I wasn’t going to post anything else tonight, in the hopes that my aggravation would dissipate by the morning, but listening to a couple of morons on 790 during my ride home changed my mind.
It was one of those something’s-wrong-with-Georgia discussions, which was fine, but the two proceeded to get into an argument started by moron #1’s assertion that teams aren’t afraid to play Georgia. With all due respect to the intellectual power on display, that ain’t Georgia’s problem right now. Georgia’s problem is the exact opposite, in fact. Georgia’s afraid of taking risks.
I’m not trying to be overly dramatic here, but how else do you explain Logan Gray, punt returner extraordinaire? No offense to Logan, who did some good work on offense today, but as well as this program has recruited over the past decade, there’s no way he should be the team’s second best option returning punts. (Or even third, if you want to argue that A.J. would have been second.) He’s basically a concession that Georgia doesn’t intend to mount a threat fielding punts. And it’s not like anyone who watched Georgia football last season lacks an understanding of what Gray brings to the table.
The reaction to the Arkansas punter picking up the first down on the fumbled snap was simply icing on the cake.
I’m not asking the Georgia coaches to turn themselves into a bunch of riverboat gamblers, but there’s nothing wrong with being occasionally aggressive. The ultimate message you send when you make timid choices like this one is that you don’t trust your talent. Which is weird, when you think about it, since you picked the talent in the first place.
Get The Picture 
5th qtr show Caller wanted to know how they get so wide open in our zone cvg. He apparently has Been on hold for 8 months
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I heard those guys too. When I was listening they were debating whether Georgia was more like Oregon or Oklahoma State. They spent several minutes going back and forth about it. Of all the questions that could be asked about the state of our football program . . .
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I think quite a few teams would be scared to play Oregon right now, but I’m not in the 5th Quarter Show call-in arena.
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This post is a little strange on a day that logan gray had his longest ever punt return, and Richt went for it on 4th from our own 35, is it not?
That said, you are correct. Then again, risk aversion is not a terrible idea when you believe your opponent is outmatched. Unfortunately, our opponents are not outmatched when they ought to be. Hopefully we’re just working through some new-D new-QB kinks.
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Tell me about the other five punts that Logan was sent out to handle.
And from where I sat, Richt’s fourth down call smelled far more of desperation than aggressiveness, but your mileage may vary.
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Well, it was first half, but I guess I could buy that. I actually think it was just a sensible thing to do regardless of context, I don’t get why that is a controversial decision in the first place, but it is.
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Going for it on 4th down is almost always desperation: for a score, or a momentum swing, or validation (ahem , Paul Johnson, cough). Sometimes it’s more reasonable desperation than others, but desperation still.
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The sideline sweetie asked CMR about the decision and he gave a great answer. He said UGA needed a TD to get momentum and he was concerned that if they kicked the field goal Arky would get back the ball and score points. Doesn’t sound like “desperation” to me. Just a good coaching decision. And they got the first down. Are you guys psychiatrists too on top of being expert football analysts?
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His 4th down calls were fantastic.
Can’t criticize him there.
Bobo is the problem.
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I don’t think the problem on O was risk aversion, but your point has merit.
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The biggest problem on O actually seems to be pass protection, I guess? That was the gist of the senator’s original post. I’m terrible at recognizing that type of malady, is Ealey really that bad?
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Gah, I was trying to reply to you with my 9:35pm post. Whoops.
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The problem on O is Bobo’s ineptitude to assess a given situation. 1Q – 3rd n 1: we send receivers on med. and long routes. All we need was ONE damn yard.
4Q – aka THE dive killer 3rd n 4: all three wide receivers go deep w/ NO check down???…even tho Ealey wiffed on the block, Murray had sufficient time to throw a 5+ yd route.
Bobo needs to tutor the Qb…that is all. This game reminds me of the UK game of 09. Game firmly swinging our way until retarded playcalling f-s it up.
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How was this remotely like the UK game in 2009? We were in control of the game and had a significant lead until we turned it over 3 times (or was it four?) in the second half.
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So I’ve actually been a larger Bobo supporter for some time. He opened it up, where I thought Richt was too conservative on offense. The 2008 version was probably the best offense we’ve had maybe ever (queue Willie jokes now). Yet, today, I see some cracks. As you point out, the situation just doesn’t call for the long routes (happened twice today). I have thought for a while that it was more execution than play-calling (see famous quote from Cox, “I saw him, but threw it anyway.”) But a little bit last year and even more this year, we are more predicable, and some of the play-calling doesn’t fit the situation as you point out.
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For the first time in a while, I saw some REALLY bad clock management. Why call timeout with 1:04 left, on a 3rd and four? You have 3 timeouts with BLAIR WALSH in your pocket. If you get 15 yards, kick it and win. If not, leave them no time. Run it to 35-40, and if you pick it up, you have THREE timouts – you can run it 3 times if you want. Almost as bad as Pete Carroll in the epic Texas championship game.
Second, Richt’s conservative nature has become a serious liability without Van Gorder to bail him out. Van Gorder was the exact opposite of conservative. He would dial up exotic stunts and corner blitzes and other craziness on the most critical play of the game. And it would work. In short, he was very unpredictable. We are the most predictable program in the SEC. It never gave us a chance at all last week, and this week we waited until the 4th quarter to go back to the deep ball that worked on the opening series. Even going for it (which I agree was the right call), we ran the SAME PLAY after the timeout!!!!
Finally, Stacey and our O-line are incredibly over-rated. Steele had them the #1 group in the nation, but for the 2nd consecutive week, they weren’t even #1 on the field. Murray’s feet made the offense look WAAAY better today. This is routine for Richt – our talent (outside of our QBs) only improves so much once they get here. Justin Houston is a notable exception here, but what other guys showed massive improvement in the last few years?
What do you guys see?
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The OL has gotten worse each week this season.
For a bunch of new starters and a new scheme on defense, I think we looked better, and adjusted better in the second half (mostly.)
We really missed King and Smith today (as well as Chapas.)
And there still seems to be no rhyme or reason to Bobo’s play calls.
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The Senator’s most important point was that the coaches don’t seem to trust the talent. Maybe lack of confidence in the OL has something to do with why our playcalling seems to resemble a preschool kids’ game.
Jim
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Then why keep him under center in the I?? Why not put him in shotgun? This blew me away. Get Murray out of the pocket. He’s good with his feet. And let him throw something less than 20 yds down feild, for f*ck’s sake!
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Agreed. More to the point, why put him in the I and play action on 3rd and long? Ark sure was buying or respecting the play action and it just forced our young QB to make faster reads. We were successful from the shotgun. you can still run the old sprint draw from there but more importantly Murray has time to look over the D.
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+1. No clue why we need to run so play action every time, especially on critical 3rd and 8 where obvious blitz is coming.
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On the positive, I’m really impressed with Murray. Only mistakes I really saw today was holding the ball a bit long on 2-3 plays, which is expected with inexperience. I love his plays with his feet, which really helped some today (especially avoiding the safety and whatnot).
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Bear in mind I wasn’t at the game, and I will be interested to see if he has anything to say in response to part of this. As for Ealey, he was *terrible* in protection on a couple of plays. Complete wiffs, including one on what still looked like an ill-faited 3rd and 4 call at the end of the game. It wasn’t that Ealy went the wrong way or didn’t see guys, that I could see. It’s that his attempts to block, when I did notice, were appalling.
If you watched the game, Spielan, Griese, Evil Griese (Bob has tendency to ramble way off course at times, this is him), and the other dude harped on the routes we seemed to be running on quite a few plays. That 3rd and 4 play was one of them. They made it sound like we kept sending guys down field and Murray was going through his processions and not finding anything and then the pressure was ending the play. That isn’t to say that Murray didn’t have moments of indecision; it’s hard to tell what is what when you aren’t at the games unless the announcing crew is top notch.
So I don’t know. We may not have done ourselves any favors not because we kept looking down field, but because we had a tendency to run 3 guys down field and have no good safety/check down/etc routes. One reason the 3rd and 4 play dismayed me is that we had gotten away from it for the previous quarter (and then some), and we were doing much better on O. Also, we Play Actioned on the play. I don’t know why (I know we had a couple of successful runs on the drive already).
There’s some talk that the Guards are having a lot of problems right now. Strickland seemed to struggle today, to me. I think Mono is not something you quickly recover from, so that might be why Glenn hasn’t played as well as we had hoped.
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There seemed to be a lot of Murray going through his reads, deciding there was nothing, and getting sacked (and, to be fair, breaking off a couple of nice runs). The announcers said the receivers weren’t creating separation, but all of them? And that frequently? I have to wonder if Murray is just waiting for a degree of “openness” that he sees in practice that just isn’t going to be there as often in SEC games.
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From where I sat, sadly, yes.
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Senator, were you at the game live or did you watch it on the teevee? I ask b/c of how quickly you got up a post afterwards (though I realize there are ways of doing this that don’t require going home and typing on your pc/laptop).
On t.v., the sideline lady asked Richt at halftime about his strategy in going for it on 4th down at the end of the first half. Richt said that it was “to keep them from getting the ball back with time,” and that even though they did go down and get a field goal, going for it did help field position and “maybe saved themf rom scoring seven.” So, I think your desperation thesis is confirmed.
I continue to think our D is on the right path, though, and overall this feels like the kind of struggle that builds into something powerful later rather than as a nihilistic horror-show. I’m glad I’m an expatriated Dawg who doesn’t have access to ATL-area sports radio, though.
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FWIW I also watched the game on TV, heard the same comment and did not get desperation out of it. To each his own.
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I was there in the heat. WordPress has an app that works on my Blackberry, which is why you saw the post when you did.
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You can rant all you want to about being “aggressive” but if we’d have kicked the damn field goal at the end of the third/early fourth instead of going for it on like Fourth and 4, we could have run the damn clock out at the end. I’m not that negative on us, we’ve lost some close games to some good teams and the defense is improving. We had some legitimate stops in this game which is an improvement from last year. Sure the blown coverages were bad but we all new it would take some time to exorcise Willie and convert to the 3-4 and that there would be growing pains, well here they are, I see some evidence that we’re moving in the right direction on that side of the ball. And before anybody jumps down my throat about that don’t forget I’m the one who caught hell before the season started for saying I’d give Grantham 2 years to seriously improve the defense or he should be fired. Championships start with defense and if we’re still doing that crap at the end of next year we should can him but for now we should be patient and let our young QB (who is going to be a really good one I think) develop, we will beat some people we are not supposed to beat before this year is out I promise you.
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+1. I also thought we should have kicked that field goal and said so at the time. It would have changed the dynamics of the game at the end.
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I think it might be time to get rid of Bobo
Im so sad…
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Let’s face it we put very little real pressure on Mallett today. He side stepped the rush several times and killed us. The D can get a pass for all of the blown coverages etc. since its a new scheme and for the DB’d a change in the way they actually are suppose to play the pass. That said the O line has zero excuses, none at all. All of them have played together for at least 2 years and yet they still can’t run block. In passing situations they can hold their own with a 4 man rush but blitz them and they have to have TE or RB’ s pick it up.
We also are terrible at the screen pass. The Qb can’t see his RB in that tickle pile of Olineman. We don’t swing pass we don’t drag over the middle we just go medium and long. Bobo saying that AM is responsible for the sacks is a cop out of a massive sort. If we keep up this strange play calling we are either going to kill AM or give him a terminal case of the happy feet.
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1. 790 is terrible. Barnhart and Durham saved that station from extinction.
Steak Shapiro might be the worst radio personality in the country. Guy laps whoever is hot at the moment.
2. Calculated risk is necessary in football, business, buying a plane ticket, eating mexican before a road trip… pretty much everything in life. Seems like Richt is playing not to lose right now.
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That is the something calling the something something
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I think everyone is tired of the shenanigans
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We will say it again, again, and again. Go back to Jax when we had Stafford and Moreno and a good team. We had no offense. Lost. Keep coming forward thru the past 3 seasons and forget about the D those years. It was bad, but everybody focused on WM. Those past three years also had O issues that were ignored.
Write it down and remember it. The O line is not set yet. Why? Call CMR and ask. There is depth and talent. Part is the QB holds the ball a little too long and his OC can’t put him in the right set and call. Call CMR and ask him why Bobo can not get in the game. Like we said before he is awaiting applause from ESPN for some cute call. More than likely it is due to his game preparation. BKA…poor coaching. If there is a RB in Athens, show him to us. We are amazed that WE has garnered 75+ in back to back games. Find a running back coach who can coach RBs getting in the lane and sustaining blocks.
If there is one thing they should do, it is pick up the speed of play. We mean hit the blocks quicker, get the routes out quicker, hit the receivers quicker [young inexperienced QB tend to hold the ball a tad too long…like today and last Sat…you see this alot with HS QBs], and the RBs need to get quicker. For us the O seems in slowwww motionnn.
For the D. Burned for not being aggressive and tackling in SC. Burned today for it by the pass. But these guys are moving. They played 2 very good offensive coaches with very mature O lines and veteran QBs. What we liked was the D line penetration…yeah there is that word quick. Plus they are getting close to the INTs. The D coaches and the D personnel are slowly writing their identity… and it is going to be one nasty mean-ass, smart minded D. These guys still have some learning. Remember the learning involves the coaches, too. Two are learning the SEC teams, coaches, and players from field and game level.
The OC needs to tell some guys he wants to see some quality PT. And we would like to see an OC that has a talented QB put him in schemes and sets that take advantage of his accuracy and athletic ability. Like we said all this past week, Murray is the key. But again the OC hinders a QB.
Post note. We hear that the TEs are not in play. Ask CMR and the OC why you would limit two on the field at one time. Take out a FB and release O Charles. He is too talented not to have him on the field as much as possible.
Does anyone think that the number 1 TB and number 1 FB will play this much this season. Does anyone want to buy an “8” jersey for a son or grandson. We gave ours away rather than give them back to our UGA grandparents
More comments from we high school kids this week about the game plans and game preparation for the OC.
Finally special teams are about average at best. The kicking is a like alot of the rest of the team is hit and miss.
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good post
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Maybe we should let Lilly call the offensive plays. At least then we would throw to the tight ends.
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Dang – sorry to see the Dawgs lose today.
As an outsider, the result is probably unexpected given a freshman QB and the switch to a 3-4.
The 3rd and 4 play call was baffling to me but perhaps they thought they would catch the Hogs off guard and get into field goal range.
Anyways, sorry again for the loss.
BD
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F’n A, brah.
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I simply do not understand the plays called on the last drive. Why not try to run the ball and use some clock and maybe get into FG range. At worst you go to overtime and if you break off a good run you have a shot to win with Walsh. I would not go deep on a third and four either, maybe drag a TE or Muzzy across the middle on a little delay route. No passes to the backs and precious few to the TEs. Damn, doesn’t UGA have four of those guys?
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Funny you used Timid to describe the coaching after it was used to describe the D last week. Sarkashian (sp?) the Washington coach said that a team takes on the personality of its coach. After Richt got fired up at the end of the 3rd qtr the teamed got fired up in the fourth qtr.
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aight, can I apply for my license now or just wait til the end of the season? Just kidding, TON of football left to play, but your boys backs’ are against the wall …
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Questioning your offensive line? Isn’t it your coaching staff and young quarterback? Just haven’t figured out which of the two caused the six sacks surrendered against Arkansas today …
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Pingback: Leather Helmet Blog: Dawg Daily 19Sep
I’m not superstitious, but … we live within driving distance of my parents, so they’ll visit every so often to see their grandson, etc. And occasionally, they’ll visit on a game weekend. I’m not making this up. These are the last 4 games for which my parents were in town:
Alabama ’08
Georgia Tech ’08
Oklahoma State ’09
Arkansas ’10
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Distancing yourself from your parents is always a tough thing to do.
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let me make a few points. hope ya’ll don’t mind.
1) “timid” is a good adjective to describe what we’ve been seeing for some time. so are “soft” and “stupid.” timid, soft, and stupid is no way to go through life.
2) the defense of bobo you see most often is the explosive offense he ran in 07 and 08 and a good part of 09. i think some of that was chimerical. first, stafford, moreno, and massaquoi as individuals had a hell of a lot more to do with that than anything bobo did. second, i think that part of the good offensive production of the last 3 years was a reflex of opposing teams knowing that they could score on us at will and therefore playing somewhat less carefully on defense (either as a matter of scheme or just players’ attention) than they might if they believed points only came at a premium.
3) i’ve seen some people saying that bobo is just running richt’s offense. but is that really true? the basic i-formation, te, flanker, split end configuration is the same, but i actually don’t see a whole lot of the plays richt ran as oc at uga being called in games anymore (and we line up in a lot of formations that weren’t part of richt’s packages). i conclude from this that we’re seeing mostly bobo’s offense at this point—plays of his design, game planning of his devising, and in-game calls/adjustments of his doing. and he’s not getting the job done. period. the ol is a train wreck.
4) this is not an attempt to shield richt from criticism, though. everything that this team does or does not do is the responsibility of his management. if bobo is a lousy oc, that’s on richt, who hired him. if our talent falls short, that’s on richt who recruits and hires the people who recruit on his behalf.
5) it’s time to question how reasonable an expectation it is that the guy whose management has brought the program to a point where it now seems perennially incapable of competing in the sec will be able to turn it around. maybe he can, but in organizational life, at least from my observation, it’s exceedingly rare that the people who screw things up are also the ones who fix them.
6) and it’s time to question what richt has earned. he’s a great guy, a great representative of the institution (though the arrests have begun to sully that image), and he’s still arguably the most successful coach we’ve had in spite of the downward trend since 2005 (i don’t want to hear about 07 or pre-season #1: those seasons stand out more to me now as a tremendous squandering of talent since we didn’t even sniff the sec championship game). but richt, like anyone else, has earned no consideration beyond what is best for the program and the institution. you can “believe” in richt all you want, but college football is not a faith-based activity. it’s a bottom-line activity, and who are you going to trust: your faith in richt or your own lying eyes?
7) and as a matter of what’s in the best interest of the program and institution, i honestly don’t know at this point if it would be better to retain or fire richt. i think it’s really a pickle because more and more it looks like we’re in a classic coaching trap: too successful overall to make his firing a clear decision, too little success to be happy with his performance.
8 ) it’s a question of what is the most likely positive outcome for the program/institution? and that comes down to this: given the time, is richt capable of turning things around? i’m less and less sure that the answer to that is yes. but when do you press the button? i don’t think we’re there at all, but for the first time i can imagine a realistic possibility of it happening even after this season if it all really snowballs. but with the likely player losses we’ll have next year, it’s hard to see where improvement will come from then. if richt were a stock, i wouldn’t buy him.
9) i’ve got no answers, but we’re in a bad place. i haven’t felt this pessimistic about uga football since the 1990s.
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Pretty astute analysis.
If it is any consolation, or something, the mid-seventies were worse, to me.
Vince turned it around, but this is a different world, with vastly different rules and a vastly different university leadership.
I have no answers, but I agree, sadly, about Richt’s stock value.
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