You want a surefire way to generate traffic at a Georgia football blog? This usually works:
Georgia’s offense has been maddening over the last few years, hasn’t it? Think of all the stalled drives, all of the predictable play calls — first and bomb, anyone? — and the lack of any cogent identity. We’re calling play action passes on obvious passing downs without even establishing the run. We’re running microback Carlton Thomas right up the middle into a loaded box. Don’t even get me started on all the Wild Dawg nonsense. The only thing left to do is let Mark Richt take back the playcalling duties until we can hire a new OC, right?
To the keyboards, people!
Seriously, there are a couple of things worth pointing to from that post. Firstly, I think this should be taken in context:
… On average, Coach Bobo’s offenses have been more highly ranked nationally. Coach Bobo’s best year (2007) was better than Coach Richt’s (2002). Coach Bobo’s worst year (2009) was better than three of Coach Richt’s five years (2001, 2003, 2004).
That’s not an entirely fair comparison. 2001 saw Richt installing a completely new offense with Jim Donnan’s players. Bobo has had the luxury of refining a system already in place. And that 2003 offense was the least talented bunch of Richt’s tenure in Athens – a very green and shaky offensive line, no established running back and an oft-injured receiving corps.
Secondly, though, while I may not agree totally with that comparison, this next point is spot on.
… Unfortunately, Coach Bobo’s tenure as OC has been worse than Coach Richt’s in the most meaningful statistic, wins. But why is that? Take a look at the defenses each dealt with: Coach Richt benefitted from defenses that were no worse than 16th nationally (with three years of top 5 defenses). Coach Bobo has never had a defense better than 28th nationally, and, more often than not, he was trying to overcome defenses that were in the bottom half nationwide. We’ve generally scored points in bunches, but, unfortunately, over the last half decade our opponents have been scoring even more.
There’s a reason Willie Martinez is gone and Mike Bobo isn’t. It’s the same reason we shouldn’t fret so much about the situation at running back, but should instead worry more about what’s happening on the other side of the ball. If Grantham can’t get the defense back to pre-2007 levels this season, I suspect that even Isaiah Crowell being named SEC freshman of the year would come as little consolation for us when all is said and done.
Get The Picture 
You can score all the points in the world, but it doesn’t mean anything if the other team scores ‘all the points in the world—plus one.’
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All true, but CMR never told his RB’s to fumble the ball like Bobo does.
Plus what was Bobo thinking when he told AJ to sell a jersey to an NFL bird dog?
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Does anyone believe Richt would call plays that differently? And if you do, that Richt wouldn’t work on Bobo’s play calling with him? That he’d give Bobo free reign without questioning his judgement?
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Yeah, I think I’ve gotten over my initial ire toward Bobo. He’s reliable for a good facepalm every now and then, but nothing worthy of a demotion. My eyes are definitely fixed more on the defense right now than the offense. And coming from a natural-born pessimist, I actually think there are reasons for optimism at this point. I think that many of our defensive issues last season stemmed from (a) not having the right personnel in place, especially on the line, and (b) a less-then-effective strength and conditioning program. And so far, all signs point to those two problems having been fixed between then and now. If our DL can wreak some havoc, and our guys can stay fresh for 4 quarters, I think we’re going to have a great year on defense. Or, some freak wave of scooter accidents could wipe everyone out. Hard to tell.
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Offense wins Games and Defense win Championships. The only issue I have with the offense is lack of imagination. Every year we hear about some new wrinkles before the season only to see them ironed out before they make the field. Same plays they have ran for several years, what happened to “King and Ealey in the backfeild together, anything with Loagn Gray other than a QB keeper, Charles lined up as a WR, etc.” Get me fired up like the Smith end around agaianst SC (btw after a few tries you will need to fake it to keep the D honest).
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I think the biggest issue is they were seldom playing in the same games last year.. whether suspensions or injuries.
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Some negative jerks ill continue to rail. Many of them are trollers. Not one is a fan in the sense of cheering for the team. They just want to lambast with negatives because they have no lives nor attention getting devices except negative unreasoning blogs. Their chief defense is that they have an opposing opinion to the positive fans and they have the right to dash everyone’s spirits while trying to create doubt. No logic. Just post a few highschool plays to try and fool others into thinking they can think and train players better than Bobo. It would be laughable but rather is sad .
Their chief claim is that they aren’t drinking the kool-aid. Good. Sit in a corner by yourselves and pound sand up your ass.
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The team could have a few wrinkles but I’m more concerned with getting the basics down. They only get 20 hrs a week and they are only teenagers. Keep rep’ing them over and over until they are perfect. Then do it again. Then add a twist. That’s what Malzahn preaches and how he gets kids turned around so quickly. Keep the base package simple, and branch off that. Thats why i was never a fan of cross training our linemen. First we need the line to be perfect; then worry about cross training.
Bobo is a good coach. Just give him a QB with some experience and a RB who can get 4 yrds. A RB who gets 20, 0, & 0, while nice, just leads to punts.
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Admittedly I am not very smart, but it’s S&C and def line that was sending Carlton Thomas up the middle on 3rd & 5? It was these things calling play action pass after play action pass? It was these things that decided we needed balance up 14 on awbarn and HAD to start running the ball?
IF preception is reality, I just can’t recall being baffled by Richt as much as I seem to be baffled by Bobo. And I don’t mean to hate, I WANT him to succeed so Georgia succeeds. I just don’t feel confident in all these statistics telling me how good he is or has been or will be…not yet.
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Once and for all (I wish), we DIDN’T send Thomas up the middle that many times last year on third and longish. Again, look it up at cfbstats.com. He ran like three times in that scenario the whole year. Also, while we’re at it look up Thomas’ numbers from the year before in the same situation. He was actually really good at picking up first downs while running on third and longish! So, yeah, this meme has taken on a life of its own, and it isn’t even factual.
Basically, it happened twice that we ran Thomas up the middle on third down and he got stuffed. Selective memory and fan frustration took over at that point, and created a “problem” that Bobo now is expected to “fix” but which doesn’t actually even exist.
Similarly with “first and bomb.” We have good success on first downs, both in terms of how often we complete long passes on first down when we try them, and in terms of of our overall yards per play on first down. First down ain’t our problem.
Do we not remember 2006, when Bobo would run the offense at the end of each half, and fans were abuzz with how wonderful he was, and everyone wanted Richt to swallow his pride and give up the playcalling duties to Bobo? Now we actually do gain more yards per game and score more points per game than we did under Richt, but people think Bobo is a fool.
In our better moments as a fanbase, we’ve pretty clearly identified where the main problems have been: defense, s&c, and (to a much lesser extent) weird kicking game strategy. All three of those are being addressed aggressively. Now we wait and hope for results. We can judge Richt’s future prospects in Athens based on how well these problems are addressed, but not by nitpicking Bobo because sometimes we end up in 2nd and 10.
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And if you look at the play log in the Auburn game the offense did not go into a shell. It did the same thing it did in the first quarter, mixing the run and the pass. It just wasn’t as effective in the 2nd quarter.
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And lets not forget the flagrant no calls on Fairly, that has to play in a QBs head sooner or later. Or even the late hit, those play on a young mans mind.
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Don’t forget that S&C also contributes largely to an underperforming and gassed O-line that got pushed around by UCF. Honestly, if the OL and DL are stronger and better conditioned this year, it can go a long way towards making Grantham and Bobo look a lot smarter since they will be more free to scheme and plan better.
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I too get frustrated with Bobo – it gets compounded when you see the “new hotness” spread offenses become so successful. However, I temper that perception with the fact that the two most successful offenses in recent memory had once-in-a-decade players (Tebow and Newton) to put the shine on them. Our pro-style offense looked pretty darn good in 2007 when we had a stud RB.
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Seems like any discussion of the offense usually devolves to complaints and finger-pointing about the D. So first I’ll ask, are we talking about the O or the D? if we’re talking exclusively about the O, then I think we could use a lot of improvement. When it comes to scoring, I’d ask when the heck is the O going to break the top 10, or top 20, or top 30? Whether we have 1st round talent and/or 10 starters returning, the O never seems to improve much year-over-year. Is it too much to ask that we have a top 25 offense? Seems like we demand the D to be top 25, if not significantly better. Why don’t we demand the same high standard from the O?
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Well how about this W Cobb, starting field position plays a more important role in points scored than any other stat. So if the Defense can give the O more chances and shorter fields than scoring can get into the top 20s. However, some teams in this country, heck some conferences in this country, do not even play D, I mean they got people out there but it is just window dressing. And there is no way an SEC team, unless they play a lot of Cream puffs and just blast the heck out of them is going to be a consistent top 20 performer.
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Okay JS, I agree with your and other’s points about sec defenses. However, auburn, arky and bama had top 20 offenses in 2010. I tend to agree with those who say defense wins championships. But then again oregon #1 and auburn #4 (in scoring) were in the mnc. I’m trying to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to any negative comment about our offense. I think the stats and our record point to an obvious conclusion, the offense must improve if we’re going to compete in the sec and nationally. We can’t expect the D to do all the heavy lifting as it did while BVG was here and had perpetual top 5 defenses.
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If you can hit the jackpot with a once-in-a-generation kind of player that fits your system perfectly and allows you to have a national top-five offense even against SEC-caliber defenses, well then yeah, let’s do that, too. 🙂
But as a realistic strategy seeking to maximize our chance of winning a championship, an offense in the upper half of the SEC (top 40 nationally) plus a defense that is lights out is the way to go.
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I’d say, from a QB-matching-the-system perspective we had that. Hell, between Stafford, Moreno, and AJ, our 2008 offense should’ve entered the ratified territory of scoring over 40 points a game that Scam Newton’s Auburn and the Tebow+Harvin Florida offenses averaged.
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Honestly, I don’t know what to say about 2008 exactly. I do think it’s hard to ever say that you “should” be in elite territory. I think there are hard-to-predict intangibles that come into play there. But, that’s not to say you don’t have a good point. In terms of scoring offense, the 08 offense regressed a bit from 07 AND was not as prolific as last year’s offense. That is surprising, to say the least.
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The reason the O won’t be in the Top 10-20 offenses in the nation is because we play SEC defenses every week AND we tend to sit on leads in the 3rd and 4th quarters. Unlike some coaches (*cough* Urban Meyer, Gene Chiznick *cough*) we don’t leave our 1st string Offense in when we are up 20 to run up the score.
Bobo has done plenty in the past few years to put the offense in a good place to win games. The defense giving up 30+ points in half of our games is the real problem and one that I am hoping has been addressed.
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Well, there’s pulling starters, but the other issue is the offense stops trying with a lead in big games too much. Which may be more sportsman-like, but backup QBs don’t get very good handing off to backup RBs on basic dive plays over and over.
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“Why don’t we demand the same high standard from the O?”
I don’t think anyone thinks our offense is just fine as it is. Nor would I characterize my own standards for our offense as anything but “high.” But I do have higher standards for the defense, and that’s because the evidence suggests that having a top-notch offense isn’t as essential to winning championships as having a top-notch defense.
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Because national rankings have to be filtered through an honest regard for what conference you are in. In the SEC, an upper-half defensive unit will be in the top 20 nationally. But an upper-half SEC offense only gets you in the top 40 nationally. Every year, look at the top fifteen teams in scoring offense. The vast majority are either non-AQ conference schools, or Big 12 and Pac12 teams. (The exceptional SEC teams are Florida with Tebow and Auburn with Newton, both of which cracked 40 points per game). The great defensive teams tend to cluster in the ACC, Big 10, and SEC.
This is not just a matter of saying “So what if that’s where SEC schools tend to rank nationally? Let’s insist that we break the trend, every year, and start sitting in the top 10 on scoring O no matter what.” There is a trade off when it comes to your final numbers between defense and offense. If you’re going to be great on Defense, then your conference’s offenses are going to produce lower numbers against those defenses (duh). Look at the five BCS championship games the SEC has just won. In four of those games, an SEC defense came in and held a top-ten offense well below it’s usual numbers. (In the other game, the SEC defense held the opponent below it’s average, but the opponent wasn’t a top ten offense to begin with). As in:
2010 Oregon 47.0 (1) 19
2009 Texas 39.3 (3) 21
2008 Okla 51.1 (1) 14
2007 Oh St 31.4 (40) 24
2006 Oh St 34.6 (7) 14
Looking at the 06 and 07 games, which were both against Ohio State, raises another interesting point. Of the three “defensive” conferences above, the SEC and Big 10 are really very similar in style of play and in the way they tend to rank nationally. In both conferences, the great offenses score in the low to mid 30s a game. It cracks the top 30 nationally most of the time (Georgia the last four years, Bobo’s administration, has ranked 34, 29, 51, 30). Again, it’s not that these teams are just not as “good” on offense as the flashier teams out west, it’s that they consistently play against harder defenses. This isn’t even a matter of statistical analysis, really. It’s just common sense plus the principle of “money talks”. The SEC has the best athletes on both sides of the ball, and shells out the money for the best coaches…Yet they never put up numbers on O like Hawaii in 06-07. Why not? Because Hawaii has the magical formula of “how to be good on offense” and the SEC just can’t crack the code? No, because SEC offenses have to score against the most scoring-resistant defenses in the country week in and week out.
If Georgia joined the WAC, we would be a top fifteen scoring offense every year. No question. Our “boring” pro-style offense would just work fine against smaller, slower WAC defenses, thank you very much.
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Uh, Rocket Scinetist, Bobo was 10th in scoring in the SEC. That’s SEC.
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Not last year, sport.
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Against ranked teams, scored 15 a game, ranked 70th in nation, against winning teams, 10th in SEC, last year, 84th in scoring against winning teams.
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Clear thinkers don’t need to write long posts. Shows lack of clarity, clean it up.
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Wow.
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3 words is all you need. Here’s a little formula:
__________or____________?
For example, offense or defense? pass or run? ranked or unranked?
Lesson over.
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Oh, I get it. Like “lecturing schoolmarm” or “richard righteous”?
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Bobo has done great against unranked or losing teams. Bobo really struggles to score on ranked teams, averaged less than 16 a game last year, not much better the year before that. Sure, Bobo gets @40+ a game against unranked teams, makes his stats look real nice, big deal. 10th in SEC in scoring against ranked teams last year. Grnatham was 5th in SEC in defensive scoring against ranked teams so clearly, Grantham isn’t the problem.
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Last year Bobo had a RS Freshmen starting QB and 4 games without their best Offensive player. In which they played 3 teams that ended the season with a winning record. Even so, put up 30 against FU’s D, 30 against AU. So those points were scored against winning teams, when the QB had time to mature and they had AJ back.
The year before, look at the points scored against teams with a winning record. Once they got AJ back, they scored, 27, 41,43, 44, 34, 55, 31, 42. And until the bowl game the Offense did their job period.
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James- We don’t need you to bring true stats and clarity on this ranter’s blog. Just keep the good figures to yourself. The anti-Bobos have their own set of figures that the foist onto the other antis who take up the cudgel anew as if you have never written. Sad. Always suspect trollers when previously used false info with false conclusions is resurrected.
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One area that bobo has improved over CMR is in the red zone. Our TD/fg ratio is much better. However, I think that game planning may have been better under CMR. While we’ve always had a shifting personality as an offensive football team, CMR seemed to have some specific ideas on how to exploit particular teams. With bobo we seem to show up with the same plan every week (2009 vs. Tech being an obvious outlier). Part of that may be because the plan has essentially been to get the ball to knowshon or aj for the last several years. This year will be a good litmus test for bobo as he has a lot of unproven talent to mesh into an offense.
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I will never fault him for wanting to get the ball to aj or km.
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The reason why the offense doesn’t rank very high nationally is because of the strength of the SEC defenses. Look at the top offenses and see who they play against.
All the so called experts say the difference between the SEC and other conferences is on the defensive lines. When the Dawgs won the SEC, they had really solid D line play. When they’ve struggled lately, the D line hasn’t been very good. Last year was a terrible year for the D line. With the emergence of Kwame and hopefully Jenkins filling the holes, the D should be much improved. this should also help out the LB’s and secondary. So, if the D line can be solid, the D will be much improved.
As far as the offense and Bobo, I think everyone should give him some credit. He can’t make all the blocks and execute. Can’t we give the defense some credit for stopping us sometimes? I’m tired of hearing about Thomas up the middle. No one ever mentions the gutsy calls that work. How about 4th and 2 against Auburn last year when Bobo calls a bomb to AJ? Play worked….TD. The smart call would’ve been to run the ball down their throats.
Let’s let Bobo and Richt do what they think is best for the team. they’ve both forgot more about coaching than most people will ever know.
Go Dawgs!!!!!
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Agree, QB did have a good 1st half where he put up a lot of points against Auburn. Sure wish he would have against the other 4 ranked teams SC, Ark, Miss St, and UCF. But 1st year starters at QB usually struggle, or that an excuse?
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Flushing UCF entirely because ….well because of whatever reason you prefer (and there are plenty of reasons to flush bowl games, unless they are BCS title games perhaps). The other three “not so great” offensive games were all pre-AJ. Not just pre-AJ, but more importantly they were before the coaches trusted Murray enough to open up the offense for him. We can second guess their hesitation I suppose, but the bottom line is if you’re bitching about “not showing up” against the good teams last year, you’re bitching about the first four games. In other words, it sucks to start off 0-3 in the SEC. Yeah, we remember. Was our offense incapable of scoring points? No. Is there some systemic problem with what we’re running that artificially limits what we can do? No. Was it any fun to struggle early like we did last year? No, no it wasn’t.
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Post, Pre AJ didn’t matter, winless against ranked teams either way. Also lost to a terrible pass defens ein Colorado with AJ. Actually, if you look at the UCF game, it could be argued AJ made the offense WORSE?
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Of course you could make that argument. But you would be wrong. UCF was a horrible performance, but is so obviously an outlier that it’s hard to make judgments based on it. If that game is the standard, we should fire everybody.
AJ Green didn’t make our offense worse. Ever.
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I disagree. I think the offense relied on AJ too much. Keyed in on him as the #1 receiver, even if he was triple covered. I think Durham, King, Charles were more than capable of putting up big numbers when teams doubled AJ Green.
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Even if you’re right, that’s not a systemic problem in the offense. That’s failure to take advantage of the offense you’ve got. Without AJ taking a double team, those guys aren’t open.
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Bobo is in charge of QB. So of QB’s 24 passing td’s, 19 were against unranked teams. Shows Bobo is trying to pump his stats up. Did we really need 55 points against Lafayette or Idaho St. to secure the win? Then why score so many points and risk injury to the starters? To jack up Bobo’s and his QB’s stats.
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Well, it’s to be expected that most of your good numbers come against the lesser teams you play. How could it be the opposite?
But, more precisely, we played most of our ranked opponents last year in the early going (SC, Arky, Miss St, oh my), when we all acknowledge that our O was struggling because of a RS Frosh QB who was being held back from the full playbook by the coaches and because of the lack of AJ. How did our O do against the ranked team we played later on? Pretty well, right? Ohhhhhh.
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UCF was the 13 th game. QB inexperience can’t be the excuse there. And AJ was there.
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UGA has a long and storied history of not giving a sh*t about low tier bowl games with no name opponents. The beloved Vince Dooley and his never to be forgotten loss to Miami (OF F’ING OHIO) in the 1974 Tangerine bowl. We sucked in the UCF game because our coaches could not convince our little darlings that UCF was a good team and well coached and wanted to win. If you think it wasn’t just that then you didn’t see Coach Richts response to the players that wanted to go for it on 4th down. “You couldn’t get it on 3 downs”. We have always played to the level of our opponents, that’s since the beginning of time.
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So your argument countering William’s “bad coaching” argument is that it was bad coaching?
You literally just proved his point.
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So offense wins games and defense wins championships. And we are talking about our splendid OC, his game preparation and game plan, his play calling and utilization of personnel in a set or drive, clock management, and etc.
Well, I’m trying to figure this out. If you offense wins games [and I guess that means the team does not lose a game], I conclude you would have a championship based on those wins. And if you think the bowls we have played in the past three season, our won loss record the past three years, the production from RB [ rushing the ball] and TEs/WRs [passing game], national rankings in offensive categories, SEC rankings in offensive categories, the availibility of a solid roster on offense, and so on…well then Bobo and staff are your guys. But do not be frustrated and disappointed where they go to a bowl, their record over all, their standing in the SEC, and their standing in the East Division.
Personally, I want them to win, but I think the pro sets and I are not the offense. My coach and offense resides in Starkville. UF and AU ran the spread and they had the QBs to run it for their championship teams. When you look at those teams, offense is what comes out on top and generated their achievements…simply look at their OCs, their schedule, and their production plus margins.
When you can generate those points, 70 to 80 plays in four quarters, wear down the opposing defense with the spread offense…well, I’ll be 100% behind a top five D that can shut down opponents and generate the points to win games. Otherwise I’m for the O’s UF and AU ran lately.
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I actually think Bobo has what it takes to be a HC someday. The best thing that could happen for Georgia would be for a school like Furman to offer the HC job to Bobo and for CMR to hire a first rate OC to take Bobo’s place.
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The AJ Green theory to explain losses is wrong. 0-3 vs. ranked teams with AJ, 0-2 without him (Aub–bad pass defense, UCF). Couldn’t score against UCF with AJ Green. AJ is not the problem. Also lost to Colorado (bad pass defense), with AJ Green.
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I thought we were talking about the O specifically, not the overall result of the game (win/loss).
The bowl game sucked with the sucking suck of a thousand sucking suns. OK. But, and plenty of stats people have argued this over the last few years, bowl games are close to downright meaningless as far as predicting the future or properly assessing a team’s true strength (with certain bowl games being exceptions, like the championship game for instance).
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How do not put up 50 on Colorado when 2 terrible teams did?
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Because game-by-game anything can happen, and this is not how we should evaluate a team’s overall quality?
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How about how an OC did against 5 ranked team? 0-5? Averaged 15 points a game? Is that a measure of what the OC can REALLY do or is 55 points against Lafayette a better measure?
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Nobody here is putting a feather in our cap over the Lafayette score. Do stop straw manning, please.
When you’re hanging your argument on five games in one season, then there really isn’t much of a discussion to be had. If you’re really interested in understanding those particular five games, you’ll have to go into a more game-by-game analysis. Overall stats from those five games alone just isn’t going to tell you much that is meaningful. Nobody here enjoyed losing those games, though I think there is some disagreement about assigning the “record” TO the OC directly.
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How you do against RANKED teams is THE stat of all stats. Last 4 SEC Champs have ALL averaged OVER 30 points a game of offense against RANKED TEAMS. You can hang your hat on those 5 games.
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Oooo! He broke out the all-caps. It’s ON.
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The last 4 SEC champs probably averaged over 30 points a game against ALL teams, and their average against ranked teams randomly hovers a little bit below their overall average.
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The point is, SEC Champs score 30+ against RANKED TEAMS, Bobo scored 15 last year. Get it?
Champs 30+
Chumps 15.
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So the point is, you like to make points that are not really very good points? 30 is more than 15, yes. If Georgia wins the SEC, they will very likely do it by scoring more than 15 points in games against ranked teams, yes. This is fascinating stuff, and where would we be without you?
I’ve been doing the “law of charity” thing here, assuming that when I pointed out how clearly fallacious your reasoning and cherry-picking was, you would clarify your position and we might have a good conversation. I am now thinking that was a misguided strategy?
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Funny, people who don’t agree with you, you label. Nice.
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The last 4 SEC Champ’s have averaged 30+ in scoring agaisnt ranked teams. You have to play big in big games. Most of these guys rest their starters against the bad teams. Bobo doesn’t. Hutson Mason only got 14 passes in 2010, for example, that’s ridiculous. #2 QB needs reps in case of injury to #1 QB. And goal isn’t to finish #3 in scoring against unranked teams in the SEC, and 10th against ranked teams, it’s to finish in top 3 against trhe GOOD TEAMS.
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William, I think this was already addressed above. We are not consistently 10th in-conference against the good teams. That was a last year fluke due to when we played most of the good teams (early).
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Actually, Bobo’s decrease in scoring output against ranked teams, is not a 1 year outlier, it’s a 3 year trend of averaging 6 points less per game against ranked teams, 3 years running. Why?
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Addressed below. Sample size is too small for a stat like this to be very meaningful. That said, going by conference rank is a little more helpful than doing it by actual points scored per game. As a rank against the rest of the conference, 10th is most definitely an outlier, as we actually finished 4th, 2nd, and 4th 07-09 against winning teams. But I think this is a basically meaningless stat to worry over, in any case.
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So you’re excited that Bobo has somehow figured out way to average 6 LESS points PER GAME againt RANKED teams the last 3 YEARS IN A ROW?
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Nope, not excited. It does not effect me because it is a meaningless statistic. It’s about the same as telling me how many yards we average on punts in the 3rd quarter of October games after scoring a field goal on the previous position.
Last year’s average against ranked teams was drastically lower than our overall average, but there are good, undersandable reasons why that was the case, so we’re bascially done here and can go worry about other things. I don’t worry about what the guy on MARTA thinks he saw in his cereal bowl this morning, nor do I worry about “trends” like the one you are trying to identify here.
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Which, to be clear, I do not intend to be as mean as it sounded. My apologies for seeming rude there. I’m not saying you’re crazy like MARTA guy. I’m just saying you, for whatever reason, are harping on something that is not nearly as meaningful as you think it is. You’re not a dumb or crazy person, you’ve just got something wound too tightly around your axle on this particular issue. It happens to all of us sometimes.
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It’s a 3 year trend, I’m sure it doesn’t concern you that we’ve gone from 11 wins to 10 to 8 to 6 either. Guess that’s not a problem for ya. The signs are there, and something is SYSTEMICALLY wrong.
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Riiiight. Thank you for this, and all your other many efforts, to make this a reasonable conversation rooted in sound logic.
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No offense, but you havn’t said a single logical thing yet.
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The past 2 years have been new starters at QB. One was a senior who sat out 3 years, the other was a redshirt freshman. If the trend continues again this year, then I might be worried, for right now, lets see how this kid can do with a year of SEC competition under his belt. All Bobo’s QB’s do good in year 2.
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Spurrier gets it. He scored 32 a game against WINNING teams, and rested his starters against LOSING teams (26 a game).
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I’d need to see more evidence that Spurrier truly “rested” his starters as a deliberate strategy, and that that accounts for this difference. Seems like a fluky stat to me. Or, it goes to Bill Connelly’s variance stat, and SC is just one of those really weird teams who plays better against good teams and WORSE against bad teams. Which isn’t really a sign of being good, or having some great master strategy for personnel management. It’s just weird.
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Lattimore had 7 carries against Troy, Garcia only threw 12 passes against Troy. Compare that to King and Murray’s stats in game 1 against Lafayette. Lattimore got his 2 biggest games against UGA & Fla. Not Troy.
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This is all so selective. Did Spurrier also “rest” Lattimore against Auburn (14 carries), Kentucky (15), and Arkansas (11)? Up in Kentucky, Spurrier was heavily criticized, or should I say thanked, for not using Lattimore more than he did. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw this.
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose you’re right that Spurrier actually employs a strategy that intentionally leads to fewer points against weaker teams and more points against stronger teams. Even if it were true in his case (which none of this proves…and Georgia has had plenty of games over the last few years where star players had reduced playloads against cupcakes), I think it would just prove Spurrier is an oddball, not that this is some standard thing that most teams do. Most teams patently do NOT score their points in this way (more against good teams, fewer against bad teams).
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Lattimore was rested against Troy, and Murray wasn’t against Lafayette. It’s just a different approach. One isn’t trying to cover up his inabilities with stats against bad teams, one is.
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Man, that’s a stupid comment.
I think I liked it better when you were typing in ALL CAPS.
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WHY DID LATTIMORE ONLY GET 7 CARRIES AGAINST TROY–WHAT’S YOUR THEORY?
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Your argument makes no sense.
1. LaLaf was our first game with a freshman QB – and he still didn’t play the whole game. Idaho St. was a chance for the team to put together a strong performance after a wretched half of a season.
2. How much did our starters play against Idaho St.?
3. How many points did we leave on the field against either team? Prove to me that Bobo didn’t take his foot off the gas. You seem to think that we should be scoring fewer points against bad teams, but there’s no way to measure how big a blowout is. A 30 point game is hardly different than a 50 point game.
4. Spurrier rested Lattimore because Lattimore needed the rest. Did you see how USC(e) fared without him?
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IS IT REALLY SO ODD TO THINK BOBO HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO SAVE HIS JOB, AND SNOW THE FANS, BY SCORING 42 AGAINST LOSING TEAMS, AND 18 AGAINST WINNING TEAMS? DID WE REALLY NEED ALL 55 POINTS TO WIN THAT GAME? WAS IT WORTH RISKING AN INJURY TO MURRAY OR KING? NAIIVE.
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I bow to your caps. If only I had a caps lock key, too. Then I could roll with you.
And, yes, I think you’re point is wrong. Bobo ran the offense to score as many points as possible until sportsmanship dictated that we let up. If he was out to pad stats, we would have scored 70 on Idaho State.
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MURRAY GOT 26 PASSES IN LAFAYETTE GAME. LATTIMORE GOT 7 RUNS IN TROY GAME.
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It was also Murray’s first game. Hutson Mason threw a TD pass in the 3rd quarter.
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At this point I have to LOL. If UGA had not beaten the snot out of LL and TT our fans would have gone ballistic. We would have heard the Richt is too soft he doesn’t have the killer instinct bah bah. The Head Coach calls off the Dawgs not the OC learn a little something.
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Bobo’s scoring output vs. ranked teams has DECREASED every year by an average of 7 points per game. 2007 35. 2008, 27, 2009, 22, 2010, 15. Is that good? What does that tell you about Bobo?
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that he’s better at “play calling” when Stafford & Moreno are on the team?
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It tells me a few things. For one, the sample size for a stat like this is insane. I’d bet ranking in something like this jumps around more or less randomly around the team’s overall ranking against all teams (ranked or unranked).
In 2006, we were the best team in the SEC against ranked opponents. 2006? Our disappointing year in which we went 9-4 and lost 4 out of 5 in the middle of the year? Yup. Because we, as we might recall, finished that season with our first ever 3-game winning streak against ranked teams, beating Auburn, Tech, and Va Tech. We only had four games against ranked teams all year, and three of them were our last three games when we were playing much better. Even then, in those games we scored off of a pick six (Auburn) and a fumble return (Tech), and in the bowl game against Va Tech we had a possession that started at the 1 yard line because of an interception (not to mention some other short field opportunities for the offense). Oh yeah, and Bobo called TWO of those games anyway (he was given the full reigns over the offense for the Tech game in 06).
The sample sizes are just too low to make a lot out of a stat like this, I’m afraid.
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It’s a 3 year trend, it’s a huge sample size for college football, not just looking at 1 year. It’s 3 years of getting 6 points a game worse against ranked teams.
Anyone want to guess which direction the running game went from 2007 & just how closely it follows the lower scoring outputs?
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It’s a 3 year “trend” of a largely random sample of four or five games from each larger season. That isn’t really a trend.
If you average 30 points a game with a standard deviation of 12 points, then in 1/6 of your games you’re going to score less than 18 points, and in 33 percent of your games you’re going to score 25 points. That’s with a purely random distribution where every game is against exactly the same quality opponent, etc. In real life, of course, you have every reason to expect that you’ll score less when you play the better teams on your schedule. So, now take a the four games that were against ranked teams in a given year (or the four or five games that were against winning teams, whichever metric we’re going for, and we keep jumping between the two in this conversation), and pure binomial distribution is going to give you pretty good odds that your average points scored in those games will be significantly lower than your average. There is also a good chance that you’ll just randomly happen to pull some of your randomly worst performances on some of those four games, and it has nothing to do with anything but variability.
Again, much more interesting (though I would just prefer to jettison the stat altogether) is how we rank against the rest of the conference in those games. And, apart from 2010, we rank about the same (if not a little better) against the good teams as we do in all games overall.
So what’s the deal with last year? If we don’t want to attribute it to random variance, then we can identify some pretty strong indicators of what went wrong. It’s just when our games against stronger teams happened to fall last year. Of the four games we played against ranked teams, three were played BEFORE AJ came back and BEFORE the coaching staff had opened up the playbook to Murray. We were by definition trying to play a ball control, avoid-the-big-mistake offensive style in those games. We were hoping our D could rise up and win games 21-14. That didn’t work out, and now you’re harping on the offense in those games, which anyone reasonable person already understands was not great.
But it’s not an indicator of some overall trend towards anything. That’s the problem with what you keep arguing here.
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Reminds me of an old “Shit Happens” poster that hung in the hallway of a certain frat house. And great post by the way.
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Then go cheer for the visor, Billy.
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You missed the point. The point is some teams do average more against good teams, and rest starters instead of jack up stats and risk injury against bad teams.
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Are you kidding me? I would be willing to bet that almost NO team averages more per game against ranked opponents. South Carolina played 7 teams who were ranked at the time of the game. They averaged 24.1 points. In the other seven they averaged 37.7. They scored 69 in your Troy example. They “rested” players in that game because they were up 56-7 at halftime.
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No.
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So refuting your example of a team who makes it a strategy to take games off against bad teams in order to be rested for important games won’t even make you reassess your argument? What’s the appeal of trolling? I don’t get it.
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The UCF game really drives me nuts. QB play should have been hones by that game. AJ was there, trying to impress NFL scouts. And you put a 0 points?? How? If AJ’s the problem, and QB inexperience at beginning of year was issue, why was QB play in 13th game (not like 1st 4 games) 80 pass effic rating, 2 int’s, 0 td’s? Was inexperience really the issue?
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Did you notice Aaron wearing a glove on his throwing hand? Ever wonder why?
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Did you notice Kurt Warner wears a glove, and he plays fine? Perhaps the problem is not the glove, or the uniform color (Richt’ favorite ploy)?
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A septuagenarian pro QB wears a glove at the end of his career? Relevance your Honor?
Did Aaron play every game in ’10 without a glove up until the bowl?
Did Aaron suffer tendinitis in his throwing elbow in ’09?
Just curious.
I wonder why his performance was lackluster in Memphis (!) at the Liberty Bowel er Bowl.
Probably that ass hat Bobo, right?
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On any given day, William, almost anything can happen. Variability from the mean is huge when it comes to something like scoring offense. Add in that this was a BOWL game, which tend to be particularly misleading for a variety of reasons, and we just have to flush it. Trust me, dude. Flush it.
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Yeah, 4 out of 5 games against ranked teams, offense only passed for 1 td or less.
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If you’re just going to repeat this over and over again, without even acknowledging the timing of three of those games and the particular sources of our struggles for those three games, then what is the point of this conversation? I admit to having a nice day off today, so that’s my excuse. But even I intended to do something more productive than repeat the same things over and over again. 🙂
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The problem with that is UCF, see UCF was the 13th game of the season when QB had MOST experience, and AJ was there. And we scored no points. If you’re going to dismiss this 13th game, as if it never happened, that’s fine, did you watch G-Day 2011 (low points scored) or look at the stats from the 1st scrimmage this summer (passing offense didn’t score a td and couldn’t drive the field). Gonna dismiss all 3 of most recent games? The 3 year trend seems to be continuing into the 4th year.
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Have you ever thrown in the towel on a meaningless task?
I’ll warn you, this is a trap.
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Yurdle, LOL, as the kids say.
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If it’s meaningless, why are you arguing against it?
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Because I don’t want people to criticize coaches of my team based on meaningless reasons. That’s bad, and I try to argue against things that are bad.
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You shoud be concerned with winning, not coach retention.
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Sigh. The straw men keep on coming. It is actually because I am concerned with winning that I do not like to see us distracted by meaningless cherry-picked “trends” that do not determine winning (or that are not directly controllable, whereas other stats are more controllable).
To whatever extent any person with authority over our football program either coached players or made hiring decisions of staff using the kinds of statistics you are using, our likelihood of winning games would go down. You may think you are here to praise winning, but you are burying it just the same.
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Well put, Xon.
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Also, you’re moving the goalposts to now make this about PASSING for TDs instead of overall offensive production? If the QB throws for 300 yards, but only 1 TD, then you say that Bobo is to be blamed for only getting one passing TD out of the QB? Even if we ran for four more TDs on top of that, and the passing O was a crucial part in setting up those scores? What madness is this?
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Bobo is in charge of QB’s, so he’s responsible for passing TD’s, and 5 against ranked teams, and going 0 or 1 td in 4 out of 5 games against ranked teams, is not getting production at your position from your position coach.
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The silliest thing ever said on a blog arguing about sports, ever.
/sensationalized and hyperbole’d
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nAH, YOUR 12:35 POST WAS 100X WORSE.
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His comment was obvious sarcastic.
You’re arguing around in circles. You don’t want us to focus too much on AJ Green, but all you care about are passing touchdowns. You say our running game has declined over the past 3 years, but want to put all the losses on our QB. You think the OC with a RS Freshman QB should be putting up more passing touchdowns instead of the RBs that came on very strong last year and were projected to have 1000 yards a piece.
You fail to acknowledge any mitigating circumstances unless they go along with your theory (the fact that AJ was our only offensive production in the CU game, made one of the most amazing catches that’s ever been seen, but he should have done more and carried our team that’s coming off of 3 close losses to SEC opponents against a team across the country, a mile in the air, and are recognizing the team that won their last national championship. Oh, and we focused on AJ too much, so he should have done more with less).
You’re not being objective, you’re not looking at anything other than numbers (when they go with your argument), you’re not making great points that people can agree with.
Off-the field issues were a problem (SEVERAL), injuries were a problem, attitude was a problem, conditioning was a problem, inexperience and new schemes were a problem, but you keep on blaming EVERYTHING on one part of our team.
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What’s your point in 10 words or less?
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Looking only at the box score tells an incomplete story.
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It wasn’t the glove. Bobo & Richt said, IN PRACTICE, QB did GREAT with the glove. But in a real game, against UCF, QB struggled had worst game. The glove? Hilarious.
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Well let’s let the O-line take a little of the responsibility shall we. The O-line played like they would rather have been somewhere else. The QB can only be expected to get hit so much before he gets happy feet. Really if you hate the team this much you really should pick a new team or better yet go pull for a pro team. This is college football not the War in Afghanistan.
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You know, it wasn’t the O-Line. They did good the previous year with Joe Cox. 10 sacks vs. 25–250% difference. WOW! Rushing was a lot better that year too with Cox at QB.
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Well, the QB voluntarily said he would’nt wear it anymore.
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Since Bobo’s in charge of QB’s, how did you think Bobo’s QB play was against the 5 ranked teams:
SC/ucf: O Td’s
Miss St/Ark: 1 td
Aub: 3 td’s
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UCF didn’t have a great defense. NC sT SCORED 28, bUFF, 10, k sT. 17, e cARO 35, s mISS 31.
Georgia? 0
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Colorado Defense wasn’t very good, gave up 50+ to Cal and Kansas, we couldn’t score 30? Why?
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Can you not keep your points to one post (plus responses) instead of spamming everything up? Are you really having breakthroughs every 5-10 minutes? This is why people don’t take you seriously. You have decent arguments, but you might as well run around the town, screaming in the faces of passersby.
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So why couldn’t we score 50 on Colorado when Cal & Kansas did?
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This is the “transitive herpes” reasoning so often mocked by savvy fans. If we beat A and A beat B and B beat C, then why didn’t we beat C? The answer to that question is NOT usually “because our OC should be fired.”
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You are aware that Colorado had the #110 ranked pass defense, right? Auburn was #108. South Carolina was #97. Miss St was #91. Should have scored 5 passing td’s on each. 0 against SC, 1 against Miss St, 3 apassing td’s against AUb, #108 pass defense, isn’t impressive.
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Dang, Xon. You are really good in this battle. Of course, to be fair, you are dealing with someone who is 3 bricks shy.
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Because we just didn’t feel like it. Because Bobo is horrible. Because one game determines your destiny.
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Didn’t fele like scoring 50 against one of the worst pass defenses in the NCAA? Sure. Bobo was salivating. So was Murray, and AJ. AJ wanted to score 10 TD’s to help his NFL draft stock rise. So what ahppened. If Bobo’s such a genius,m and the problem was AJ being out, then, uh, what happened in Colorado?
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You’re right. You’re also an ass. Congrats. You have just been appointed OC and it will be measured to you in the measure you use. Hasn’t class started back yet?
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82 comments in 4 hours? The season needs to get here very, very soon.
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Bobo likes to be unpredictable. That’s why even when the offense is hitting a groove in the running game, he’ll (try to) surprise with a pass, and vice versa. It is frustrating at times, but judging in hindsight is easy. It makes it seem like the offense doesn’t have an identity at times when the calls change like that. Stats, don’t like, though; and if the defense toughens and the offense maintains what it’s been doing, we will be happy come December & January.
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Hopefully William will sell his season tickets and not have to go through another season at UGA. He obviously has a obsessive/ compulsive disorder that he deals with here on GTP. Good luck William.
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Thanks for this remarkable article about the incredible Mike Bobo. Senator, I decided to base my evaluation of Bobo off of 2 games. Idaho State & Lafayette. You & the bloggers here inspired me to see Bobo another way.
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Don’t be cross. You gave it your best shot and you didn’t really sell it. You are a little over matched here by Xon . A lot of us would be. Now “get on the bus”. 😉
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Ok, as soon as we get a new bus driver 🙂
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Is Bobo a Good OC?
Depends.
Losing or winning teams?
Ranked or unranked teams?
Wins or Losses?
1st or 4th quarter?
1st or 3rd down?
Between 40’s or Red Zone?
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Q: Did you run that computer module on the Falcons if they kept Brett Favre?
A: June Jones named Coach of the Year…
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Do you know what the term “chumming” means?
just sayin’
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Thanks for the link, Senator. Glad to see that the discussion has gone ham.
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It’s not like I didn’t call it. 😉
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Don’t you see what he did there? “Someone” wanted their own page hits… 😉
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I agree, coach Bobo should NOT have called the fumbles vs. colorado,mississippi state…..
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You know when you should give up? When even those who probably agreed with you in the beginning of your argument just wish you would be quiet.
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I don’t believe our OC is held to the same standard that BVG, CWM and CTG were/are held to. The DC’s are expected to have top defenses every year. The offense is expected to….what? Stop fumbling? Stop jumping off sides? Stop going 3 and out? Use time-outs effectively? Score more points? If CMB were a DC and couldn’t break the top 30, he’d be dumped. Its obvious Martinez, Fabris & Jancek weren’t the only problems we had or we wouldn’t have gone 6-7 after they were fired.
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The problem, W Cobb, is that the SAME level of excellence does not translate to the same national ranking. Kind of like the cliche in baseball that “good pitching beats good hitting,” when you play great defense it overcomes good offense disproportionately. In other words, great defenses pull “down” on great offenses harder than the great offense pulls “up” on the defense. Thus, when you have a dynamite defense, the kind that finishes in the top 3 in the SEC, you will be ranked in the top 15 nationally. But, when you have a dynamite offense, the kind that finishes in the top 3 in the SEC, which ALSO has to play against SEC-caliber defenses, then your national ranking will not be in the top 15 (with the exception of a few absolutely incredible offenses…i.e., Tebow Gators and Newton Plainsmen-Tigers-WarEagles).
This isn’t about holding O to a different standard than the D. It’s about holding them to the same standard, but not using a simplistic metric as the standard. “National ranking” is a simplistic metric, b/c it does not mean quite the same thing on O vs. what it means on D.
We should have the very best athletes and the very best coaches. To judge whether our coaches are performing at a sufficient level of excellence, we’ll have to do something besides talk about the national ranking of the respective units. Or, we’ll have to understand that an excellent offense that plays against excellent defenses will not rank as highly nationally as an excellent defense will.
I know I’m not arguing that we accept mediocrity. I can envision things that Bobo’s offenses should be able to do if he’s up to snuff, and things that would indicate he’s not. At this point, I think Bobo has done a very good job as OC, in the model that Richt is familiar (which involves promoting a guy internally and mentoring the heck out of him all along the way). That model is as good as any other, though recent seasons have made a lot of fans perceive it as “soft.” Similarly, recent struggles in the won-loss record have made a lot of fans hyper-sensitive to the largely unavoidable sorts of hiccups that are going to happen with any offense. In any case, I might be wrong, but we have to have some kind of reasonable idea of what an excellent offense IS before we can make an assessment. I think a top-30 national ranking, playing against the kind of competition we play against, is consistent with excellence when it comes to offense.
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Xon,
True if Bobo finished in the top 3 in scoring against ranked teams last year no one would be complaining, or if the team had finished ranked in the top 25 winning 10 games, but he didn’t. He finished 10th in the Conference, there’s only 12 teams. That means 9 out of 11 teams, going up against similar competition, did better than Bobo. Also, finishing out of top 25 rankings last 2 years is getting old. I think Bobo was the main reason last season and the decisions he made and personel moves he made. Grantham actually did a pretty good job in SEC rankings against ranked teams in both scoring and yards allowed, especially for his 1st year. Bobo had 10 out of 11 starters back. Should have been a big year. Was 6 & 7.
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Xon. Bro, I like the analysis and don’t disagree, but you’ve got to condense. TL,DR = Too long, didn’t read.
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Xon,enjoyed every word. When you get old with brain farts, you really enjoy reading words pulled together to make forceful and cogent points. Cuts down on my blogging when you write well. The Senator will be glad to read that.
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+1
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I don’t understand why so many people just want to hate on William. He makes some pretty darn good points.
Anyone who has been watching UGA over the last few years with both eyes open has seen the way Bobo pads his stats against bad teams.
Our offense tends to disappear against good teams. Sure, they are good teams so its harder to score, but we disappear even worse than other teams. And far too often we can’t even score against HORRIBLE teams (UCF, Colorado).
My theory is that Bobo does indeed have some talent. He can draw up great plays. He can score points. The problem is his consistency, and what appears to be a failure to continue to innovate. That’s why he’s so prone to being shut down by good teams or teams with really good coaching. He starts panicking and doing Green Notebook type stuff, and our offense putters.
Stop criticizing William’s sample size when he compares our offense vs. ranked teams over a 3 year span. That’s PLENTY of sample size, and it illustrates a really serious problem.
Our offense has been getting worse and worse against ranked teams, and that’s not something to dismiss.
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Sigh. EVERYONE pads their stats against bad teams. This is common sense, but I could put together statistics if you like. Occasionally a team clicks against a good team and runs them out of the stadium. On average, they don’t. And since you bring up the “3-year sample”, Georgia averaged 26.7 per game against ranked opponenets in 2008, including 30 against the vaunted Alabama defense. The last two years were no fun, and there’s plenty to criticize. So why make shit up to criticize?
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Georgia’s SEC ranking in scoring against teams with winning records:
2010: 10th
2009: 4th
2008: 2nd
2007: 4th
Let me repeat: the idea that Bobo pads stats against crappy teams as part of a deliberate strategy is one of the dumbest things I’ve read in the comments section at GTP.
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Up 41-0 vs. Idaho State, and Murray’s sent back in? Up 31-7 and Murray’s still against La Lafayette? Why risk it?
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Senator,
How do you explain 55 point of offense against Id St. and La Laf then? Why not “call the dogs off” and sit Murray at halftime?
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Because it was Murray’s first live action and he needed the experience?
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2009… That should have an asterisk by it since it was 4th in the SEC with a short-armed, face turns purple, 5 foot nothing, ginger quaterback. That’s impressive.
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Muckbeast, it’s a small sample size because football is already a small sample size, with only 12 to 13 games per year, and this is a particular small subset of those 12 to 13 games. You are looking at 4 games a year, averaging them, then doing that for four games the next year, etc. These numbers are going to vary just like our scoring from any game to another varies, though you would expect it to hover around a mean that is a somewhat lower than our overall average (we should, on average, score fewer points against our ranked opponents than we score in all our games taken together). And, in terms of SEC ranking, as I’ve pointed out and as Senator finally bit the bullet and documented below, we stay at roughly the same position. In fact, we rank a bit better in scoring against ranked opponents than we do in overall scoring. See:
2007 5th overall, 4th against ranked
2008 3rd overall, 2nd against ranked
2009 7th overall, 4th against ranked
2010 4th overall, 10th against ranked
The only outlier in that already questionable data set is this past year, where we had a steep dropoff in terms of our peformance in ranked teams as opposed to what we did overall. But, as has been pointed out previously, that’s got to be a function of our bad timing in when we played our games against ranked opponents last year. We played 3 of the 4 early, when Murray was collared by coaches and AJ was suspended. Not hard to figure out.
It’s fun to have something to argue about this close to the season, so no harm no foul. But, honestly, that some of this even seems plausible to people means we might need to take a step back. As a fanbase we are firmly in bitchy girlfriend territory at this point, from complaining that Richt just doesn’t “care like we do” to nitpicking every last thing, and turning strengths into weaknesses. It’s gotten ugly.
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“As a fanbase we are firmly in bitchy girlfriend territory at this point, from complaining that Richt just doesn’t “care like we do” to nitpicking every last thing, and turning strengths into weaknesses. It’s gotten ugly.”
Amen, brother.
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Xon,
Your posts are as long as BullDawg’s. Man, you can type Bro.
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Disagree. Xon doesn’t waste any good words like some of us(I’m admittedly the King of that shameful category). You don’t lose the thought when reading Xon’s words. BuLLdawg has pretyped diatribes that he dumps onto a blog, over and over. He is the King of negative stats and false reasoning.
I’m envious of Xon’s writing ability. His words are like a gallon of Kool-Aide spashed in the face.
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Cross-posting from my original post over at DawgSports:
Coach Richt averaged 23.09 points per game against ranked competition. Coach Bobo averaged 24.19 points per game against ranked competition. If you restrict it to top 10 competition, Coach Bobo’s lead is even more pronounced. He comes out ahead 22 to 19.14.
(These are based on final AP rankings because the BCS only ranked a top 15 in 2001 and 2002. Unsurprisingly, then, Coach Richt’s average decreases slightly to 22.89 PPG if you use BCS rankings.)
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Well the two of them were 6 and 7 last year. Who cares. Frankly Richt and Bobo suck against Fla and others. For the $3.5M paid last year it is unacceptable. I do not understand why you bobots defend this crap. We have been a very bad team for the last three years including the offense.
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How many years in a row now has Bobo’s QB thrown at least 3 interceptions against Florida–biggest division rival? 3 years in a row man. Crazy.
You can’t beat yourself. You can’t put the defense in that kind of field position situation 3-4x a game against Florida.
The turnovers against Florida just kills the team’s morale.
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Spears,
What’s important is scoring margin, not scoring. Richt’s was a lot higher than Bobo’s. Richt when he ran offense usually outscored the other team by 10+ on the average during the good years.
If defense would have given up 20, Richt woud have scored 30, if defense gave up 40, Richt would have scored 50.
That’s why we won a lot more games with Richt as OC than with Bobo.
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…or that could be that the defenses were better under Van Gorder…durhurr
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Current meme list:
– Richt is on the “hot seat”
– Richt is soft
– Bobo is a bad OC
– UGA is a victim of bad luck
– Carlton Thomas runs the dive play 9 – 10 times a game…usually after 1st & bomb
– we have no O-line…receivers…running backs…corners
– our players can’t drive scooters safely
Senator…nearly any of these (and some I’ve missed) are sure to get 150 posts or more. Why not do a count-down of the top 10 negative memes leading up to game day?!
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William = buLLdawg
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Wow. My head feel like it bout tuh buss open.
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I thought Bobo got outcoached against the better rushing defenses.
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Holy hell, it just took me over half an hour to go through all these comments. The hell is going on in here?
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My main concern is the drop from 35 points per game all the way down to 15 points per game on offense against ranked teams.
35-15 = 20 points per game loss against ranked teams.
With 35 points, we’d have won against MSU, SC, Fla, UCF, Ark, and Colorado.
11-1. Would have been pretty cool.
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This has been already been addressed in all the previous stuff that has been said. Just sayin’.
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Xon,you should use a few calculations of high profile data to show that 95% confidence levels cannot be met with a sample size this small. Statistical formulas and all.
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Cojones, lol, would it do any good? I do thank you for reminding me of confidence intervals, though. Stats class, it’s coming back to me…
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@ William
The answer you are looking for is the players did not play at the Liberty bowl. They did not play for CMB or CMR. They did not perform. The coaches sucked and did not motivate the players. Everyone let everyone else down.
Okay, so they let everyone down. They don’t want to take responsibility for it. What do you want to do about? What can you do about it? Nothing. Give it up.
They sucked but are doing it differently now. Do you want confession of wrong or do you want them to repent by changing their actions?
I am glad they are doing things differently. No complaining you energy vamp.
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Sorry I’m late to the Bobo bashing party, but I watched the UGA vs SCAR game from 2006 a few nights ago, and honestly, the offense just seemed to click better w/Richt calling the plays, even with Stafford throwing 3 picks. I think Bobo is capable and I want him to succeed, but not once during that game was there a play call that left me shaking my head like we get with Bobo. Sure, not all of them worked, but none made you look at the screen and go “WTF was that?”
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I have to agree that as pesky as William can be, nobody has refuted his arguments that we have *somewhat* tended to get bullied by ranked teams in the last few years, but isn’t that kind of what a losing spell is all about? I’m glad William has a safe place to express himself.
I like CMB just fine, I think his stats are decent, but not amazing. We do tend to repeat a lot of football myths about him, but man, Carlton Thomas cannot catch a break on the blogs – you’d think that guy’s dad bought the team and forced us to play him – he’s just a kid in there slogging it out like the rest of them, doing the best he can, which is far from terrible, and everybody’s callin’ him ol’ useless shorty CT. I give him a pass on smoking some weed or whatever he did to get suspended – had to chill out from all the meanness he gets from his own fanbase.
Bobo does seem to get outflanked at times by superior coaching. Totally cool, CMB – getcha beer and shake it off, can’t be a scientist all the time. And if 13 games a year is not enough of a sample size for talking about CMB’s offense, then it’s not enough of a sample size to talk about anything, Xon. However, I think it is sweet that your people sent a space diplomat in peace to our planet to drink a beer and defend Bobo on GTP blog. Thanks for not blowing any of our sh*t up.
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Ha! No problem, Nellie, my people are a proud race and were happy to do it. We always like to help others get their thoughts straight. You are our favorite a-hole character on American television circa 1976-1982, by the way. The vote was not even close.
As to sample sizes, you’re kind of right. Football has a notoriously small sample size, and it’s a problem. However, 13 is better than 4. But more importantly, 13 that includes every game played is better than 4 that selects only those games that happened to be against ranked teams. It doesn’t take much to skew any four-game average pretty severely, even compared to the 13 game average.
Really, though, I can accept a modest use of the ranked opponents analysis, so long as we understand what a “normal” expected result should be. It’s going to have a lot of variance, so you can’t flip out about this or that game, or even this or that season. But, if you get a trend like, say, four or five years in a row, then that might be something. At least, it might be the best we can do.
When you actually analyze our scoring offense against ranked opponents, you get basically what you’d expect. We score fewer points per game than our overall average when we play the better teams on our schedule. (Again, it is the opposite result that would be strange and would possibly require some kind of explanation). How MANY fewer is the real issue, and the answer there is that we still rank the same or better in conference against ranked teams as we do overall. With the exception of last year (and we know the basic issues that were behind last year’s results), in fact, we did BETTER in the ranked opponent games than we did in all our games overall.
It doesn’t matter that we scored fewer points against ranked teams than we did overall. Again, that’s exactly what should be expected, and it’s what almost all other teams do as well. The issue is HOW low our scoring fell against these ranked teams, and relative to the rest of the conference we’ve done just fine there as well.
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Day trader or programmer ….. but not an alien.
just sayin’
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PhD in philosophy, actually. And hopeful lawyer. I WISH I was a daytrader, though. 🙂
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PhD philosophy…heady stuff! I thought my guess was good based on your screen name “Xon”.
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