kickoff.
Next.
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How many times did they kick out of bounds?
Read the quotes from Fabris and Richt during the offseason. We got the kid with the huge leg to do kickoffs and the coaches won’t put him on the field. They’re more interested in directional kicking, which has not worked for us.
Of course, maybe everybody but you is crazy. Maybe our special teams are really great. I wonder why nobody else can see that?
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Florida also got a touchback on 11% of their kickoffs last year. UGA had touchbacks on 5% of their kickoffs. It seems to me that the team with the rate of more than twice the touchbacks is the one kicking deeper.
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Oklahoma State kicks deep. Last year that led to their having the 3rd longest average kickoff in all of D1A. (Even then they still only had 13 touchbacks all year.) On the other hand, kicking deep line drives (as they did yesterday) also led to their being 110th in kickoff coverage. UGA ’08’s much lamented kick coverage was 75th.
In yesterday’s game the well covered kicks were high and around the 10. The long return to open the second half was fielded around the 2.
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110th versus 75th sounds like a lot. It’s not. The difference between the average return allowed was 3.32 yards. If OSU kicks to the goal line and we kick to the 10, we lose the field position game.
Maybe somebody can examine the tape, but something that I thought I noticed was that the first kickoff had numbers I recognized (like Rennie Curran) covering the kick. On the poorly covered kick, I didn’t recognize any numbers. I wonder if the coaches thought our defense was on the field too much, so we should go back to playing our walk-ons on kick coverage.
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The overall kick/return net difference between OKST and UGA last year was 4.5 yards. But they weren’t kicking off with a true freshman kicker (who struggled elsewhere in the kicking game as well, fwiw) and didn’t have a team as injury depleted as ours.
And yesterday the shorter kicks worked very well. It was the deep kick people like you keep screaming for that got us burned. Just as it did with Kentucky last year.
Mark Richt isn’t an idiot. And Kevin Butler isn’t at practice every day.
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I’ve never said that Mark Richt is an idiot. But I know he’s not perfect.
Our kickoffs last year averaged 94th in the nation at 59.62 yards. There’s not a single team of consequence that kicked the ball shorter than we did last year. Not one.
Now USC had the best average at 68.28 yards per kickoff last year. That’s a significant difference. Even if we set our sights much lower than #1 and wanted to get to #20, we’re talking about 64.82 yards per kickoff. I think we have the legs on our team to do that.
And for the coverage team, I think we just need to follow the lead of the best special teams units and put our best athletes on the field.
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I appreciate the fact that you don’t shut-down commenting after a loss.
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The defense looked solid. Not spectacular, but since they had to be on the field so much b/c our offense couldn’t do anything, it’s understandable that they broke down towards the end.
Speaking of our offense, it was completely vanilla and uninspiring. You’re right, we lack an identity. I have no idea what the philosophy was on offense. And where was Marlon Brown?
I wasn’t too impressed with Okie State. They beat us–so I’m not trying to take anything away from them–but it’s more about what that says about us. If our O can only muster 10 against that defense, how on earth is it going to do against Carolina’s (which looked pretty darn good on Thursday night).
Hopefully, we can get our minds right and correct some things. Maybe spice some things up as well. SEC season starts next week.
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Was at the game, some observations…
-If I told you on the evening after the G-Day game that we go to Stillwater w/o Tripp, Houston, & Caleb and Joe gets the flu on Wednesday night, what would you have told me about that trip?
-From the stands, the D obviously played harder and w/ more intensity than last year. If we can get Houston back, I think he’s going to make our rush better.
-The KO coverage is pretty unexplainable. We’ve got to get better, or it’s going to be the death of us…and I mean that in the worst way for this staff. I trust that CMR knows that more than me, and he’s certainly earned the right to fix it.
-We have a boatload of young, fast, talented guys. #1 is going to be fun to watch for a few years.
-Hard to judge Joe. I don’t know that he felt that well.
-We’ve got to get Caleb back. Richard runs hard, but I’m not convinced. Caleb’s got some wiggle that we need. And we need it bad. No matter what Joe or Logan does, it won’t matter if we can’t get a few 15 yard runs.
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How much of Cox’s performance, if any, was due to the illness? I was impressed by your D, but not much on offense. Ten to 17 might be enough for either team to win next week.
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Based on what we’ve seen, if either Georgia or South Carolina scores seventeen next Saturday, the game will be a blowout.
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+1
I believe the over/under set for 14
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I was shocked by the touchdown that Evans gave up. He stood there flat footed while an All-American receiver ran straight for him at full speed. He waited until Bryant was even with him before he even turned his hips to start to run. Did he think he was running a 25-yard curl? I can forgive Bryant using his height or athleticism to win a jump ball, but just standing there watching him run by you is unforgivable. I’ve seen better coverage out of high school safeties.
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Kinda like Auburn 2005?
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“I was shocked by the touchdown that Evans gave up”
Really? He has been getting beat deep for the last 3 years.
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Getting beat is one thing. Standing there and watching like you’re a spectator while you get beat is another.
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Special teams are going to kill us. Two things:
1) It’s not that we don’t kick the ball deep it’s that we don’t cover the kicks. We out kick or Kick-off guys by kicking it to the 10. We still have the same walk-ons going down at a snails pace hand fighting the blocker and getting held up with our 1st string D guys at the rear to save the TD when,not if, the return guy breaks containment. Fab is crazy, by definition, doing the same thing every time but hoping for a different outcome.
2) CMR is showing that he is not tough enough to be a head coach, not as far as the players are concerned but in his apparent lack of control over his coaching staff. Fab might as well have given CMR the middle finger since he did not do anything to fix the problems from last year. CMR needs to man up and remove Fab from special teams. If Fab will not change then fire him he can’t coach up marginal talent anyway he only can coach stars that would be great in spite of him not because of him.
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I’m mostly pleased with the defensive effort. I would have bet almost anything that if we held OSU to 24 points then UGA would win.
The offense and special teams play didn’t give the defense much a chance.
After hearing so much about Joe C’s high school heroics maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that looked like a high school quarterback out there.
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