Grab a plate and do your thing.
- SOD defends signing Deion Bonner. Sure sounds noble, but I still wouldn’t want to be the guy with the locker next to Bonner.
- Mark Richt thinks the way to improve last year’s horrendous showing on special teams is with personnel. We’ll find out, because he’s not making any changes in the coaching assignments.
- Matt Hayes’ piece on the plus-one is a perfect exercise in cynicism. Well, almost perfect: “The biggest problem I have with the Group of 12 — all good men trying to do the right thing — is they’re being pushed into a situation they want no part of.” Yeah, right.
- There’s no way the WWL can bring back Craig James after his Texas Senate campaign goes up in smoke, is there?
- Rating 2011’s college quarterbacks by QB score (“if you generate yards and avoid turnovers, you will be rewarded”) yields some different results than does the standard passer rating formula.
- “The biggest thing I took from working with Coach Meyer was that Xs and Os are about one percent of why we were successful (at Florida) and why we will be successful here.”
- List of projected SEC quarterback starters in order of career wins here.
- Georgia isn’t wasting any time filling the slots that opened up in the defensive backfield.
***********************************************************************************
UPDATE: Promises, promises.
ESPN, we’re holding your ass to this, understand? (h/t Doug)
Get The Picture 
Craig James has it backwards. Being gay is a matter of biology. Being an obnoxious, preening douchebag is a choice.
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And James has raised douchbag to a fine art.
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I wonder if the Big Dawg punishes douchery more harshly than being gay in Craig James’ world?
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I think Craig James can answer that himself, after he yanks that knife from between the hooker’s shoulder blades.
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Our special teams will also have 2 freshman at kicker and punter to boot.
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This is an out and out failure to recognize a deficiency and to act to fix it by CMR, He recognized that Willie was messing up and got rid of him, greatly improving the D. Same thing with certain position coaches on D. The failure by Special Teams last year was all about coaching and not about just players. It’s systemic. Nobody is accountable. Basically he is in denial about ST and things won’t improve until he wakes up. How many games do we have to lose because of this?
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Our special teams were quite good in 2010. Butler and Walsh were both great, and our kick off coverage improved dramatically under Warren Belin. Coming in to 2011, I can understand why Richt may have thought things would be a-ok. Blair getting the yips and Belin’s departure to the NFL were things out of his control. I give him credit for recognizing and attempting to address the issue this offseason, even if it’s a bit later than we might’ve hoped for.
I do think it’s kind of funny that “putting more talented guys on special teams” was something many of our fans have been clamoring for this past season, just like “our strength and conditioning needs an overhaul” was a common complaint in 2010. Maybe those of us outside the arena aren’t such idiots after all?
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AGREE 100%, although special team coach can surely help.
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Belin made it work. When he left it stopped working.
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I believe that a lot of the player he was using graduated.
So, it may have not been ALL Belin. He was clearly a good LB coach and a good ST coach. But Olivadotti is clearly a very good LB coach. He may not be quite as good at STs, but Belin had a group of guys who had been on kick coverage for a few years. Olivadotti did not.
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ABC kept Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football all those years, precisely because America despised him. If I was an ESPN suit I’d try Craig James on the same theory.
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America despised Howard Cosell as a person but respected Howard Cosell as a sports journalist. Craig James gets no such respect.
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I don’t know Mayor, them what knew what a “sports journalist” was may have respected Cosell for his professional chops, those millions who had not been in that arena hated his ever lasting guts. In fact, Craig James is a nobody in this part of the country to anybody other than die hard college football fans. Id say its a tossup for the average fan.
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Howard Cosell, love him or hate him, was the recognized preeminent sports journalist of his generation. A really good argument could be made that he was the first real television sports journalist.
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Richt’s statements about the changes on special teams continue to puzzle me. I’ve seen several instances where someone asked Richt about coaching changes on special teams and his response every time has been to change the personnel. His answer raises two more questions in my mind.
Why couldn’t there have been personnel changes during this past season?
Isn’t getting the right personnel on the field part of the coaches responsibility?
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True. Besides your valid point, I see this solution as another indication of Richt’s general rule: out-talent them rather than out-coach them. This approach works well enough (as long as you recruit and sign Top Ten talent)–until you face a very well-coached team with decent talent (Boise) or team with equal or better talent. In those cases, Georgia ends up on the short end far too often.
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Except I think the point here is that Georgia didn’t out-talent anyone on special teams last year (Brandon Boykin excepted, of course).
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And why, exactly was that, Senator? Could it be that UGA doesn’t use all of its available scholarships to sign recruited players and gives those remaining scholarships to walk-ons as a reward, then plays the walk-ons on Special Teams?
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It wasn’t just walk-ons. If I recall correctly, Nick Marshall had a couple of spectacular whiffs on punt coverage last year that contributed to long returns.
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The worst of all though was Sailors not realizing there was an overload to his side in the final punt of the Vandy game. He just took off and let the whole Vandy team come clean.
(Or was it the decision to have Sailors gunning for Mathieu one on one in the SEC CG? Definitely a point for the “not out talent” camp.)
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My point exactly– w/o a Special Teams coach no one coach is responsible. So there is no overall plan.
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That’s probably an exaggeration (or certainly should be), but I wouldn’t want to dispute the point. I was just noting that an upgrade in “talent” as opposed to a change in the way that that talent is coached, games are managed, etc. always seems to be the emphasis of our staff’s problem-solving. In an area like special teams, where coaching emphasis and consistent effort seems to account for a lot of success at the college level, I’m thinking that talent alone shouldn’t be our only upgrade. And if Georgia’ special team talent really is that shitty–well, there’s no season-long excuse for that either (as Jason implies above), right?
But, on the bright side–at least the coaches admit that there is a problem. That’s, obviously, a necessary and positive step towards improvement.
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There is a rather long history in NCAA football of Special Teams contributing to the success of a program w/o even one ST player being a starter on O or D. See the “12th Man” at Texas A&M circa 1970. A&M actually used guys from the student body to be on kickoff and punt teams. It’s all about coaching.
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Walk-ons on STs get to literally spend all of their practice time working on STs. It’s like when you have a random fast guy as a “punt block specialist”. They don’t need a real position. So, it can be advantageous if they’re coached up.
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So…Carvelle, in his ongoing effort to demonstrate his death grip on the facts, pronounces SOD to be someone who possesses a “reputation as a strict disciplinarian”. Damn. Just damn.
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Holy crap, I missed that the first time around. The only way that characterization could’ve been any more off the mark is if it’d included a mention of “wildly popular ESPN personality Craig James, known for his sage wisdom and hands-off parenting style . . . “
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“The biggest thing I took from working with Coach Meyer was that Xs and Os are about one percent of why we were successful (at Florida)…”
The remaining 99% was a combination of Irvin coaching special teams and what a friend they had in Huntley
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-06-14/sports/florida_1_uf-johnson-gainesville
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Get ready, because ESPN will definitely bring back James when he loses, and they’re going to start calling him “The Senator.” I know it doesn’t make sense, but you just watch. I’m very sorry Senator, but there’s a very real possibility that your nickname is about to be synonymous with “Craig James,” win or lose.
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Yes we all know that ESPN will bring him back. He knew it too and that is why he did the whole stupid Senate thing in the first place. LOOK AT ME I”M CRAIG JAMES BITCH!!!
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Re: Deion Bonner–Does it surprise anyone that SOD would sign him. UT has always been a haven for criminals and SOD has made things even worse in that regard since his arrival. SOD has never demonstrated even one ounce of moral fiber. The fact that he has a law degree and was once a practicing attorney in Georgia speaks badly for the legal profession IMHO. Can we get the guy disbarred just on general lack of integrity? State Bar of Georgia General Counsel’s Office where are you?
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SOD is feeling the squeeze after that Cantucky game and is looking for some juice.
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But is the juice worth the squeeze, that is the question. Is it worth it to sell your soul to sign a few mindless sociopaths just because they can run fast in order to win a few football games? In the final analysis is THAT worth your integrity? When you do that haven’t you already lost because those who do not subscribe to that sort of thinking end up shunning you? Then you have undermined what you were trying to accomplish in the first place because nobody worth a damn will play for you because they no longer respect you. Wait–I forgot we were talking about UT …. Never mind.
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Bonner was not stealing he had just returned from Auburn a few weekends before where things were left in the locker room for prospects and though that was how things worked everywhere. I say that joking but somehow wouldn’t be suprised.
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I hear rumors that the Dawgs are making some changes in their offensive schemes next year [playbook].
What are you hearing about this Senator?
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Nary a word, Will. But I didn’t hear anything about last season’s shift to the single-back hurry-up stuff beforehand, either.
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Upon reading GTP during the off-season, coach Mike Bobo realized that:
– he is predictable with his play-calling
– he is merely a shill for CMR’s offensive design
– maybe Carlton Thomas is more effective in the flats
– the screen pass has been invented
– Aaron Murray should watch more film of David Green
– the I formation with a stable of some of the best running backs in the country may be a good idea to use more than the hurry-up shotgun, single-back spread
– fans hate the draw play on 3rd and long, regardless of field position
– he can actually help his O-line with play-calling, not expose them.
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Would certainly be interesting.
One good thing may be thinning the playbook out quite a bit. I’ve read a lot of quotes from good OCs about being the best you can be at your job. They do that by not running as many plays but being masters at executing the plays they are running.
That makes a lot of sense to me. When we see a play once or twice a season I have two thoughts:
1) Why do we waste practice time working on these plays to run them once or twice a year when we have trouble executing our most basic plays?
And 2) If it’s a brilliant play that works to perfection, why have we been saving it? Why don’t we drop some of the dumb plays that never work and call the really interesting, well-executed, well-designed plays more often?
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“We do a lot of diligence when we recruit,….”
Yes, if by due diligence you mean screening for the ability to stomp bar patrons and steal from teammates.
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I’m surprised the QB Score link did not get its very own GTP “Envy and Jealousy” post. Good Lord, people hate the SEC.
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I am a fan of Aaron Murray the kid and Aaron Murray the QB, and I’ll be happy if he quarterbacks at UGA for the next two years. Still, the shorthand provided by the ESPN “breaking down the quarterbacks” really gives you a quick and dirty picture of where he’s at in comparison to his peers: he’s in the top quarter, maybe third best in the conference.
As we have debated, his W-L record (which is hardly on his shoulders alone) is not as good as his stats, OR he doesn’t seem to make those stats in situations where they can dramatically affect the team’s W-L record, OR the truth in this case is somewhere in the middle: Aaron’s a *slightly* better quarterback than the average team he’s been on for the last two years, but only slightly, meaning he isn’t going to make the difference between a W and an L in most games.
And yet…AM’s a DGD. Here’s hoping for his breakout season.
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At least Deion is getting some “pre-trail[sic] intervention”…
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