From yesterday’s Seth Emerson Mailbag:
1. Much has been said good and bad about OC Mike Bobo and his skill as a play caller. What do you expect from him this season in his play calling? What will be a good sign that it will be a good season for him…and (uh-oh)then bad signs…
– HammerDawg
1. Bobo is aware of the criticism, but he’s hard-headed in the sense that he’s not going to let it dictate his play-calling. I don’t see the offense becoming more wide open for the sake of being wide open.
Excuse me, but I think Seth just blamed Bobo. Welcome to the party, pal!
Get The Picture 
Well it’s just one reporter’s opinion … And he stated the obvious. It would have been newsworthy had Seth said “I think Bobo is aware of the criticism and he’s vowed to try and not kill his own offense’s momentum with draw plays on 2nd and 14.”
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Some people define momentum by losing 4 yards on first down. Others don’t.
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Bobo blames Bobo.
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why would Bobo listen to the chorus of critics? 99% of them probably never played football above the high school level. The only critic who counts with Mike Bobo is Mark Richt, who seems to feel like Bobo is running the offense the head coach wants him to run.
there’s nothing wrong with UGA’s offense that a few road graders up front wouldnt cure. That’s just my opinion. I doubt Bobo or anyone else is listening to that, either.
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Well said.
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And agreed with.
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I’m not a Bobo hater or defender, but this statement is just plain dumb …
“Bobo is aware of the criticism, but he’s hard-headed in the sense that he’s not going to let it dictate his play-calling.”
I’d tbe more concerned if a coach did change his play calling because he was being critizied … Changing it because you’ve learned or adapeted is fine, but always doing what the fans wants = failure.
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Well, if you listen to the “nattering nabobs” on the Sphere, Bobo’s boss has made all sorts of changes due to fan pressure…I have never believed that, but some do, some here do.
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I get what you’re saying, but a lot of times the fans are out front on this stuff. There are several changes that have been implemented by Richt in the last few years that fans were pointing out needed change a while back, particularly in the S&C program.
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Audit you are a smart guy and I have been reading your comments on here and other Dawg sites for years and have found them thoughtful and intellegent. Do you honestly think that FANS are more in tune and have a better understanding of what is going on than the coaches that watch hours of film and see the players every stinking day? Really?
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Sometimes, yes.
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I thought there was big pooh-pooing on here from the Mon Morn QBs as to whether fans or coachs read these blogging criticisms. They posted hat the words on here were in a coaches, players and recruits vacuum.
Starting this crap all up again doesn’t help any of those factions. I believe it is used to hurt recruiting and some recruits last year verified that fear and they went elsewhere whereas UGA had been their original place of choice. It still is cowardly and fan arrogance still sucks.
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Found “Scooter’s” response in that post from 2009 very interesting.
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Of course I think the coaches know way more about what they’re doing than we as fans do.
However, I think a lot of things fans were noticing such as decline in S&C/need for a recruiting coordinator/Joe Cox footwork happened while the coaching staff was still asleep at the wheel from ’06-’09 and were obvious to just about everybody but the coaching staff.
I’m sure there are tons of wrinkles and fixes of bad habits that happen on the practice field that we never notice as fans. I also always assumed at some point the coaches would have fixed all the things I cited above (they have). However, it would be disingenuous to pretend like the fans didn’t notice a lot of this stuff long before action plans were put in place by the coaching staff. That’s all I’m saying.
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That’s fair, but the idea I got from Bobo’s words was that the coaches noticed the tell was creeping in to Aaron’s routine and they prevented it from becoming a game-altering tell. Whether it was noticed by a fan and first reported to the staff through a blog was not made clear. That it had existed for some time is downight false. That the coaches didn’t find it first is unclear, only that Bobo forthrightly acknowledged that the perception was correct and had been corrected. What came first is unclear to me.
You know, I’ll bet that I could go over play by play of all college teams and pick out “tells” that may be correct or not. If I represented all my cherry-picked observations as fact instead of supposition, I would be an arrogant idiot who, with a few accurate observations, has suddenly flown past the knowledge and observations of entire coaching staffs and become the guru of CFB. To call it a failing of any coach because I had noticed it also would be the height of arrogance.
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Bobo’s offense scores plenty of points to win in the SEC. The games that got Bobo much of the criticism were the fault of the defense in my opinion.
The analogy is blaming the kicker that misses the final kick to win the game. What about the rest of the team that made it come down to that?
If you score 28 points in the SEC, you should win. How many of those game did we not? Now that Willie is gone, the future looks bright.
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I agree with that to an extent. I think my biggest frustration with Bobo, and the Senator has echoed this in the past, is that he has a tendency to fall back on doing what he wants to do versus what the team is doing well in a particular game (now whether that strategy is based on marching orders from the boss man, I can’t say).
The Auburn and Georgia Tech games in 2010 were prime examples. Aaron Murray and AJ Green were torching those two defenses through the air and neither Ted Roof nor Al Groh had an answer. Instead of continuing to bomb away, he pulled back the reins to try and run the ball and allowed Auburn to take over their game and Georgia Tech get back in their game after both teams started getting stops. If the goal of an offense is to score as many points as possible, then I don’t care if Aaron Murray throws the ball 60 times if the defense has shown it can’t stop it. I wish Bobo would call games this way.
The best game he’s ever called, IMO, was the Georgia Tech game in 2009 when he never stopped running the ball when they proved they couldn’t stop it. That shows me that he is capable of being a top-flight OC, but he just needs to trust his instincts more when things are working rather than what he thinks an offense should look like.
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Thank you, and the corrollary to this is to STOP doing things that are not working in a game.
Sometimes the safest thing to do in the 4th quarter is not try and beat the clock by grinding it out on the ground when that is not working, but keep passing and trying to score points if that is what is working. Too often I feel like we have a “prevent” offense.
And I still can’t figure out how “running more plays” makes any sense as a goal in and of itself. I’d rather see our goal as “running plays more efficiently”. # of plays run as a success metric is the *result* of a good offense, not the cause!
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ps – I am ambivalent about CMB overall, btw. But one thing that emerges from all this Bobo hand-wringing is that if this many people get this frustrated with him / CMR on certain subjects, well, maybe you ought to weigh the benefits of a different approach – who cares where the idea came from?
In fairness, I think CTG gets a pass on some things, but since he has the “fire” people ignore things like the second half of the SECCG where a not-spectacular LSU offense ate our lunch. Is that off-base?
I wonder how much the intangibles factor in, here. Bono’s demeanor and funny last name, for instance.
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Also, I’m curious as to how Audit Dawg perceives the 2010 Ala/Aub game where Aub came from behind more points than they did in our game when Cam Newton whipped our D. Kirby Smart lost that game just as Grantham lost our game by letting Aub overcome the points that UGA’s O had put up sufficient to win. To say that Bobo lost a game by changing a game-winning strategy that was defended better by Aub in the second half is pure bullshit.
“falling back on doing what he wants to do versus what the team is doing well” …..I’ll let that hang out there where the breeze can open the holes in that statement a little better for everyone to see.
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Whoa there. Slow your roll, dude. Re-read what i wrote. Never once say anything about any coach being responsible for losing a game. Hell, I never even mentioned the outcomes of any of the three games in my comment. I only said that was an example of one of the more maddening things about Bobo’s playcalling to me.
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Sorry. I took the ,”….he pulled back the reins to try and run the ball and allowed Auburn to take over their game….” as responsibility for losing a game.
Bobo’s playcalling can be maddening to as many of you who wish to view him that way as you please. The Senator is affected differently. He just feels like pulling out his hair. You can all portray the feelings he elicits from you any way you like. I just decline to judge him on his coaching abilities because yall don’t like certain plays called at certain times. Those differences have nothing to do with impugning his professional abilities.
Why don’t we go back and review the level of professionalism he is held to by the coaches in the SEC and his stats. Those have been thrown out there and had him as 3rd in O coaches in the SEC.
I think we ought to view Bobo as that great and lovable UGA O-coach who fucks up once in a while. I’m truly sorry that some of you don’t get the thrill of a productive and rather dependable O led by a really good coach and person who should be venerated for many of his achievements.
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“Bobo” – stupid phone spell check!
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I am not saying that I disagree with you, but committing to the run game (or pulling the plug), sometimes isn’t as cut and dry. Part of the strategy in a good running game is to wear down the defense and run all over them in the 3rd and 4th quarters. It’s hard to tell if it’s not working based on limited success early in the game. By design you won’t have much success in the first half. The payoff is in the second.
Do you risk bailing out on strategy that is designed to be a war of attrition? The same could be said for the deep passing routes where you hope to wear down their corners. (of course this opens up a can of strength & conditioning worms).
However, I 100% agree with the “if they can’t stop it, neither should you” approach.
Again, I’m not disagreeing with all valid points you make, I’m just throwing it out there.
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Absolutely.
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Bobo’s “skill as a playcaller” doesn’t bother me all that much. He outsmarts himself too often but he can also be brilliant at times. Not saying he couldn’t be better, because he’s not the best gameday OC, especially when matched against a good defense.
But it’s his skill as a COORDINATOR that I question. And that’s where the focus should be, not on his playcalling.
~~~
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Yes. And coordination shared with the assistant coaches for the O line, RBs, and receiving corps.
Because good Ds can mess up O plays that are sound and represent the play to call in a particular situation, it doesn’t impune play-calling at all.
Sometimes a coach will call a certain play that has more risk to it in order to come from behind or to distance the score to more ensure the win, but that extra risk isn’t taken with that play if the D is doing it’s job. Fans don’t want the team to take extra risks once they get away with a few and lead in the game. To continue to risk big when you don’t have to would have fans on his ass for another reason. With Bobo, it’s never going to satisfy fans who have anti Richt persuasions gnawing at their gut.
This anti Bobo meme started right after the anti Richt dust settled during last year’s season. It was turned into a joke to most of us , but some still have that anti view (with no solutions proposed) who will continue to try to piss on our parade. Enough already!
Senator, sometimes you like to scratch old scabs. It feels good for a moment , but it risks undue criticisms becoming the festering agent fo the onset of a fandemic.
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“undue criticism”
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
I think that both sides (pro-Bobo and anti-Bobo) have some valid arguments. Personally, I’ve never been anti-Richt but I’ve always been anti-Bobo. I know many people who feel the same way. And have for quite some time.
Clearly we have a difference of opinion. That doesn’t make your opinion a fact. I’ve proposed solutions. I don’t think it’s worth a huge argument, but I think it’s unfair that you attack and condescend to the people who do disagree with you.
You think Bobo’s great. Not everyone feels the same way. Move on. He has his problems. People have a right to criticize the coaches and (literally) always will. You disagree and that’s fine. That doesn’t make their opinion less valid.
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CTG talks like a guy who has a system, has thought it through, and can explain why it works when it does, and what the gaps were when it doesn’t. I just get the feeling that CTG sleeps, eats, and breathes defensive philosophy – and translates that onto the field. Bobo just doesn’t give me the same vibe. Bobo doesn’t strike me as a “system” guy. Leach, Holgersen, et al are guys who are implementing a system that has been analyzed and re-analyzed and perfected. Bobo on the other hand comes off as someone who seems to call plays like he’s playing playstation.
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Maybe he could have better success with the “ask Corso” feature?
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Now we are down to “vibes”? Why don’t some of you, just for good ole fair play, look at Bobo with differing eyes for a while. Look at his achievements and during-the-game events that dictate final scores. One of the major reasons given by Jarvis in returning this year is to right those D wrongs that led to an L last year.
Thank goodness that our team doesn’t try to point fingers at one unit or the other like some fans do. That’s because they are a team and understand that they will never attain perfection unlike what many fans expect.
This is a fan blog and a place to exult the team’s achievements. Cheap shots by fans and some trolls don’t constitute exultation nor fair criticisms. I sometimes think that some of you are Schultz posers.
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This is not aimed at Bobo but it seems that under CTG the D is being coached. As a long time season ticket holder I have watched the UGA sidelines for years under Dooley, Goff, Donnan and Mark. The thing that I have noticed is that now on the D side of the ball CTG is almost always talking to the D with a white board in hand showing them what they did and what they need to do. In the past when the ball changed hands the D would come off the field and sit down. Maybe once in a great while CRG would say something to the DL guys but for the most part they just sat there resting. The same is not done on the O side. Bobo is in the box again and maybe Coach Friend will talk to the OL but for the most part they just sit there until it’s their time to go back on the field.. CTG coaches like a Pro coach, Bobo not so much.
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