David Hale asks Mike Bobo the question that’s been on the minds of many this week.
Will writes: David, is there any way you could bring up the point the Senator pointed out on his blog recently about Cox’s footwork tipping off opponents to the coaches? I just don’t know how else to get that to them. If we, as fans, can see this (and confirm it in numerous game film examples from this season) it can’t have slipped past other defensive coordinators.
David: We all owe a big tip ‘o the cap to The Dawgfather, who noticed this well before most people… including Mike Bobo apparently. But even Bobo now admits… it’s true!
“We did go back and look at it and it was more so in the Kentucky game,” Bobo said. “It was not every play of pass-run, but there was definitely more of a stagger this past week, and that’s something we’ve got to work to correct.”
My follow up: So you hand’t seen this before the Kentucky game?
“No,” Bobo said. “We usually have a stagger, and he had gotten a little more square on certain plays.”
Should we be happy that at least they’re going to work on it this week, or PO’d that it took a poster on a message board to bring it to their attention in the first place? A little of both, I suppose.
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UPDATE: From Hale’s live blog today –
… I’ll say this, when I posed the question about Cox’s tells to Bobo, he didn’t even let me finish the question before he answered. He obviously was aware of what I was talking about without me needing to explain it to him. That tells me that either a.) they noticed it before or b.) he’s been reading Senator Blutarsky and the Dawg Run message board.
You tell me – which do you think?
Get The Picture 
Wow
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Bobo says it wasn’t happening before the UK game, but TheDawgfather says he was using it to accurately predict the plays as early as the Tennessee Tech game (when he first noticed it).
Terrible job by the coaches not spotting this, and what an utter failure Cox’s supposed leadership and poise have turned out to be.
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Holy Shit Batman…i’m staggered and vote for the latter. Send Bobo back upstairs so maybe he can see something through binoculars and hire The Dawgfather as replacement sideline OC.
Probable conseqences: All our eagle-eyed intel gatherers will have all the other SEC coaches mad at them for blowing the tells or enemies have been picking for the past nine years.
Or we can only hope that Bobo was jerking David around…i know, i know, that’s too much to hope for.
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Absolute, total incompetence. Jeez. I am dumbfounded.
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Stagger … what a great word! The team has been staggering all season.
For this Saturday, more swagger, less stagger, please.
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It says a lot…none of it good.
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I think if I were Bobo I would not have admitted to that.
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Give me a break! Because someone else noticed it before Bobo, then he should be fired and they guy who noticed it should be a sideline OC. Some of you are on a witchhunt. I bet most on here could not even begin to understand what it takes to be an OC at a BCS school. Don’t flatter yourselves. Get off your highhorses. Good spot on the footwork though.
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Mike, you really should be watching some game film instead of putzing around on the internets.
Oh, and I think in this case, they actually found a witch.
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hodgie, i didn’t say he should be fired. He’s got about eleventy kids to feed. There’s no bailout for that. He should just go back upstairs to the coaching box and use binoculars from a distance. The Dawgfather would be an additional OC and his duty station would be the sideline right next to Mark but i don’t think anyone has requested The Dawgfather’s permission for that yet. He probably has another job or some other lame excuse.
And a couple of more things: (x) if we didn’t have highhorses, what else would we rock on and (y) if we didn’t flatter ourselves who else would? It’s the curse of the age-old narcissists’ dilemma.
i closed my eyes and am presently having a vision (z), about what it would be like if our coaches coached baseball and tried to find A.J., Israel, Joe’s feet and hands…
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Hodgie,
Your logic is intriguing, if flawed. Because my buddy tells me he can’t figure out why his car is vibrating so much, and then I look at it and notice that his left front wheel is well out of balance–that means I want his car?
Here’s another one. My buddy is Jimmie Johnson, and he tells me he can’t figure out why his car is vibrating so much, and then I look at it and notice that his left front wheel is well out of balance–that means I want to be a NASCAR driver?
I kinda think it means that my friend/Mr. Johnson could do a better job doing HIS job, not that I want to do it for him.
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I think the Jimmie Johnson analogy is a little overboard. Funny comment about the highhorses, though. I just don’t think that this is that big of a deal. I would also guess that the feet are not always 100% a giveaway. But, color me blind. I still believe in Bobo. He has been somewhat sketchy this year but there is a reason he is the OC and I am in the bleachers.
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I suggest the latter. This is the equivalent of a batter knowing what pitch is coming. It takes half of the guessing game away for a defense. You can be sure many other teams saw this before the blog poster did.
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Score one for the guy “Outside” the arena. It seems that Richt should have noticed it as well. I’m not giving him a pass on this either.
I would be curious to see how often Cox did this before the UT game and during the UT game. If Cox did…..I’m sure Monte picked up on it and that would explain at least half the problem with that game. Of course why Georgia never adjusted to Crompton’s roll out is another question. Please help out the coaches with that one too.. Dawgfather.
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Sigh. Coaching. Do I hafta?
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Did anyone else wonder why the “big guys” were added to backfield on short yardage(did good),except on the 2 when we needed the 1st or td ? Dawgfather anyway you can help CJF and CSS also ?
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Senator,
I have been reading your blog for a while. I am an Alabama fan that somehow was directed to your site from the Capstone Report. This is best college football blog I have found (even though it is a Georgia fan site). So props to you for your very enlighted site. I went to college in Georgia, so I have a small ifinity for your team. I have a lot in common with you guys; I hate Florida, hate the ACC, and want you guys to beat Auburn every year.
It helps Alabama when you guys are playing good football.
So with that in mind,
To all the Georgia fans,
I have felt in the past what all of you are going though now. We had Mike Shula for a coach, sigh. Watching your team implode, making boneheaded turnovers, and showing no discipline causes a fan to want to pull his hair out. One thing that you guys have going for you that we didn’t have during the Shula years is a proven commodity, Mark Richt. He is a good coach. He should be given the chance to right the ship. The administration should leave him alone and allow him to hire or retain coachs/ coordinators that he deems appropriate.
At Alabama, Shula was not a proven commodity. Once things started going south for us, the administration tried to push certain coordinators on Shula. This breeded failure. Anytime the head coach isn’t given full authority over the team, it will become disastrous.
I implore you guys to support Richt. Hold your nose through the rest of the season. Give him the offseason to right the ship and see what happens next year.
yours truly and good luck against Tech,
An Objective Alabama Fan
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Thanks for the kind thoughts, Scooter. I can’t say I disagree with your comment, either.
I hope you’ll jump in more often here.
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Which is fine, and I’d totally agree with this, if it weren’t for the fact that there seems to be no movement in this direction. I know you can’t save much this season, but at least have the decency to knock off the good times ahead, I swear!/eh, it’s just youth/eh, it’s just the wind/you fans don’t know what you’re talking about/who’s on our KO coverage team? eh, beats me song-and-dance that happens at every presser. I know you have to give those things, and maybe you don’t wanna, but how about this: Read out of the phone book. Compose poetry. Do it in Latin. Beatbox during questions. I don’t care. But please, please, please, please let me pretend to consider to wonder to think that you have a clue what it’ll take to right the ship. Because the words given make me think the staff thinks that sh*t will fling differently next year, and ta da! 10 wins.
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What’s that smell…?
Mission trip to Honduras!
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Scooter,
First, you guys also had Mike DuBose which is worse than Shula.
Second, I think Dog fans forget it wasn’t so long ago that Bama, Tenn and Auburn were reeling just as much as the Dogs are now, if not more.
Thanks for the support. Oh, and sorry I couldn’t resist, but I thought Objective Alabama Fans were like unicorns.
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Good staffs will cross check each other.
Defensive coaches will critique the offense and offensive coaches will do the same with the defense.
Both share how they would attack the other.
So, either this simple thing was missed on both sides of the coaching staff, or there is a culture in place where no coach is willing to challenge another, or they are simply not doing their cross checking work.
So is it incompetence, dysfunction, or negligence?
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What’s truly sad about this whole situation comes on 2 fronts.
First, this means that Richt, Bobo and the offensive staff NEVER caught this. Now, the real question is, how did this trait develop in 11 games? Joe Cox has been on campus for 5 years, and his footwork was under coached to the point where he could be seen as giving tips to other teams by how he lined up? This has to have been a long term problem and the failure of the offensive coaches to notice it is completely damning, and it’s doubly problematic for Bobo and Richt, two of the coaches who are supposed to be QB-guys. What have they been doing with Joe in practice for the last couple months that turned him from the accurate leader we heard about all summer into the turnover machine that tips off the other team about the play-call?
Second, this means one of two things: 1st, Richt does not have the defensive coaches ever scout our own offense in order to help the offensive staff with weaknesses, which from my memory of lower level football, was always one of the first things we did every day. The offensive coaches would confer with the defensive coaches over weaknesses, so as to close gaps and make it harder for the opposing team to take advantage of easy things. OR, it means that if Richt does have the defensive staff do this, THEY MISSED IT TOO. I don’t know which it is, but in either case this is a sever indictment of the coaching staff, as a whole.
I mean, is this even fathomable, that our 5th year, senior QB has been tipping plays (accidentally, mind you)? This is truly the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to this season.
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[Insert snarky comment about how bad Joe Cox is and how this is in no way the responsibility of the coaches, and how Stafford never had this problem] – Texas_Dawg
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“This has to have been a long term problem”
Well, not to be Texas_dawg, but no, it doesn’t. It could have been a gradual mistake that should have been noticed earlier and wasn’t. But just about all of our games are still available on ESPN360. Someone ought to go back through the season and see just how gradual this was.
And if Arizona State or Tennessee was the first to catch it, because that’s where the offensive problems became systemic rather than a matter of experience, in my opinion.
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That’s what I meant. I take gradual to imply that this was developing for a period. I doubt highly that just last week Cox started using his feet differently. By long term problem, I mean that it’s been developing all season without any particular solution being offered. There is no way you send Cox into the game as your best QB if you’re aware he does this, right? Why allow him to tip the other team, especially this late in the season?
As to your other point, regardless of the opponents inability to catch on, this is unbelievable. Cox hadn’t started but one game prior to Oklahoma St, so opposing teams had little to go on early in the year by the way of noticing tells. Imagine not noticing this, and then after the game on Saturday Paul Johnson mentioning it to the media. Embarrassing? Slightly.
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As this piece of information was found from “outside the arena” it should be completely ignored and thrown in the pile with KO coverage and the rest of the garbage we sit through on Saturday . . .
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“You tell me – which do you think?”
(a) a monitoring early warning system detection of ‘stand by for bad sh!t coming up’ software covertly installed on Get The Picture and Dawg Run and several other select underground sites that pose not only a direct danger but a clear and present DEFCON V threat to the stability and direction of The Program;
(b) detection chips (specifically designed not to interfere with pleasure centre) covertly installed, through either ear hole or nose hole, inside the brain(s), if any, contained inside the arena of thick skull bone of certain selected enemy correspondents;
(c) one of the duties that Jon Fabris assigned to Mark who in turn assigned same to Damon is for Damon to read the usual subversive treasonous unpatriot noise in the system sh!t each day and make a report of same back to Mark who shall then report same to Jon;
(d) Texas Dawg reads Get The Picture or Dawg Run, or both, depending on how he feels that day, and tweets bullet-point summary result of subversive treasonous unpatriot noise in the system sh!t back to Mike Bobo; or
(e) Texas Dawg is Mike Bobo’s nom de plume and Mike actually has to read the subversive treasonous unpatriot noise in the system sh!t, like the John Steinback Pulp Fiction novella it is, but because we are a system-style attack team, it’s no big deal because it fits somewhere right into the system.
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Dog in Fla, I never knew Thomas Pynchon was a football fan. You ARE actually Pynchon, right?
🙂
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Who can read Pynchon’s shit? No one! Even money says he doesn’t even read it. I tried it one time and thought somebody was punking me. I was right. Pynchon was punking me and anyone else who paid American money for one of his books. They’re way too long, make no ***king sense whatsoever and read like he was high all the time.
Who would ever write like that? Although this would be a good screenplay for a The SEC football sequel to the ‘Blind Side’ –
“Gravity’s Rainbow: The Downs and Ups of Bret Butler’s Punting Game.”
Now if we could only figure out some way to get that Bullock girl in this one and trick her into doing a full-frontal. Did she really think Nick was good looking or was that just part of the script? Maybe the right role for her would have to wait until they complete the screenplay for Nick’s autobiographical film, “Get Shorty!” Nick would be played by Danny Devito, of course.
Getting back to the Gravity’s Rainbow idea, the only sure character cast in mind would be ‘Doyle’, as he holds a special teams meeting to get everyone fired up and ready to go just like this NSFW, home, play or anywhere else sketch idea audition tape which shows the full spectrum of Doyle’s free-range method acting capabilites and his close relationship with other characters on screen so that they don’t dare to try to steal the scene from him…
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Ok, not Pynchon. David Foster Wallace, then? Faked your own death?
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Got me! That’s how i have so much time on my hands. Hope Bobo or his receptionist don’t read this and rat me out. This doing nothing gig is the best i’ve had in awhile except for one little thing, it doesn’t pay and so far i can’t get my hands on any of that life insurance money. Who can you trust these days?
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Glad to have you back in whatever form, DiF/DFW. You were missed. Love the posts!
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It’s a brave new world we’re living in when–with all due respect, Senator, for your fine nom de plume–when a newspaper reporter can write something along the lines of “maybe Mark Richt, Georgia head football coach has been reading and learning from Senator Blutarsky” without any kind of sarcasm or irony.
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True, but honestly I hope he hasn’t. 😉
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Will:
Without knowing the tendency all season, you can’t lay this at Bobo’s or CMR’s feet. Any offensive player can develop ticks in his stance over the course of the season. Some years back Kelly Washington at UT would change the position of his arms if the playcall was a throw or a run. Kelly was a beast of a WR and I think he might still be in the league. Like Joe, he had very little game experience when he became a starter (though for different reasons). A backup qb is not going to get near the coaching that the starter gets, so its irrelevant that he’s in his 5th yr. As talented as Stafford was, remember how often he threw off the back foot or kept the ball down by his chest instead of up at his ear. This was a uber talented #1 pick w/ loads of attention. But when the tailgate dropped, he could look pretty inexperienced.
Scooter:
The general fear amongst many fans is not CMR’s abilities, its his willingness to objectively grade his assistants. Bad ST’s and epic collapses have been recurrent for the past 5 yrs. I’m happy with what we’ve accomplished under CMR and I think that next year and the year after that will be improved over this yr. But if no changes occur, then every few yrs when we don’t have the right mix of talent and seniority, we’re going to be dreadful (see this year).
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I’m not sure, but by pointing out the flaws in Stafford’s game following 3 years in the system, you’re contributing to my point that the coaches aren’t doing their jobs.
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Don’t forget that Bobo called the TD pass that Troupe caught “on a play I called for A.J. and didn’t realize he was out of the game.”
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On a related note, what does this say about Auburn’s coaching staff that they did NOT pick up on this? There is still hope Dawg fans. We are not the only SEC team with a coaching staff that doesn’t have a clue. Maybe our team is actually better than we thought. After all, the UK defense knew what was coming and we still almost won the game.
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I’m not ready to say that the entire SEC knew the tells buy rest assured the good ones did. UK might not have had a clue but UT ate our lunch and Charlie Strong has owned CMR’s O for more years than I care to remember. I think that any SEC team that picked it up would keep it to themselves since they have no reason to share.
Let’s just say that if our staff can’t pick it up when it is the QB who’s to say the WR’s or OL’s aren’t giving it away as well. We all know that B Smith coming into the game is as big a tell as you can give without an airplane banner.
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