All shook up

Apparently Will Muschamp doesn’t see the SEC the way us normal people do.

“We have two good teams in our league — and that’s Alabama and LSU — and the rest of us you can throw us in a sack and shake us up,” he said.

I guess all that parity explains Florida’s first conference losing record in 25 years.

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And we were bitching about the size of his paycheck a year ago.

So, how soon before we see the first “Is Grantham Better Than VanGorder?” piece show up?

Observations from the 35: Huddle up!

Because with this year’s model of Georgia football, nothing says “we got this one, thanks” quite like running plays from the huddle for a solid quarter of the game.

Unless it’s giving carries to Boo Malcome.

Anyway, on to what I saw.

• I don’t think there’s any question that the game turned on the McCalebb fumble that occurred after Crowell dropped the ball.  Whatever hope Auburn had to make a game of things quickly evaporated in the next minute.
• That was big, but the most electric moment, not just of the day, but for a longer time than I can remember, was the Rambo pick-six.
• But neither of those wound up being my favorite play.  Honors for that had to go to Bruce Figgins and his TD catch.  I’m a sucker for 344-Fullback and that was the best executed version of the play I’ve seen yet.  Kudos in particular go to Carlton Thomas who threw a killer block to set things up.
• Murray looked as poised as I’ve ever seen him.  Every one of those TD passes came off of beautiful throws.  All of which goes to show that if he’s got the time to set and go through his mechanics properly, he’s a damn fine quarterback.  Right now, he’s playing on a different level.
• In the Battle of the Highly Paid Coordinators, it’s now Malzahn 1, Grantham 1.
• The thing I bet Grantham took away from Auburn’s first drive wasn’t that the Tigers scored, but that they gave up on the run.
• And Mike Bobo vs. Ted Roof wasn’t a fair fight.  That was the best-prepared, best-called game of Bobo’s career.  Murray’s abuse of the Auburn secondary was a beautiful thing to watch and that’s a tribute to Bobo getting him ready and putting things to work at the right time.
• The first fumble was Crowell’s fault.  The second one wasn’t.  That was just a case of the Auburn defender getting the snap count right and disrupting the handoff.
• What gives, Drew Butler?
• John Jenkins is quietly, steadily turning into a dominant player.
• Jarvis Jones was his usual play making self yesterday, all over the field.  Auburn paid a lot of attention to him, not that it did much good.
• The other problem with paying too much attention to Jones is Alec Ogletree.
• Another bouquet deserves to go to Will Friend.  Okay, maybe the o-line still needs some work blocking running back screens, but that was the most dominant run blocking performance we’ve seen in a long, long time.  And some of Murray’s confidence in the pass blocking was reflected in his mechanics.
• Speaking of blocking, the fullbacks kicked some major ass.  Watch the replay on Crowell’s TD run and see what the Auburn defender does as Ogletree comes up to lay the wood on him.
• Speaking of which, is there anything more beautiful in SEC play than watching an offense line up and ram the ball down the opponent’s throat as we saw on that drive?  Georgia didn’t throw a pass after the first drive of the second half and still outscored the Tigers 10-0 the rest of the way.

Really, I could go on, but one of the dangers in recounting a game like yesterday’s is that you wind up coming off as little more than a sunshine pumper.  It’s just that you had to be there to see it.

Congrats on the win, gentlemen.  You deserve it.

****************************************************************************

UPDATE:  If you haven’t looked at the box score yet, you should.  It’s mind-boggling.

Team Stat Comparison

	Auburn	Georgia
1st Downs	9	30
3rd down efficiency	3-11	12-15
4th down efficiency	0-2	0-0
Total Yards	195	528
Passing	144	224
Comp-Att	12-23	14-18
Yards per pass	6.3	12.4
Rushing	51	304
Rushing Attempts	25	56
Yards per rush	2.0	5.4
Penalties	3-14	8-60
Turnovers	3	2
Fumbles lost	2	2
Interceptions thrown	1	0
Possession	19:05	40:55

Sometimes you have to admit that stats aren’t bullshit.

The best laid plans of mice and mid-major conferences

I have a lot of respect for Boise State’s football program, so I don’t take any special satisfaction in the Broncos’ surprising home loss yesterday as far as they’re concerned, but after the Mountain West’s punk decision to move the game from TCU to Boise, I can’t say there’s a bunch more deserving of getting screwed out of BCS money as a result of the loss.

Tough $hit, suckers.

Reunited and it feels so good.

In the depths of my despair after the debacle that was the loss to Tennessee in 2009, I posted this:

But… but.  I’ve read Macon Dawg’s reasoned, thoughtful comments about how this isn’t the first time Georgia’s suffered a humiliating loss, and while I agree to a point with his reasoning, I think there’s more going on than that.  Mark Richt wakes up this morning as the captain of a very dysfunctional ship.  I doubt there’s anyone in the Dawgnation, including the head coach, who feels same way about the program today as I did in Jacksonville seven years ago.

If I had to put my finger on what’s wrong, I’d call it a crisis of faith.  I don’t mean that in a religious sense.  (By the way, of all the arguments I’ve seen about what’s wrong, blaming Coach Richt’s religious convictions for the slide has to rank as the dumbest.)  Rather, it’s a systemic doubt:  the coaches lack faith in the players to execute and the players lack faith in the coaches’ ability to deploy them efficiently and effectively.

It’s that last point that led me to doubt Mark Richt’s future in Athens.  And I’ll be honest with you – after watching Georgia’s disappointing play against Boise State to begin this season, I thought that all the changes that had been wrought by him since that UT game had amounted to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  I’ve long subscribed to the battleship theory of running a college football program in that it’s impossible to turn either of those things around on a dime, especially when you appear to be rudderless.

But you don’t execute a near-perfect game against your oldest conference rival in a series that practically defines evenness without having everyone on board rowing together in the same direction (okay, I’m done flogging the naval analogies).  Yesterday I saw a team that was confident in every phase of the game, players who knew what was expected of them and coaches who knew where to put those players so they could excel.

I’m not stupid enough to start making crazy predictions, other than I don’t see how this team loses to Kentucky, so don’t expect to see grandiose visions of Georgia’s future coming from me.  But I do know this – this program wasn’t going anywhere without a sea change (sorry) in attitude from the top down.  I was skeptical that Mark Richt had it in him, but I’m ecstatic to say that it seems he did.  And I couldn’t be happier for him and everyone else who has a stake in Georgia football.

Boy, this is going to be a fun week.

Harrow’s big hit

Since I’m tossing out YouTube clips this morning, here’s one of the biggest special teams plays of the season.

That drew a collective “whoa!” from the crowd.

Joe Adams is real. And he’s spectacular.

This punt return clip has been splashed all over the Intertubes, so you may have already seen it.  But if you haven’t, strap yourself in for the next minute.

You can close your mouth now.