Monday morning buffet

Sorry, but there’s only one thing on the menu today – Bulldog stew.

—  I hate to keep harping on this, but it really staggers me to read:

… Who will replace Ogletree remains an open question.

Senior walk-on Jeremy Sulek got the playing time against Boise State, and finished tied for the team lead with seven tackles, five of them solo. Richt said Sulek knows the position better than any available player “right now,” which “gives him a better chance to make some plays.”

—  I was predicting this quote back in the parking lot after the game.

Linebacker Christian Robinson said he has a picture up in his room where he listed team goals on it. The only one he’ll have to scratch off is beating the Broncos.

“This was a big deal for me … but everything we set out as a team to do is still available,” Robinson said outside the locker room in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, “and we’re going to do everything in our power to do that.”

Christian, buddy, you played a good game Saturday night.  But at some point you guys are going to have to quit talking about winning one of these “goal” games and actually go out there and do it.

—  I doubt this will be the last time we’ll read this:  “Coach Mark Richt said the Broncos used stunting and late movement to disrupt Georgia’s blocking schemes.”

—  Richt is discussing last year’s South Carolina game plan here, but after Spurrier watches the Boise State tape, is there any reason for him to change his approach?

“… A year ago, our defense actually played overall pretty well. The point total wasn’t unbelievable against us, but we didn’t put enough points on the board offensively to make it a one-possession game to maybe cause South Carolina to try to do something a little more than what they were doing, which was just handing off the zone and throwing the quick screens out there to (Alshon) Jeffery. We’ve got to score some points to put pressure on them too.”

—  I wrote about it earlier today, but if this is a concern, why run most of your offense out of a spread shotgun and leave Figgins and Ogletree standing on the sideline?

… Richt said that Richard Samuel would probably remain the starter over freshman Isaiah Crowell at tailback. He said Crowell “understandably” needs to get better in pass protection. “I thought he was eager to block,” Richt said. “He did make some very nice blocks, but there were a couple of times that he missed an assignment here and there.”

—  Bill Connelly’s numbers say Georgia underachieved Saturday night.  So do my eyeballs.  And then, there’s this “but”:

But about Georgia:

* Get Brandon Boykin more touches (80-yard run, 40-yard kickoff return).
* Georgia’s offensive line was no match for what is obviously still an incredible Boise State defensive line.
* Isaiah Crowell is going to be good. He only lost three yards in his 15 carries and probably did well to average four yards per carry considering the line disadvantage.
* Jarvis Jones is good (9.0 tackles, 2.5 TFL)

So there’s that.

—  I’ve written something like this before, but it’s always useful to see it confirmed by somebody not as partisan as I:

… Chris Petersen has clearly gone about making his team stronger on the lines.  The Broncos are no longer the typical BYU-Hawaii Western mirage that can put up a lot of points, but has no prayer of stopping a quality opponent.  His team is not strong, deep, and aggressive up front.  I’ve seen nothing from Georgia to convince me that the Dawgs are in the top half of the SEC, so I’m not about to say that Boise State would be on equal footing with Alabama, LSU, or even Arkansas, but the question is no longer ridiculous.  It was a pleasure to watch a well-organized team operate in their opener with clockwork efficiency.  I miss the days when the same could be said about a Mark Richt team.  Remember how the 2003 opener against Clemson felt?  Remember what it looked like to see a well-coached team against a bunch of athletes running around like headless chickens?  Yeah.

—  Elkon goes on to write that the South Carolina game “takes on massive proportions”.  That may seem obvious to us, but, if anything, Patrick Garbin writes that history suggests that may be an understatement.

… In the previous 117 seasons of UGA football, 11 of them began with losses in the first two games, including two in recent memory (1993 and 1996). Of those 11 seasons, only one ended in a winning season for Georgia, and even that was just a sub-par 6-5 record in 1979.