Interesting chart from John Pennington, comparing SEC defensive yards per play from the 2012 season with this year’s stats (against BCS opposition only):
School 2013 Yds/All/Play 2012 Yds All/Play Change Florida 4.77 4.33 0.44 worse Alabama 4.99 4.38 0.61 worse Missouri 5.31 5.78 0.47 better S. Carolina 5.47 4.63 0.84 worse LSU 5.66 4.64 1.02 worse Ole Miss 5.87 5.79 0.08 worse Georgia 5.88 5.27 0.61 worse Auburn 6.11 6.48 0.37 better Vanderbilt 6.19 5.00 1.19 worse Miss. State 6.22 5.67 0.55 worse Arkansas 6.41 6.18 0.23 worse Texas A&M 6.42 5.45 0.97 worse Tennessee 6.70 6.49 0.21 worse Kentucky 6.97 6.01 0.96 worse
Bitch about Grantham all you like – and much of it’s deserved, no doubt – but he’s got plenty of company this year. Just for yucks, I checked Georgia’s offensive ypp for the same periods. It’s declined from 6.7 to 6.29. As TAMU, Alabama, Missouri, LSU and South Carolina have all improved in that department in 2013, I’d say that’s a bigger deal. Toss in the craptastic special teams play, and you can see the path to 4-3.
Get The Picture 
“Toss in the craptastic special teams play, and you can see the path to 4-3.”
Realism…dangerous thinking.
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Damn it, I’m trying to be an apologizing enabler… or an enabling apologizer. It’s hard keeping all these hats straight.
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Senator, you’re not being fair. Injuries had a lot to do with the 4-3 as well as with the decline in O numbers. Not to mention…(seething quietly as he spits out the word)…REFS.
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Wasn’t really getting into underlying issues with this post, but I agree that injuries have played a significant role in the decline on offense.
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Shrill shill for the program is better. 🙂
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Hats? Hats!!!!! now just wait a darn minute. 🙂
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Seeing how much worse this year’s Vandy D is vs. last year doesn’t make me feel better though.
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Gives you an idea of how crappy Georgia’s offense was in the loss.
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Fire John Chavis. Todd is relatively as good as Kirby.
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Todd who?
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Hey, at least I can remember 3 out of 14 DC names. That puts me over the Mendoza Line.
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I had no idea we were back to 7th in the conference in ypp, which AFAIK is the best single statistic for evaluating D and O. I was starting to be persuaded that maybe it’d be worth seeing what $750k can get us on the open market for a d-coordinator, but now I’m not so sure. Given the SOS so far, It wouldn’t be surprising to see us in the top third of the conference in defense at year’s end, which is perfectly reasonable for a unit starting so many true freshman.
Losing sucks, but if it’s actually due to poor coaching the data will show it soon enough. Ain’t seeing it yet.
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And they were 6th last year with seven draft picks on the roster. Did nobody else notice this?
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Yea, I think 2012 stands as Grantham’s biggest disappointment. If that proves to be characteristic of Grantham’s ability, we need to move on. Jury’s still out in my mind, but next year we’ll have a pretty firm track record to make judgments on.
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The run D improved quite a bit post-Clemson. The rest of the D…we’re still waiting.
Though I will confess I’ve gone from not wanting to watch us on D at all, to being nervous to watch us on D because of BS flags. So…progress?
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I’m smiling at the thought of Condi Rice pouring over this data and also coming to the conclusion…”but, yeah, their special teams play was craptastic.”
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So when we best UFU and they also
Lose to FSU and Boom gets fired is he our new DC. Who will coach our ” special” teams?
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We don’t need a special teams coach. How many times do I have to say it?
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Can we all agree that if we surrender over 30 points to Florida, Grantham should be fired at the end of the season at the latest?
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He shouldn’t be allowed on the plane home. Give him a bus ticket.
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You know my son brought home a crappy report card and tried to convince me his grades were actually relatively good because many of his friends had bad or worse grades.
Senator, sounds like you are saying is that I should have patted my son on the back and told him to keep up the good work.
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Then you’re not reading my post carefully enough.
Hope you treat your son better than you want to see Grantham treated, though. 😉
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He has had 48 games as DC. I made up my mind on after about 35 games. Its not like he wasn’t given a fair shake.
He has had 19 games where we have given up 30 or more points since he started as DC, That’s 17 more than Alabama, 15 more than LSU, 12 more than Florida, 10 more than SC, 5 more than Vandy,..even Auburn has only given up 12 in the same period. ..I recently posted the number of 30 point games on here for every SEC school since the start of the 2010 season. We are down at the bottom of the conference with the likes of MSU, Kentucky, and Ole Miss.
You can’t expect to accomplish anything but getting torched 5 times every single season. I don’t know whether its his system, or practice routine or what…but its not working and its not ever going to work because Grantham refuses to even admit there is a problem other than youth and lack of experience…HELLO?, then what the heck happened last year?.
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He could also be saying that thanks to rule changes and other advances in the game, perhaps we should adjust our expectations of what a good defense looks like and the numbers a good D will put up.
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And that Jimmie’s and Joe’s matter? And that a several important Jimmie’s and Joe’s on SEC defenses from 2012 are in the NFL in 2013, while the important ones on offense are still around?
I agree with all of these points.
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I thought it was funny near the end of the presser today when Richt was asked about how the fan base can get “vitriolic” after a loss to a team like Vanderbilt and want certain coaches fired.
Richt responded that the questioner’s comment was first time he had even heard anything like that. “You saying that is the first time I’ve hear that, So that’s how that goes. That’s how much I pay attention to that.” Richt said to laughter throughout the room.
The questioner asked Richt if he ever went on Dawg Vent or read anything. Richt said: “I don’t even know what Dawg Vent is. Sorry about that,”
The questioner then asked him if he got emails or if people had his email address.. Richt said: “Oh people have my email address but I don’t look at my emails so…” to more laughter.
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Yeah…it’s really amazing. I would have expected him to say, “Oh I read all of the blogs and papers every day….twitter too. That’s how I make my decisions and all of that. As a matter of fact, I’m going to fire Coach Grantham because Scott thinks I should”….Shheesh!
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I just said it was a funny moment at the presser…that’s all.
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Since CMR admits that he doesn’t keep up with all the blogs, news articles, twitter, etc. … I’d expect he’d hire a grad asst. to peruse these media outlets on a daily basis so to help give CMR some “street cred.” You know, kinda like the role Michael J. Fox played on the TV series “Spin City”.
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I agree with many of the commenters here: my problem with Grantham goes back to last year when this team couldn’t stop anybody with all of its NFL talent. He knew that he was going to have a challenge with youth this year, but he didn’t simplify things until it was too late. I would also like to know where are the 2nd half adjustments that he was pretty good with in prior years.
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Read Buck Belue’s comments about game and the difference in Erk’s defense and TG’s defense. Simply said Erk had and used more upper classman. Understandable, not everybody left for the pros after junior year. And if you play alot of frosh and redshirt frosh expect mistakes, that is what young players do.
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I’m sure if Grantham had a choice, he would use upperclassmen, too. He does not have a choice. He has to play the hand he has been dealt for better or worse.
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Is there any way to measure the performance of the special teams? As in, quantitatively, how bad this years ST is compared to other years and other teams?
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Bueller? Anyone?
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