David Ching has a look at what to expect from Georgia’s defense this spring. His conclusion? “… don’t expect early practice reports to break down how the defense dominated the day.”
Yeah, well, take a look at how the offensive line is expected to line up per Seth Emerson’s pre-spring depth chart and tell me the defense doesn’t have a chance to shine. From an experience standpoint, as well as productivity from last season, the line is the defense’s strong suit and the offense’s weak link.
My guess is that early on the defense is going to show out better than anticipated, but that it won’t be worth putting too much stock into that.
Get The Picture 
For those amongst us that have sky high expectations for this season, Jim Jones said lay off the Kool-Aid. Our O-line will likely show little improvement because we still have no such thing as an offensive tackle on the team. We have a bunch of guards and centers spread out across the line. I hope to see the defense improve but it’s asking a lot considering the mess we had on defense last year. Hopefully special teams will actually be able to use the punt return this season. We’ve bought into preseason sunshine pumping many, many times only to see the product on the field not equal what we hear about during the offseason.
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TD, I mostly agree with you but I do think Theus is a tackle, just not a good one–RT at best not LT. This is probably the biggest disappointment of the off-season IMHO. There were an unusually high number of good OTs coming out of JC this past year and several got signed by our rivals. Bama, Auburn, Ole Miss, hell Mizzou got 2. But UGA signed 0 JCs for the area of the team with the biggest immediate need. We go into the coming season, once again, without a dominating OL and with the LT spot weak.
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So you’re saying the koolade will be made with fake juice?
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I would call it kool-aid with Splenda instead of sugar.
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Splenda gives me headaches, just like our OL…
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Good one 202. Slurped my coffee into the back oh my throat… Gotta go cough
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Hutson?
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I hate to break it to ya Russ. Kool-Aid. It’s just sugar and food coloring mixed in with some water and fake flavors.
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There will be no aftertaste with this year’s new and improved batch of Kool-Aid
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We better get a backup QB ready, because Mason will get hit hard and often behind this projected OL.
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Lets review the last few seasons. For years we would always get the opposite of what we expected. The offensive line will be the best in years, it didn’t happen. The defense has to be the greatest because we have so many NFL caliber players, it wasn’t all that great. The short version is if we think it’s going to be good it will suck and if we think it’s going to suck we will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t. It’s the “Georgia Way”.
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The first half (…if we think it’s going to be good it will suck) is right. I’ve not been “pleasantly surprised” about any aspect of our team since 2002. Maybe Gurley in 2012.
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Even as a Disney Dawg, I can’t argue with this. Murray, for one, lived up to expectations, but with every other position, it really does seem that in-season reality is the inverse of preseason expectations.
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I always approach the coming season with cautious optimism but this coming one has more questions than most. The OL is always an issue for us Dawg fans, and it will be again in 2014. Now we can add uncertainty at QB, although our RB situation somewhat diminishes how critical that might be. Far different than 2013 as it relates to QB and OL, I think we knew what we had in AM and assumed the experience we returned at OL would make us good enough. In fact the entire offense was a non-concern for me and that turned out to be right.
On defense we have as many concerns as we did going into last season. I felt we couldn’t help but improve last season despite the loss of accomplished players; I was wrong. I may be wrong again but I don’t think we can be that bad again. My 2014 confidence is more about the staff changes than the talent, and that really isn’t “high confidence”. I hope these guys respond to a new teaching philosophy or we could sweat another 8-4, 9-3 year.
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We have potentially the best private school OL in the country!
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