If you’ve ever wondered what the captain of the Hindenburg had to say in the aftermath, here’s a clue what it must have sounded like:
… Schematically, Mississippi State called numerous blitzes, Richt said, which tripped up the ground attack.
“We just, at times, called a couple running plays just blindly and just said, ‘Hey we’re going to run this no matter what,’ ” he said. “There times when we had success and some times we got hit in the mouth because of the pressures they brought. And again, until you look at the film, it’s going to be hard to say exactly. They did a nice job defensively.” [Emphasis added.]
I give Richt points for the honesty – not that it was exactly hard to miss that after watching Carlton Thomas being sent into the middle of nine and ten-man alignments more than once – but that’s one sad admission from a guy who used to be considered an offensive guru.
I’m ready to turn play calling over to a graduate assistant. Even pulling random plays out of a hat has to be better than what we saw last night.
Get The Picture 
friends, i think our offense is rebuilding.
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Anyone watch the Al-Ar game? See any of Aub-SC, KY-Fl, or Tn-UAB? Is Ga as tough as any of those teams, including UAB?
Nope, not in my opinion. For some reason, over the last three seasons, GA has lost a toughness required to compete and win in the SEC. We need to get it back to the Junkyard dogs on both sides of the line. Grantham is getting us there, BoBo and Richt are not. In the AJC Richt says he is going to look within to find the problem. Just watch the other teams in this league to see what the problem is. As to where, hope he looks in the mirror.
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Can you say no two-a-days? Makes one wonder.
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It’s not 2-a-days. It’s bigger than that. Some of us have been pointing out the massive failures in the S&C program for years. The voluntary workouts in-season & the old, tired methods of CVH. NFL scouts, numerous times over the last 4-5 yrs point out how we have great talent but our players are weak, soft & FAT. How any fan can watch both our lines get pushed around week after week & still think we don’t have a major problem with strength & conditioning is beyond me.
Fans thought Richt wouldn’t fire Willie because they were old friends. No, the one he will never fire, despite pathetic results is his closest friend, Dave Van Hal.
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The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!
I’m tired of defending Richt, and that quote does not help…
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Bobo needs to go. And we need to make serious changes in the strength and conditioning program. Somehow, the play-calling has gotten markedly worse; and our guys just aren’t as tough as other teams. It’s embarrassing.
Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think what began in the preseason as a falsely hot seat under Richt is now becoming a legitimately hot seat.
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hot seat? this is a goddamn death watch now, and frankly i’m ready to hold the pillow over his face myself just to get it over with.
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Did Richt or Bobo not know that MSU wouldn’t blitz a freshman QB? Hell, my wife could have told you that. I don’t think so much of the offense can be blamed on the O-line. When they stack 8-9 in the box against out 5 lineman it’s just a numbers game after that. Bobo’s stupid play calling is making the entire offense look terrible.
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They(MSU) took note of what Arky did…apparently we did not watch that film cause we would not be playing them again, I guess.
Richt just sealed Bobo’s fate with that admission. No one is going to give Bobo slack after saying “yea we just threw crap at the wall to see if it would stick better this time.”
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What the hell do we pay Bobo for again?
Calling plays blindly?
Someone else said that too…OH yea WM
Something like that bout the Fla game last year.
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I feel sorry for our guys. When they are in the huddle and a play is called they must look at each other and say what , WTF!
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“Pulling random plays out of a hat” is what this is.
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Murray is a warrior. I feel badly for him because a lot of the other players on this team are a bunch of candy asses. This lookes like a Ray Goff team.
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Am I watching the same game everyone else is? Of course the play calling sux. Of course Bobo needs to go and of course it’s stupid to rush up the middle when the D crowds the box. I’m not criticizing our O line because of this game. I’m criticizing them because of last season..and this season..and this game. We need to fire Searels too. But what we need to admit is that in addition to awful coaching THESE KIDS SUCK. We are awful at recruiting now. Spurrier said it best when he said, ‘they always get those top recruiting classes, what happens to those kids when they get to Athens?’ We are such good judge of talent that we have a kid we recruited as a QB playing back up receiver and a 5 star running back playing LB. These guys are making stupid decisions and lacking intensity play after play. And who went and got these kids? The same coaches we are now saying need to be fired because of their poor decisions on the field. Why is this even a discussion?
oh and during the game I took one look at Richt during the first sign of contraversy and knew.. this man will not rise above the challenge and lead us to victory.
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From re-watching the broadcast, and watching that last drive and the reaction by Richt on the sideline, I actually think he called the plays for that TD drive. He seemed a lot more involved in what we were running than the rest of the game. Probably was telling Bobo what to call. May be a sign of things to come.
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I had not seen Richt with a play card much this season until late in the game.
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Very insightful.
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He hung Bobo out to dry with that “calling running plays blindly” quote. Bobo may not be fired, but I’m pretty sure he ain’t gonna be calling crap again. I would expect to see Bobo back in the box next week.
Now on the D side. Is it Grantham or is it players who do not want to buy in? I think a little of both, but the D is killing us. We had MSU in 3rd down all nite long and never got off the field.
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umm…its pretty hard to play defense when your offense only puts up a couple field goals. I dont care if you trot Bama’s D out there. At some point fatigue is a factor for everyone.
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I have said it a number of times CTG is dealing with Special Ed kids that just can’t follow instructions. The 3-4 and the nickle depend on players playing their assignments and not reacting to fakes. Once the who’s got the ball portion of the play is determined then and only then do you run like heck to the ball. Our guys are all ADD kids they will take a fake any fake. Add this to the fact that we have no DL capable of holding the gaps and the D is burned. CTG is calling the plays the guys are just not smart enough to play the positions.
If CTG doesn’t have a buy out in his contract his agent is on the phone as we speak looking for another Pro gig. The other two D coaches will be on staffs within hours of their resignations. RG will get a gig based on his recruiting. The handwriting is on the wall.
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I actually agree with this somewhat.
Our secondary looked lost on just about every single play out there. They made a below average QB look quite competent.
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Let’s go back to 2007- Richt showed emotion(celebration, blackout, etc…). We did great. Richt was forced to apologize for celebration and stopped showing emotion again and team has played without emotion since also. Not defending him, will not do that again, but he is darned if he does and darned if he doesn’t. Now if he went around cursing, throwing, stomping, calling ncaa names and doing things underhandidly others, outside UGA, would look the other way. Coaches and media do NOT like UGA, because they do NOT like Richt, because he is a good guy. They put him down, when he shows no emotion and make fun of him when he does.
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i don’t give a damn what the national media thinks, just what his players think and maybe his supporters. you don’t have to curse, or throw anything to boost up a teams spirits. just show intensity. he doesn’t do that and frankly even when he did back then it felt forced (to me anyway).
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motion and gimmicry continued to be shown but was not as effective so he quit using it. I dont think he was big on it when it was working anyway tho.
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It’s scheme and play calling. Buck Belue’s protests to the contrary, Bobo just doesn’t appear to have what it takes. Ultimately, as much as I love him, that falls on CMR. Right now we’re not taking advantage of our athletes, creating mismatches, attacking the defense or even doing much to fool them. Until you break the 8 and 9 man front and force them out of it you are not going to succeed. There are ways to slow the blitz — running the I into the teeth of it is not one of those ways. Bobo’s play calling is creating a bad problem for the offensive line. 5 0r 6 can’t block 8 or 9. It’s simple math.
Bobo appears terrified to attack the defense in the red zone. How many times have we actually thrown the ball into the end zone? Very few. Playing for field goals won’t cut it.
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Buck Belue has repeatedly demonstrated that is a clueless moron when it comes to discussing the football program.
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The season is lost, so it is time to fire coaches to prepare for the next season. It will also give time for 2011 recruits to reconsider GA if ever they change their minds this early depending on the result of the new coaches and who the coaches are.
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Aren’t GA fans in a tough position after vehemently denying all preseason, again and again and again and again, that Richt was on the hot seat? There was a time in July that this blog might as well have been renamed the Bemused Mark Richt Hot Seat Memewatch, and it continuously gave that meme no credence. Can you completely go back on such a deeply seated principle so quickly? If so, everything this offseason was just a front, wasn’t it?
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I know…because no one has ever been wrong before. I guess everything u say is perfect and the truth GTFO of here and go back to where you came from.
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It’s not the being wrong, it’s the repeated claims that people like Finebaum were idiots (well, he is, but got it right this time) and couldn’t possibly be right, because Georgia just doesn’t fire good men and good coaches, they’re better than other places.
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Claims about Richt being on a hot seat weren’t justified this summer. They might be NOW, but they weren’t this summer. It’s like pushing all-in on a weak draw in poker; even if you hit, you can’t look back and say it was a good move when you made it.
Finebaum et al. could not have known this summer that our offensive line would look like this. They couldn’t have known about A. J. Green being out 4 games. They couldn’t have known that our running game would struggle like it is. Etc., etc., etc. So back when they began making all these hot seat claims, we were RIGHT to mock them. And we’re no less right about that now.
It just so happens that some relatively unpredictable things have happened between then and now, all of which make it look like Finebaum et al. knew what the hell they were talking about. (Like when some lucky bastard at the poker table says, “I just knew it,” after some ridiculous suck out.)
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i think some of us are talking about different things. one is what constitutes a hot seat. if by that you mean a recent body of work that puts one’s job in immediate danger, i’d agree that this summer’s talk about richt being on the hot seat was premature.
but what i think tywebbo1 is talking about is the way people who starting criticizing richt earlier on were automatically labeled by some as the lunatic fringe, kind of like the people who started saying willie was horrible in 2006.
call it lucky if you want. other people might call it prescient. personally, i think the internet commentariat has often proved far more astute than our coaches.
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Senator always pointed out that ANY coach can be on the hot seat following a terrible season. A lot of people who were spreading the hot seat meme last summer would come back with that lame answer when challenged–“Well, what I mean is that if he goes 6-6 or worse this year he will probably be on the hotseat.” That applies to virtually every coach in the country, and is utterly stupid as a reason for saying that someone is on the hot seat. Richt was not on any real hot seat THIS summer (i.e., under no ultimatum, official or unofficial, about having some major turnaround). Of course a team that suddenly can do nothing well and is 0-3 in conference play starts to change the perception a bit. (Although, I don’t think there’s any way that Richt gets fired THIS year. If we go 6-6 or miss a bowl altogether, then there will be absolutely no leach remaining for next year. That seems clear.)
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The problem with your defense is, they weren’t eminently unpredictable. A clear pattern has formed around the Mark Richt era, and most objective observers saw the way it was going. Clearly, Georgia bloggers have an affinity for the men, which is admirable, but it prevented most of them from seeing the state of the program for what it is: declining. There is a trend that has been developing since 2008- and maybe beforehand if you count 2007 as an aberration- and it’s one of underachievement and disappointment. 2008 was probably the most talented team of the Mark Richt era, and thus the most disappointing, even though there was raw success in terms of wins.
And maybe this middling place the UGA program is at right now would acceptable if there was a clear sign that the future is bright. But I don’t see it. Aaron Murray will certainly improve, but so did Matthew Stafford, and it’s doubtful that Murray is ever greater than Stafford. A.J. Green will also likely be gone after this season. If this offense is the best that can be mustered without a 1st round pick at wide receiver, then what can be expected next year?
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He needs to adapt things to the talent he has available and not adapt the talent to the things that have worked in the past. He was recently quoted as saying “We’ve been doing the same things that we did in 2002 and 2005 when we won the SEC” That is not the quote verbatim, but that’s the gist; and it betrays a potential complacency that needs addressing. Fundamentals were a BIG part of yesterdays loss, fundamentals that broke down in our other two losses: fumbles, dropped passes, and pass blocking that would’ve been fine for screen plays except we weren’t running screens.
I don’t think he should be fired but he needs to leave his comfort zone and take the appropriate actions lest he potentially go sub .500 this year.
If he does not adapt, he will be let go. I’m not calling for it, but I see it happening.
Grantham was a step in the right direction but he’s almost forced to commit the same errors as Richt by default, running his D with Martinez’s recruits. I think he’s doing the best he can with what he’s got, but I think, sadly, it’ll be 2 or 3 years before they crank out the D Grantham envisions. Hopefully he’ll be with UGA long enough.
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
There are bright spots though, in spite of what I perceive as coaching deficiencies:
Aaron Murray is playing he heart out and getting up after being throttled without being rattled. He doesn’t panic, he’s mobile, and he’s gutsy, nearly to the point of recklessness, but he’s never been wrong thus far. Sure he throws into double coverage but so did cox, so did Staff, and so did David Greene.
Brandon Boykin is disciplined, you could tell every fiber of his being was screaming to run on a couple of those fair catches, yet he called for the fair catches anyways, as he was coached to do. Whether it was a good coaching decision is debatable but he excuted regardless of what he thought of it and got visibly more upset with the way things were going as the game went on. We need more like him in all of our areas of play.
May these two inherit the Earth, it was good to see them (as well as Logan Gray) giving the scoreboard the finger and hustling after we were undoubtedly beaten.
Short story: Do what you can with what you have, know your advantages and limitations, adapt as needed.
I want so badly to send CMR a copy of Sun Tzu
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“The horror……the horror”…..Marlon Brando character in Apocalypse Now.
Rose colored glasses tend to make you myopic.
And yet, in the dim mists of the past, there is:
1979. Which began with a loss to Stanford in the Bluebonnet Bowl and ended at 6-5, and the successful recruitment of a difference-making player.
There is only hope.
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Imagine what would have happened to the 1980 UGA team (and all the early ’80s teams) if CVD had been fired after the 1979 season. Think about that before endorsing the kind of action some are calling for today. A wise man once said: “You are never as good as they say you are when you win or as bad as they say you are when you lose.”
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I’d rather make this decision based on the body of his work and his own decision making rather than the hopes that he MIGHT recruit a player who turns out to be arguably the greatest college football player to ever live.
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So, let me get this straight. You would have fired CVD in 1979 “for his body of work.?”
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Why don’t we ever use 4 and 5 wide sets.I think our wr corps as whole would be hard to stop and create alot of mismatches.For GoD sakes just starting opening up a new can.
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No offense to Coach Dooley, but it took him 20 years to get there. I don’t want to wade thru ten more years of this.
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Lets face facts CMR is in his O comfort zone with plays that date back to his early FSU days. The FSU teams of those days were so far superior to their competition that penalties etc meant little. Fast forward to now and the 85 scholarship limit. We put ourselves at a disadvantage by being the nice guy that brings a rock to a gun fight. We are still running the same plays 20 years later only now the competition has at least our equal in players. In the old days UGA had qulaity depth, not now, we have walk-ons on scholarships we have kickers, snappers, guys who would be cut from UF or Bama standing around taking up space. We are good to average on the first string but we have terrible depth. Wonder why we breakdown on D late in the game now? CTG knows the depth is an issue and he is making the first string guys play until they puke. Willie would let RG and JF substitute all the time so our suckatude was balanced. Ever notice in the Willie days we would have 2nd or 3rd string guys in on downs that you would have thought you should have your first teamers on. It happened all the time.
You are not going to see real attitude improvement until there is some kind of ultimate accountability. Tell them up front that they will be evaluated based on their game and practice performance at the end of the year and if they fail to show that they are capable of playing in the SEC, we will not be renewing their scholarship. They may seek a position elsewhere. Tough love if you will but it accomplishes a couple of things. Maybe the guys spend some of their drinking time studying film. Maybe they get serious about the work-outs. Maybe they voluntarily work after practice. If you can’t tell by their play whether this is happening then you are a bad coach.
Fire Coach Van and bring in someone from the current young guns. Van is too busy trying to save souls to produce winners.
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Or make Coach Van team chaplain and get a younger guy as S&C coach.
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LOL.
CVH so clearly has to go. Ever since the story broke of NFL guys saying our players showed up weak, soft, and fat, CVH needed to go.
The never take away someone’s scholarship thing has definitely made people complacent.
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Or make Coach Van chaplain of the SEC and you team chaplain, Muck–how about that?
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This eternal optimist has had his optimism stomped out of him. Now we can “Turn out the lights cause the party’s over”.
60+ years a Dawg Fan & we are now at an all time low. I was there thru a lot of coaches & a lot of terrible seasons but I have never been to a point that I was ready to give up on the program until now. “That’s All, Folks”.
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Come on 39, you are going to tell me this is worse than Johnny Griffith, worse than…..well, trust me it has been much, much worse than it appears to be now.
I hate to keep talking about Dooley’s tenure, but it seems appropriate.
I am sitting in the stands at Bobby Dodd Stadium in lovely Grant Field, and watching us flail around for almost a whole game, and a gentleman in a red blazer stands up in front of me and screams “Dooley you are a fool, if you are not fired you ought to commit suicide.”
Then Andy Johnson played the Tech defense like Arturo Toscannini…..Dooley, of course, took neither of this red-clad gentleman’s suggestions.
Just saying, 39, a down cycle and a howling lunatic fringe is nothing new.
We are, after all, Georgia, not Alabama.
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Truly spoken III. And in Alabama the lunatics are not the fringe. They are the mainstream.
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Bobo’s motto is when in doubt dive play into the line. I think Bobo has outsmarted himself on a number of occasions over the past few years. With the exception of GT last year when did Bobo just keep running a play that worked until the other team stopped it. Most of the time Bobo just stops himself by not calling it again. Are his series so scripted that he can’t change them or is just too mentally lazy. I think the GT game last year was scripted too but thank Dawg that GT’s DL was as weak as our coaches thought it was otherwise Bobo would have been lost again.
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