It’s looks like we’re in store for a nice day, weatherwise, in Athens. I’ve headed out the door. I think I’ll let Ed Gunther sum up my feelings this morning:
The gut is screaming to go with the Bulldogs on this one. Thinking rationally, the Gamecocks have the better running game, can adjust better, and probably have a psychological edge here. But damn, why does the gut say the Dawgs just need this one more? I hate that. Argh.
The Call: Georgia by 6
Then there’s this from Chris Brown.
… By all rational measures, South Carolina should roll Georgia en route to a big season.
But when your team is coached by Steve Spurrier and quarterbacked by Stephen Garcia, rationality has to go out the window. Carolina is usually good for a shocking loss, and a reeling Georgia squad looks to me like they could be the ones to do it: They do have talent all over and sophomore Aaron Murray is quickly developing into an elite quarterback. I expect Georgia to get up early on some USC mistakes and to hold the Gamecocks off despite a late rally, and the tide of anti-Richt sentiment to be stemmed for, well, for another week.
If you’re a Georgia fan right now, there’s no such thing as an ugly win. I’ll take it any way it comes.
How I felt last Saturday: Don’t want to be treated this way.
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Unless something miraculous has taken place with respect to our OL, I just can’t see a win. It’d be great to see Crowell go off today, though. Poetic, even.
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“I am in a glass case of emotion”
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Every win is a thing of beauty in its own right.
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I’ll take a win, no matter how ugly at this point. Besides, she only looks ugly the next day.
… I mean it, the win only looks ugly, yeah, that’s what I meant…
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Any win over a top 25 team sounds just beauty these days.
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I agree on the gut feeling the dawgs take this one. I also have a gut feeling that even with a win today we still won’t win the east
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pure fantasy.
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Tennessee even fumbled 6 times last week recovered them all and still won. I’d take win like that right now.
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As frustrating as it can get watching the Dawgs sometimes, there is still nothing I would rather be doing on a Saturday.
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Gut….or hopeless heart? Anyone picking UGA in this game is either wishful thinking or unable to see the obvious.
Other than #29, we have no LB’s. There is no secondary. Our D line is soft and will be tossed around like a bale of hay.
Do I really need to comment on our offense? A QB unproven in big games, a stumbling starting TB good for 2 yds/attempt, unproven WR’s and oh yes…Will Friends OL.
There is NOTHING good right now in Athens.
My heart aches for a GA rout…..MY gut says Spurrier sends Richt from Sanford Stadium with a dismissal loss…and ALL will question the effort.
We can Twitter with the best of them….
SC 30-16
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Spoken like a true fan…..
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Exactly. ‘Cause no “true fan” would ever (a) get frustrated, and then (b) express that frustration in a way you find unacceptable, right?
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Huge difference between a fan and someone who just follows UGA Football. By looking up the word “fan” in the dictionary, one can see that “true fan” is a superflous term; however, the term can be inferred as fanatical. Use of “unacceptable” here demonstrates that you feel that the negative comments are not tolerated by personal sensitivities of a fanatically loyal base; whereas, that base truly feels (justifiably) that public dissonance can’t possibly help the program you claim that you love. Many may agree with you , but have no answers as to how these anti-Richt rants will help at this time. Could you explain how it will help?
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You have every right to be upset and I understand. You want Richt gone, fine. What I don’t like is insults and verbal jabs directed at the players. Right is the coach now and unless the dam breaks that is not going to change until after the season so deal with it. While you are bearish on the team, I believe we can win every game. You can also bet that I will be watching every minute of every game cheering the whole time. Boise was one game and they are a top 5 team. With a sampling of one, you really wait until the USC game. If we look bad then fire away on the coaches but man, don’t insult the players. Go Dawgs!
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I might agree with some of what you said but let’s just root for the damn team on saturdays and drink our pain away. I know it’s hard not to bitch, but I still love gamedays and will try to enjoy them.
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in the mother of all upsets, the marks and todd shock the world by beating south carolina by 14, which is exactly the number of points by which i picked them to beat boise state, making them even steven/stephen for the season
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Sometimes You’re just a nut. Other times you’re still a nut. Funny.
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I despise Spurrier and hope he chokes on his visor, but playing without a O line…and calling plays that ignore this fact…never result in a win. Cocks 27 – Dawgs 13
/drives scooter into wall
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F’ing Scooters!!
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Good, competent coaching trumps “gut feeling”. Spurrier’s just better then Richt. SC wins. Could be close though if UGA shows up.
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The thing is, Richt knows how to do this. In 2003 he bobbed and weaved his way along with a shaky O-Line. But, even if he recovers that skill, Odell Thurman is not walking through that doow.
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Door. Although Pitino may have actually said “doow,”
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Penn Wager? Oh crap. Can’t believe we got that call on the punt.
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We have to do something about Penn Wagers. When he and his crew get the assignment to call a UGA game they always find a way to screw the Dawgs sooner or later. I saw holding by the USCe O-line on virtually e-v-e-r-y pass play. Only 1 holding call all day on them. Wagers has it in for CMR and today he was presented with his dream–to be able to possibly get CMR fired. I want Wagers fired instead. McGarity, make a tape of just pass plays focusing on the O-line of the Dicks..er…Cocks and send it to the head of officials for the SEC Steve Shaw and let’s at least see if anything is different from the Rogers Redding administration.
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Our players deserve better than the coaching they are getting. Richt is a good man and I hate for anyone to lose their job but he’s got plenty of money and he needs to go. Grantham is a useless blowhard that guy sucks.
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I want to slam my dick in a lead door. New and excruciating ways to shoot yourself in the foot. You are the better team. You dominate up and down the field for 4 quarters. You fuck yourself. You lose. Pain.
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“I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”
Jesus, why do folks expect a different result?
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I didn’t think that the coaching was the failure tonight, except for the obvious lunacy of going for 2 with 10 minutes left in the game, and not calling a timeout on 3rd and 3 with 1:30 left in the game-those were two Goff-worthy moments.
I just go back to:
-Crowell tripping on the way to the endzone in the first half
-Boyin dropping a pick 6 in the first half
-our not rushing the punter when the ball rolled around for 15-20 minutes in the first half
We have just become losers as a program. Really, really painful. There used to be a time when we made those plays.
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we’ll get it back. the others better get their licks in now b/c this losing will come to an end bro’.
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I want to go on record as saying that I disagree with every post on this thread. I thought the team played well enough to win the game but got screwed by circumstance–and the refs. It’s easy to passblock when they let you hold.
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+1
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If it means not having to listen to you snivel anymore, I’ll be more than happy to slam that door for you.
This will be a team to be reckoned with, although it may take another couple games to get there.
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Sorry, that’s meant for the guy who proudly proclaims his cynicism.
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Agreed entirely. I’m because this team, and this coaching staff. Hard fought effort, but mental mistakes (and bad luck) all over the place. Demonstrable improvement over last year.
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A lot better than last week, too.
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Man. That was a tough one. The team was much more competetive and played their hearts out. “sad face”
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Six words: Bad teams find ways to lose.
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+1. They’re just no longer able to win the tough games against good teams, and they take mediocre teams and turn them into tough games. Ten years ago the talk was about blowing the lid off the program. Someone seems to have out the lid back on.
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“put,” not out.
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Looks like to me good coaching (by Spurrier) beat player mistakes (by UGA). Don’t see how you can really hang this particular one on the UGA coaching staff (unless you want to take the passive aggressive Spurrier line and say, “it’s not your fault, I’m the one who recruited you.”) Not that I’m a Richt fan. Don’t ever want to see the Dawgs fail. Loved seeing the fight in these pups, though. At least I was entertained (and drunk).
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yeah – don’t see how we can blame the coaches for not blocking people or Murray continuing to fumble on sacks or “giving them” the fake punt or any other lame excuse to not blame continued losses on the coaches. At the end of the day, poor execution rests with the leadership —- period. If I hear one more comment laying mental mistakes at the player’s feet, I’m going to puke. Ever notice how Saban/Mullen/Meyer/etc teams don’t freaking make stupid mistakes that cost them the game many times over?
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I do blame the coaches regarding blocking, tacking, etc, when they fail to scrimmage in full pads and mistakenly believe that practicing in shorts won’t adversely affect our ability to tackle and block.
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Crowell appears to be the real deal. Would love to see him get more chances out of the I-formation, but most of those were for Richard Samuel. Aaron Murray takes a couple quarters to either warm up or chill out, I can’t tell which.
I’ll still be cheering for them every week, and will look forward to seeing how the coaches continue to get Crowell more touches, and how he handles the spotlight.
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Murray’s been downright terrible in the first halves of both games this season, but he’s not helped by Bobo calling passes mostly on obvious passing downs and a still bad-in-pass-protection offensive line.
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You can blame this on the turnovers in the second half, but we lost this in the first half with scoring opportunities that ended up with two field goals and a third missed field goal. We had a chance to jump on them early and (I know here we go again) the playcalling squandered our chances.
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+1.
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I about turned the tv off when we three the ball from the shotgun on 3rd and two at the 20 or whatever after ramming it down their throats all the way down the field.
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That said, though, the playcalling was much less goofy in the second half.
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+1
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Tough loss. We could’ve/ should’ve/ would’ve won… There’s still a decent season to salvage, though probably not one that’s good enough to save Richt. His tenure rides on the Ole Miss, Miss St, and Tennessee outcomes. If he sweeps those 3 and Vandy and we can get some confidence going to Jax, all is not lost. But we HAVE to win those 3 games.
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I’d say his tenure rides on whether we see some significant improvement in all facets as the season progresses. Not sure if there is a specific won-loss record, but i doubt 7 wins will cut it no matter how good we look against auburn and tech.
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One of those games that just makes you want to puke.
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Nothing more I can say. The team fought hard, but huge mistakes killed them. They had the passion, but it wasn’t enough. We still lost to another ranked team. Our team just finds a way to lose, and we can’t get around that. I am proud of them, but also so disapointed. Losing at this level has to stop. 0-2 now looks so bad and the rest of the schedule is throwing up so many question marks
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The Dawgs fought hard. Some mental lapses by a few players.Some bad playcalling early in game but Bobo made some better adjustments as the game went on. They were picking on our outside LB all game with lattimore. As a team I thought this was a well played game. Crowell is the real deal.
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I wish Ogletree didn’t have to go and break his foot; we missed him tonight.
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I’ve officially stopped caring about this season. If that makes me a bad fan, so be it. Maybe Richt keeps his job, maybe he doesn’t. Another season lost in the middle/bottom of the SEC. Maybe I should just be happy that we’ll probably win next week. Whoopdie-doo.
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I agree. You are a bad fan.
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Okee dokee.
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Can I have your tickets?
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I still care but I calloused. I have come to expect we will find ways to lose.
This program has played like losers for three years running. It now appears endemic.
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“I am calloused”
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I am constipated.
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O line did a much better overall job than last week. Looked like a different bunch. Crazy to say but if you take away turnovers and special team play our defense as a unit did well overall especially in the middle. Still tired of this team finding ways to lose, but still encouraged watching these players tonight
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Unfortunately I’m not, because although they looked better than against Boise, they are only at the level of the team that lost to Colorado, Miss. St., Florida, and Auburn last year. Play good enough to win but make too many crucial mistakes and lose.
I believe it’s in their heads at this point.
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Oh, Arkansas last year too. I have seen this movie before and I am damn tired of watching it.
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Mental toughness is not there for sure. Plus, you can’t take any plays off as we learned today.
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What would Florida, Auburn, Alabama, LSU, UT do in about 3 more games after a 1-4 start? FIRE his fucking apathetic ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Another clusterf**k. Another loss. It’s painful to watch this team. When are we going to start playing REAL football? Execution, tackling, covering punts, blocking, pass rush, etc. Again, nothing but a clusterf**k.
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Actually, except for about 4 plays that were colossal f*ck-ups, the Dawgs played really well and should have won this game by 2 or more touchdowns.
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Like Colorado last year? Or Florida? Or Auburn?
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How many times are the dawgs going to drag that same excuse out? “colossal f*ck-ups”. If it happened once or twice a season it would be a f*ck-up. When it happens multiple times per game, it’s in our identity. I’m to the point where I believe we practice screwing things up.
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No. If they practiced screwing up they would get good at it.
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+1.
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Mayor is right. We did dominate and played much better. I can’t imagine Georgia Southern losing to us in a day where you give up those kinds of plays. It was by no means perfect, but we did tackle, block and hit better than last week.
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My initial thoughts.
1. really hurt ourselves in first quarter with only 6 points out of 3 redzone chances. When we got down deep, Crowell left the game and Samuel got the carries. Felt like if we kept feeding Crowell the ball we would have scored more than 6 points. Didn’t like bobo’s play calling once we got down deep.
2. Up 6-0, our defense held and forced a punt on SC’s next possession. The punter boomed a long one 60 yard punt and B. Smith fair caught the ball on the 10 despite having 30 yards of daylight in front of him. He did that a bunch today. Anderson then jumped early and we found ourselves inside our 5 and punting deep from our endzone. Anyway, the point i am making is that bonehead play by our punt returner set up SC for that long pass from midfield and we found ourselves down 7-6 despite dominating.
3. If you give up a fake punt TD for 72yds, a fumble return td, a pick six, etc., even Idaho state can or should beat you. it would be easy to call all these big plays occuring on a single saturday a fluke, but uncorrected errors caused them (like murray holding on to the ball too long), The big plays/mistakes definitely had a “one play away Ray” feel to them.
4. During the tv broadcast, it was said that UGA practiced 2 days this past week in full pads and that this was a rarity in our program in recent years. Our you kidding me!!? this is the single most important weakness in our program that has caused our demise the past few years. We played much better this week with respect to hitting, tackling, blocking, so we need to continue full contact scrimmages and that should lead to continued improvement. Maybe we wont be so soft. Enough with practicing in shorts, green non-contact jerseys and not allowing tackling to the ground.
5, I am trying not to avoid knee-jerk reactions after this loss. We played much better, and we dominated 80% of the plays. We played much better than last week. But you can’t surrender touchdowns on offense and special teams and beat anyone.
6. It is not injuries that have hurt our success, it is our fear of injuries that has led to this decision that we are better off practicing without contact so that our starters are fresh and healthy. A tough S&C program is not a substitute for contact and intense scrimmaging. We are better off practicing hard and going into game with banged up players.
7. Crowell looked great. Wish he had more carries.
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Crowell did look great. And then on one unfortunately important play he looked like Washaun Ealey.
I am so, so tired of giving away games.
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Proud of the Dawgs. Anyone noticed we haven’t had any personal fouls so far (excluding a facemask last week)? To me that shows a tremendous amount of character considering how tough these games have been. I saw drastic improvement from last week. Bobo is still making me chug Tums like beer but we scored some points. Unfortunately, turnovers happen and we saw a ‘perfect storm’ with all of these turning into extra points. Not excusing the turnovers, it just seems like a lot of bad luck as well.
If you left the game early you suck gator balls. And if you think this season isn’t worth watching then I question if you were ever a fan.
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So last week was the loss we got outclassed, this week was the one we gave away through special teams and turnovers. Here’s a preview of what’s likely coming: the loss where we blow a big lead because we’re trying to drain the 2nd half clock, the loss where we are in a huge hole and almost catch up, the loss where the refs absolutely screw us, the loss in Jax, etc. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m exhausted of thinking about how we lost because it’s become beside the point.
The point is that this program continues to lose in big (we really need this one, wouldn’t this be great to win, we owe them one, this could turn the season around, let’s show the world what UGa is all about) games. Been this way for awhile now, and hard to see it changing without THE change on top. Fair or not–although the benefit of the doubt has been pissed away in plenty of poorly coached performances.
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If you proven correct, then we will definitely have a new coach next year. Guess I will hope for continued improvement translating into a string of big wins.
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We gave up 395 net yards to SC – 390 net yards to Boise.
No offense….but where’s the improvement?
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That stat surprises me. I guess it just felt like the defense played better this week because 4 of SC’s scores were not the fault of the defense. Further, our line wasn’t getting manhandled like last week.
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253 yards rushing, too.
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The reduction in personal foul penalties is definitely an improvement over years past.
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