In his most recent Mailbag, Bruce Feldman answers a couple of questions about how much of a difference Jeremy Pruitt and Hutson Mason will make for Georgia this season. There’s a lot of stuff in his response that will make the average Dawg fan happy, including his belief that Georgia enters this season as the favorite in the SEC East, but Feldman hedges his bet in a couple of significant ways.
First, while the defense should be improved, it’s hard to say how much.
Having Jenkins and eight other starters back, bodes well for Pruitt. The defense should be improved.. How much remains to be seen. Pruitt inherited a loaded D with a bunch of studs in the secondary at FSU. I don’t know if he has as many playmakers back there in Athens but this should still be one of the better defenses in the SEC.
It’s a good point. Just go back and look at Emerson’s pre-spring depth chart and try to answer that question.
Second, if last year’s SEC was the year of the quarterback, this year is going to be which school best survives it not being the year of the quarterback. And Georgia’s certainly part of that discussion.
As outstanding as the skill guys are in Athens — RBs Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall are superb and wideouts Malcolm Mitchell, Chris Conley, Michael Bennett and Justin Scott-Wesley are playmakers, I still expect Georgia to miss Aaron Murray’s presence in 2014.
Mason, a fifth-year senior, got some experience late in the season after Murray was injured. UGA was 1-1 against Ga. Tech and Nebraska in his two starts. Will he be able to deliver some clutch plays when this offense needs it on third downs? We’ll see…
The silver lining, as Feldman goes on to acknowledge, is that Georgia is far from the only school in the conference that has to address that issue.