If you’re looking for reasons why 2010 turned out to be a lost season for Georgia football, here’s a good one.
… When the season started, Georgia hoped to have Ealey and King as a potent tandem. They talked of each rushing for 1,000 yards. Instead the Bulldogs will end up having had each available in only seven of their 13 games.
What is striking now is the tone of the coaches. I don’t want to say that they’ve written Ealey and King off entirely, but it’s pretty clear between yesterday’s comment from Richt about King (the current Quote of the Day), Bobo’s mention of how close the coaches came to taking the redshirt off Ken Malcome and Ealey’s own awareness that he’s in competition with the redshirted Malcome and a player who hasn’t even committed to Georgia yet to be next year’s number one back that the coaches aren’t married to this year’s top two.
Get The Picture 
Yeah, neither of those guys turned out to be very good this year even when they were healthy. With King, I’m really not surprised by that, Ealey looked like he had potential last year but outside of brief flashes didn’t show us much this year. Maybe he’ll come back with fire in his belly and be ready to play next year, a little competition never hurt anybody. I can also do without his on the field antics.
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I fail to see how heartburn will remedy Ealey’s problems.
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+1
Hemorroids might be better at getting him to move his ass.
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I honestly can’t believe that Ealey didn’t play better than he did this year. With the flashes of brilliance he showed last year, I was expecting huge things this year. Maybe he needs to get back into the #24 jersey.
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His early season fumbles that contributed to (caused?) 2 losses by the Dawgs made Ealey overly anxious to the point that he no longer ran with the reckless abandon one needs to be successful in the SEC (see Herschel Walker). To a slightly lessor extent the same thing happened to King. Neither of those backs came back mentally from fumbling at the absolutely worst times even though they did not really fumble that much. Without those fumbles the Dawgs win at least 2 more games, maybe 3 more. Also, the Ealey whiff on the block of the DE near the end of the Arkansas game causing Murray to get sacked probably cost the Dawgs that game, too.
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Would be nice to pick up Crowell and have him running circles around those boys. He has a style similar to Trent Richardson. Pair that with a newly revived “old school bust your ass” S&C program (hopefully) and he could do some damage. That is if he puts the work in………..
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“Attitude reflect leadership”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGhz4OA6Wgg
There is an UNUSUAL amount of time spent getting these young men’s attention. The close proximity in age between the RB’s coach and his players might be more of a minus than a plus. A young coach can’t be a players “buddy”. A healthy regime of “bull in the ring” might just be the answer to this inattentive response. Yes they may get nicked up. I wouldn’t make it comfortable for them for no matter what. A healthy understanding between leader/coach and student/player is always beneficial. We might just have a case of too much “rock star status” going on here. We sure weren’t playing at full strength at any point in the early season. Chapas injury hurt us a lot more than we talk about. Losing a game early is hard to overcome. Look at VTech’s 2nd game after losing to Boise. It showed a lot character in those players to rebound after that 2nd loss and win out. That’s intestinal fortitude right there!
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“That’s intestinal fortitude right there!”
It’s also an ACC schedule.
Good call on the Chapas injury, though. He hasn’t gotten nearly enough credit for the success of the running game the past few years. With him limited this year, it just wasn’t the same.
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Are they that bad? Looking just at ypc over the last 2 years, they’ve been as good as Knowshon Moreno. Knowshon averaged 5.4 and 5.6, while these two have averaged 5.7/5.3 (Ealey) and 5.2/5.4 (King) I know they aren’t as fun to watch and don’t do they “making a -2 yard loss into a +1 yard gain” thing that Knowshon did, but it terms of average production they seem to be pretty good.
Musa Smith, who I recall being very well thought of, averaged 4.9 over his career at Georgia.
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Rick,
You’re correct saying that those stats (5+ ypc) look good for both of them. But look at who they amassed the large majority of their yardage on…No one who was worth much of a damn (ie, Auburn, SCe, etc.) allowed them much running room while ULaLa, etc were the teams that they padded their stats against.
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Rick has a good point. I’d add that our coaching staff jerks our RBs around on a seemingly weekly basis – depending on who is ‘in favor’ or ‘out of favor’ at the moment. I have no doubt Malcome/Crowell will be the next Ealey/King. The answer to our running problems is always just around the corner with a redshirt or recruit de jour. Maybe the perpetual inconsistent running game isn’t the talent – maybe its just plain lousy coaching.
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Which coach would you blame for each back missing six games this season?
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He has a point Senator our running backs fumble the ball, they never change the ball to the off hand and they tend to run to a spot. I know a RB coach can’t teach vision but he can stop fumbles.
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Senator, why not turn that around. I don’t believe you are saying fewer RB injuries would have meant better RB production. Why are our coaches ‘writing our RBs off’ if they were injured? Did they write AJ off when he was injured? Nope.
Truth is, our RBs screw up all the time – fumbles, missed blocks, poor execution, missed assignments, etc. But it’s easier to ‘write off’ Ealey/King than to admit the coaching needs improvement. Yet another example of the coaching attitude that gave us directional kick-offs for sooo long before CMR finally admitted there was a problem and fixed it. It took a change in coaching, not a new kicker. The RB problems will be fixed through coaching, whether we switch RBs or not.
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+1.
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-2. There we go. Much better.
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Could be wrong but pretty sure Senator was referring to suspensions. But yea, I can see where those are the coaches fault as well.
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Exactly, take a look at what a great job the Running Backs coach did for the Gamecocks from last year to this year. It’s all about coaching. Oh, wait, maybe there was another difference. Maybe if we looked at how the great UF coaches turned everyone into Percy Harvin. Hmmm. Maybe not. Well, its obvious that since Texas had the same coaches, their defense must have been just as good this year. Well…
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How long does CMR put up with King? He isn’t responsible enough to make academic appointments, he can’t remember to pay speeding tickets, He pouted away his freshmen year behind Knowshon. He needs to grow up. He has had way too many chances to get his act together.
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It does seem to be a character/discipline issue with Caleb, although he has had enough chances to display the potential he supposedly arrived with, maybe was just not as talented as recruiters forecast. I agree, after all the chances he has been given, it is time to plow more fertile ground. Sometimes you just swing and miss. If he really didn’t do all he could to shine and grab the brass ring, he will wake up later in life with huge regrets. Sorry for him, but he did have his shot.
As Rick said, some of KM’s best runs were for short yardage. Knowshon was the best 3-4 yard back we have ever had because many of his runs were 5-7 yards after contact. He isn’t getting away with that in the NFL so he has been unimpressive running behind a weak Denver OL. What bothers me the most is KM, Caleb, and Ealy are all having difficulty with finding holes behind our OL the past 4 years. Seems to be a disturbing pattern.
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You wonder if Brandon (his older brother) will try to get Caleb to transfer to another school where they will hire Brandon as a coach.
It worked in HS.
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Agree that the holes aren’t there. However, on the few occasions that there are holes, King and Ealey don’t seem to have any speed to hit the hole and break free. That, or the turf monster trips them up.
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Also, Thomas is small so I assume he must be fast. However, we repeated tried to run him between the tackles. I’d think a toss sweep or some way to get him outside would be the best way for him.
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I think we’ve got a microcosm here of what I believe has been a recruiting / talent analysis problem of late. King and Ealey may be written off? Richard Samuel languished at rb before moving to lb?
That’s a lot of potential whiffs at running back.
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Not saying you are wrong, but look at the offer lists those guys had. It’s not like we took a chance on a bunch of 2 stars. EVERYBODY wanted these guys. does that mean EVERYBODY was wrong and we were unlucky?
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Seems to me we have a problem with assessing the RB position. Let’s see, MAYBE we should burn the redshirt and put KM out there and see if he’s any better. OR, hopefully we can get Crowell and maybe he’d be better than what we’ve got. Is Lumpkin better? Or Ware? Or Thomas Brown? Or maybe we should’ve played Knowshon as a true frosh.
Why can’t our coaches see some of these things in practice?
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Any time that you will red shirt a tremendous running back because he can’t pick up the blitz, it just tells me you have a ex-quarterback as a head coach. The only thing Mark Richt cares about is QB’s. Running backs are just more blockers for the QB. We are a passing football team that only runs enough so the Gawd Almighty play action pass can be executed. We are not Running Back U and have not been since Dooley retired. We recruit midgets at running back. Marks had 10 years OJTing as a head coach and yet every year he is learning something knew. This year its we didn’t practice hard enough in the pre-season. I had a boss like Mark one time and the guy would change his management philosophy like some people change their underwear. The bottom line was his employees (players) were never sure what he was doing. We have looked confused for the last 3 years because Mark still doesn’t know what he’s doing at HC. Early on he was just imitating Bobby but the SEC turned out to be a tougher league.
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Georgia has run the ball more than it’s passed in every one of the last five seasons.
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That may be true Senator. But does anyone consider UGA a running team? Even when we had Knowshon I didn’t consider us a run-oriented offense. 69D has a point, CMR does have an infatuation with QBs. If CMR had an equal amount of love for NTs it would solve a big problem.
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Dude, you’re not even making sense. First of all, most people would probably consider UGA a “balanced” team. But if you insist on going with “running” or “passing,” then yes, people consider UGA a running team, probably BECAUSE THEY RUN THE BALL MORE THAN THEY PASS (and they have for at least 5 consecutive years, possibly more). Where is the gray area?
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Speaking of Lumpkin, Ware and Brown, I wish we had a couple of those guys around now.
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