Is Mike Bobo getting ready to shock the world?
https://twitter.com/#!/SethEmerson/status/96210918114992128
I’ll settle for surprising Boise State.
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
Get The Picture
Or maybe no one on the team can block worth a damned…
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Frustrating. This makes three seasons in a row we’ve heard this “we’re going to do something creative with this guy or we have a new package for that guy” story, and it either never pans out, or it is used poorly. I’ll believe it when I see it…. and see it used effectively.
Ex.: One single drive in 09 to start the season against Ok. St. kicking ass with all this creative stuff (wild dog, switching in Logan Grey at QB, etc.), driving straight down the field, then never seeing it again all season.
Ex.: Branden Smith has one big run on an end around against South Carolina. Thereafter, every single time he’s in the game (09 and 10) they run that play, never faking it or using him as a red herring. Smith in the game = Smith getting the ball. Everyone watching knows that, and it never works again.
Ex.: Logan Grey being put into the game at QB for one play at at time in 09, and running the read option and keeping it every single time. Never handing it off, never throwing; just the read option, and everyone knew it and it never worked.
Ex.: Carlton Thomas as a change of pace back. “Uh oh, we’ve got a change of pace guy in, I bet you think we’re going to run a sweep or send him out for a pass… PSYCHE! straight up the middle!!!!!!”….. for a loss, 9 out of 10 times, because thats what we did every single time and everyone knew it. I expect to see more of this again. “Guess what, he’s back in the game, bet you think there’s no way we’ll do that again, and….. PSYCHE!” for another loss.
Ex.: The fabled Mark Deas package. How was this supposed to be any different than the Branden Smith package? “Well sometimes coaches just put that stuff out there to make D coordinators prepare for something extra that we never use.” Again, how was this supposed to be different than the Branden Smith stuff that they were already preparing for?
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Hmmm, after going through last years stats, earlier to see about the third and long myth of Thomas up the middle. I have to say there were lots of 8 + yard runs of Thomas up the middle. But hey don’t let facts get in the way of a good myth.
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Of all those examples, that is not the one I expected anyone to disagree with. I do remember a few of those Thomas up the middle runs being successful, but since you know the facts, what % of those third and long runs resulted in a first down?
Seriously, though, when its third and long and you see murray hand the ball to Thomas, at that instant when you realize Thomas has it and he’s going straight up the middle, are you thinking, “great call, this is going to work”, or are you thinking, “not this again, why aren’t we passing, this rarely works”?
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H.K. at 10:06 am
“Ex.: Carlton Thomas as a change of pace back. “Uh oh, we’ve got a change of pace guy in, I bet you think we’re going to run a sweep or send him out for a pass… PSYCHE! straight up the middle!!!!!!”….. for a loss, 9 out of 10 times”
H.K. at 10:33 am
“I do remember a few of those Thomas up the middle runs being successful.”
A lot can happen in 27 minutes.
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How is it contradictory to say you remember something failing 9/10 times and then saying that same thing did occasionally succeed? 1/10 fits the bill of “I do remember a few of those Thomas runs being successful”.
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In my mind, you can’t say something fails 90% of the time (OMG BOBOZ TARDED!111!!!11) and then, when confronted with some evidence, say “oh… yeah… sure… but… but…but…” At the end of the day it’s just harmless semantics. But the uninformed hyperbole is getting awfully worn. I’m sure the stats bear out that this play was productive more than 10% of the time.
Bobo does some things really well. I’m sorry that he doesn’t call the flawless games that any of the other flavor of the month offensive coordinators would. Quite frankly, I’m pulling for him so that we win… and so that it shuts up the drama queens in our fan base.
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Never said Bobo was a bad coordinator, or “tarded”. I’m talking about getting creative, not the overall offense. I don’t think the offense was the problem last year except for some untimely fumbles which Bobo didn’t drop.
We clearly disagree on the use of Carlton Thomas. How bout the rest of those examples?
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I wonder about things like the end around with Smith, if that is the call of the QB (he can hand off or fake, depending on what he sees), I also wonder about audibles being the issue on some of those 3rd and long calls. As far as the fair catch thing, well that I do not have any idea about.
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This was covered in a previous post a few days ago as James points out, but fun to revisit CT’s REAL stats (assuming I’m reading these right from cfbstats.com):
– as noted, only 4 attempts on 3rd down, and all in short yardage situations. He converted once for a 1st.
– 20% of his carries on 1st & 2nd down covered 10 or more yards, and his overall average YPR was over 4 as noted, so that’s pretty servicable as a running back and what CMB’s chart would have been telling him too.
I think the meme (which is funny) about CT is that we threw him into the line in situations that called for a different play. I submit (with no way to verify right now) that a lot of this came from 2nd down attempts after a failed “1st & bomb”, especially during the first 4 games AJ was out. Interestingly, this was half of his carries (32), most first downs (10), most runs over 10 yards (7) and nearly a 5 YPR average (4.81). So, we saw a lot of CT on 2nd down, where he was fairly productive. But with only 64 attempts and 272 total yards on the season, most of us wondered why we either: A) did not use him more, or B) bothered to use him at all.
And it’s “Gray”.
I will concede the limited and unvaried use of Logan and Branden in the situations you’ve brought up are frustrating. As for Smith, maybe that was a little like Hershel….we knew, you knew, they knew, and we all knew the other knew that HW was going to get the ball on a sweep. Their job was to stop it. With Smith’s speed, I’d submit Bobo is thinking the same thing…let him get to the outside and let’s see if they can catch him. You’re not going to run that play 5+ times a game anyway.
As for Logan heading into the line everytime on the read-option…uhhh, errrr, ummm…yeah.
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Hershel?
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There were three times that Thomas got the ball last year on 3rd down. He gained 4 total yards. However, on 1st and second downs he averaged 4 yards a carry. Which if I am not mistaken is what you want your RB to average. Now, I can not say how many times he broke off a 10 yard gain on those carries. But I can say that he only carried the ball 64 times last year and averaged 4.25 yards a carry. So his negative rushing times could not have been as bad as you and a lot of guys make it out to be and surely not 9 out of 10 times. Maybe 50/50 which is still bad, but that also means it was a feast/famine situation. Where he gets stopped for -4 but then busts a 10 yarder.
His long was 15 yards, and he made 10 first downs as a running back out of 64 runs, that seems pretty good to me.
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You’re mistaken. 4 ypc is barely adequate. 5 or better is where you want to be. Last year, Thomas was credited with gaining 291 yards and losing 19 yards (for a net of 272). I don’t know how many carries resulted in those 19 negative yards. But for some perspective, Ealey had way more than twice as many carries as Thomas, and was credited (debited?) with 17 yards lost. Bottom line is, Thomas was not an efficient weapon in the backfiled last year.
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+1
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Rome is one player I would prefer to see red-shirted unless he is absolutely going to dominate. We have great players and depth at TE, why not save him.
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Like KM and all that depth we had at tailback. If he can play and contribute, play the kid, no matter the depth. if he’s only gonna see a handfull of snaps and never touch the ball(Marlon Brown) then RS him.
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I agree Jason, it seems like a waste to play him….unless we think he will be one of those “3 and done” NFL lock guys. Barring injuries to at least 2 of our TE group, I don’t see what we gain.
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Bobo disagrees.
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to me that sounds like Charles and Rome could be the two TE’s out there catching passes next year.
assuming we actually throw it to the TE’s.
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If by “there,” you mean Athens, I doubt it. I count on Orson going pro after this year. I just hope he really blows up this year before he leaves.
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well…
next year was supposed to mean “in about 5 weeks”
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Didn’t we just see an article about how Lynch had been working his a$$ off and had become a beast? Now Rome is going to use playing time that may have been Lynch’s? Or Charles’s? Or White’s? Or Figgins’s? I doubt there will be changes to the offensive approach. But I don’t doubt we’ll have confusion about which players should be on the field.
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I don’t think anyone has ever accused the staff of playing a freshman over an upperclassman who may be better.
If Rome takes playing time away from the older guys, it’ll be because he deserves it. So the only confusion will be if we hear that Rome is unstoppable and he never plays. We just have a wealth of good TE’s.
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And I have no problem IF he is better, or more productive. If all things are equal, RS the freshman. It only makes sense if he is the BEST option, not just a talented option. I have no problem with playing freshmen, but they would lose ties for me. Why waste a year of eligibility to get comparable results? Now if we are getting needed experience for a depth isssue, or immediate need at the start of the next season then play him. I don’t that is the situation at UGA with tight ends.
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We will see different packages with different players when Bobo is gone.
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Suprise Boise hopefully but I’d be happy with suprizing my brother in-law, after every play he says ” I knew Bobo was going to call that, I just didn’t want to spoil it for you.”
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+1 There are very few UGA fans that can’t call the O. I guess the OC feels that the opposing DC is not as familiar with our O as our fans. However after years of running the exact same O I think the opposing DC’s consider UGA as an off week.
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And yet UGA averaged over 30 points a game. Wow, we must be better than we thought to do that when everyone knows what is going to be called. Sometimes, people, engage the brain please.
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My point isn’t that Bobo isn’t a bad play caller or a bad coordinator on the whole… or that Carlton Thomas is a bad player. I personally think Bobo’s pretty good at running a pro offense and getting better, and I think Thomas has a lot of potential if used properly. The problem I was pointing out is that when it comes to Bobo deviating from the norm and getting creative (which we always hear rumors of this player or that player doing something unusual or this new package or that in the preseason), the last few years have been very disappointing, and forgive me if I’m not reserving the least bit of hope that a Jay Rome package or him doing anything outside of typical tight end duties will be successful. I hope it happens and its successful, but the last few seasons have taught me not to expect that or get my hopes up.
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Well that I do not know about since Pro-teams seldom have the riches at TE that UGA does not. Since at least 2 of those, maybe more might play on Sundays.
Of course, if he gets cute and it blows up in his face, well then he is an idiot. So he is kind of in a no-win situation imho.
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+1000
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If you could predict all the plays Bobo is calling, you’d be coaching on Sundays.
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The funny thing is both points of view in these comments are accurate. It does seem like every summer has a story about how creative Bobo is going to get with the playcalling, but it doesn’t really seem to materialize during the season. At the same time, the fanbase gripes about boneheaded playcalling and pines for someone else while refusing to admit that every OC makes headscratching calls.
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Bingo
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Yes
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I agree with HK above. Get back with me after this season. Bobo as a QB Coach & as an OC will do a great job. (Running Richt’s Offense). GATA.
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IMO, Bobo’s problem is that he plays for balance and “pints’ but at times it seems that he does not play to the game at hand. it doesn’t matter that we score 30 points, if the other team has more. Too many times, he gets away from what might be working to achieve balance, or goes conservative, presumabley because we have already scored plenty of points this half, this quarter, etc. He plays the stat sheet and not the opponent
Bobo will not change the offense, to add two tight end looks, or for any other reason. He and Richt love the I-Formation play action offense-regardless of whether it is working (See Arkansas last year) and that will never change
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I agree with this Mr. Tu.
We drive and kick ass and then change the entire approach. We don’t make them adjust or keep doing whatever seemed to work. Seems like some of the above comments about being balanced. Who cares? other than the final score.
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