I’m not sure I buy the premise in the header of this post. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d like to believe that the defense shows up tomorrow and holds the Auburn offense under the season high 34 points it gave up in Jacksonville, but Auburn’s offensive stats coupled with Georgia’s season-long problems with running quarterbacks suggest otherwise.
Now I agree with Aaron Murray when he says the plan is to “not try to think that we have to score 100 points and just keep doing our thing.” I just hope that Mike Bobo realizes that Georgia’s passing game is part of doing that. On passing plays of 20 yards or more, Aaron Murray is one of the ten best quarterbacks in the country.
I don’t advocate abandoning the run, of course, but Georgia isn’t going to win a battle of rushing attacks against the Tigers. For Georgia to score in the 40s, Murray will need to sling the ball around. What should give Bobo confidence attacking Ted Roof’s defense is that even playing against a much tougher secondary and turning the ball over four times, Georgia still put 31 on the board against Florida. If the Dawgs can hang on to the ball tomorrow, there’s no reason they can’t surpass that number. And it’s very likely they’ll need to.
Get The Picture 
We’re going to win 42-38.
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You’ve been drinking my brew.
From experience… surprisingly not as bitter as you’d think coming back up the first time (maybe even a little sweet). It’s the vomiting bile uncontrollably every 30 minutes afterward that makes you feel like death.
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It’s going to be a surreal, tribal scene inside Jordan-Hare Stadium tomorrow. There will be a collective “us-against-the-world” amongst the Auburn faithful-with UGA playing the role of “the world.” Hope we can handle the atmosphere.
Fun Fact: I used to work with Shug Jordan’s daughter (who’s a very nice person). She pronounced her last name Joar-den, as in Micheal, rather than Jur-dun, as in the way all the Auburn fans pronounce it.
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Yeah, looks like they’re using that mentality exactly
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Incidentally, do any UGA fans want Cam Newton on the bench?
I see a pretty good UGA team that doesn’t have a hide to prove it. Auburn with Newton is precisely such a hide A win over a Newtonless AU is a 6th underwhelming victory.
I would make a similar, although much less forceful, argument about Josh Nesbitt.
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How many of SC’s, Arky’s and MSU’s fans complained about A.J. not suiting up?
Sauce for the goose, and all that…
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Those dudes were still in their respective division races. All we have left is perception and pride. Beating a mediocre team does very little for either.
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Neither does losing to a team that cheated to sign its best player (if that’s how it turns out).
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I would say that’s a feature, not a bug 🙂
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I want Georgia to make it five straight over Auburn. Newton sitting makes that more likely. I’m not going to feel bad because a player they likely cheated to get isn’t playing.
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Agree. Beat them any way we can get them and don’t worry about it….The record book will say five straight. That’s what I want to see.
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I think the record will still say four straight because the NCAA won’t retroactively give us the W, they will just vacate the win so nobody gets it.
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True to an extent. Not sure exactly what you’re saying, but the NCAA only vacates wins by the offending party. Losses stand, so if we were to beat a Newton led Auburn team and he was later declared ineligible, the win would still count for us. However, if we lost to Auburn and Newton was declared in eligible, the win would be vacated from their books and the loss from our books as if the game never happened.
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Without all the ruckus, I believe AU would have beaten you guys pretty good.
I just don’t see how AU can be as focused and prepared tomorrow with everything that has gone on. It’s kind of like wearing the burden of being a highly ranked team. At some point, the pressure usually crushes you.
I think the game will be close, but AU wins 34-28.
I’ll be pulling hard for the Dawgs.
BD
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Without all the ruckus I think it would have been something like 41-34…somebody. With the ruckus, I actually expect the same thing.
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I agree, I don’t see how the team can be totally unaffected either positively or in a negative way.
What this will mean for the outcome of the game, who knows?
I remember having Herschel on the sidelines with his thumb in a cast, if you can accept that as a parallel, and the whole team rising up, the whole stadium rising up….the earth shaking at kickoff and stuff.
But there’s a difference, Herschel’s Thumb was broke, he did not lie to his teammates.
(Which is what we are, at the nut of it, talking about here.)
All I can hope is that Lee Ziemba and his cohorts are a little less impressed with Cam Saturday afternoon.
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I am concerned the “ruckus” will affect both teams. UGA Bloggers and their commenters everywhere are spending more time talking about whether Cam will play tomorrow (and whether a victory without Cam is valuable) as opposed to actually breaking down the matchups for this game. Surely our players are also thinking about these things, which doesn’t bode well for their focus going in. I hope our players don’t wet the bed when they step on the field and see that Cam is actually going to play.
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Really?
Pardon me if I come across as obtuse, but if the fact that the good Senator discussing Cam Newton’s eligibility slightly more than breaking down the game has any tangible effect on our players, I’d argue we have a much bigger problem on our hands than this isolated event.
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You missed my point. Not criticizing the Senator or anyone else. Just pointing out the likelihood that this saga is distracting our players as well as Auburn’s.
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I want to beat Auburn any and all times at anything, with or without Newton. They do not top my fiery hot distaste for the Gators, but they aren’t far behind. The only reason that I don’t want Newton to sit is because the kings and queens of all excuses, AU fans, would try and diminish the win.
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Yeah, but, wouldn’t you want to run it to keep Cam off the field?
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I think we’d like to run it, but Auburn is actually solid against the run, and Georgia’s running game is only pretty good. I don’t think it’s possible to get a repeat of Tech ’09 against this Auburn team.
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I totally agree. The Offense is going to have to help our ‘D’ in this game, by have long sustained/scoring drives. If (Big IF) we can score first, we play keep away from Cam. He cannot hurt us if he’s on the sidelines. But we cannot have the Mike ‘3 and out’ Bobo show up that wore out our defense earlier in the season.
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You can keep an offense off the field with a passing game too you know. See the Falcons game last night.
Ryan wound up with 50 attempts, 30+ completions but barely over 300 yards. But they knew going in that running up the gut on Baltimore was a recipe for a loss.
We’ll see if Bobo can figure out the same w/r/t Fairley and the Auburn D.
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Oh, yes. I grew up on r-n-s Houston Oilers football and they ate clock like mad.
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Murray will have to win this game, but he won’t if Bobo confines him to the pocket.
That gives Auburn carte blanche to blitz away, negates Murray’s running ability, and we’ve seen where that leads.
Speaking of the Falcons, they won on a 33-yard touchdown pass from a Designed Roll-out. Rolling Aaron left or right eases pressure and opens his options. It’s foolhardy of CMB/CMR to keep ignoring that.
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I agree with the Senator. Same game plan as UT game.
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Lesson from MSU…hold the ball, eat clock. But score more. We’ll have to establish at least a 3.5 yd/rush average to chew-up the clock. This favors Bobo’s typical game design, it’s up to the O line and King/Ealey to execute.
On D, I trust CTG to instill the KTMFD attitude for Cam. Stuff the dive, and tackle Cam on the corner no matter what. Make him pitch. Make him throw. They may prove successful in scoring that way (i.e. our corners and safeties getting burned as usual) but in the end, if we hold Auburn to 30 points, we have a chance. Cam will have enough problems…frustrating him and making him rely on his teammates to score will get in his head.
I look for the tiggers to run away from Mr. Houston, but if we stuff Cam, then Justin may get some big hits coming from the backside.
Prediction: 6 scores for AU…3 FGs / 3 TDs = 30 points. 5 scores for UGA 1 FG / 4 TDs = 31
GATA!
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I have no idea how to evaluate sources of sports rumors, is this legitimate?
http://twitter.com/790TheZone
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Ok, well if I track the Re-tweets (which I think just means ‘repeating what that guy said’), the original source is ‘SECFootballGuy’, who looks like he set up an account yesterday.
So sounds like BS, but why are 2 media outlets using that account as a source? It’s almost as if sports journalists aren’t entirely professional….
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Looks like it’s already been deleted as well as the “secfootballguy” twitter account. Who would have thought that sports journalists are just looking to break stories first and get their hits instead of keeping strong, integral stories?
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The Dawgs O has to put a ton of points on the board. If there’s one thing CMR should have learned from the spread by now, it’s that you can’t expect to hold them under 35 points – especially when they have a very good dual-threat QB. Our O has to go all-out and score 40+. Murray, AJ, Orson & T. King have to beat these guys, not Blair Walsh.
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