It’s when you break that down that it gets a little interesting. In 2012, Georgia led the nation in yards per passing attempt, at 10.0 ypa.
Last season, Georgia’s 8.9 ypa was good for eleventh nationally. “Aaron Murray threw past 20 yards only 9.6% of the time. His throws were focused more on the shorter zones, hitting the 6-10 yard range 23% of the time compared to an average 16.6%.”
Either Murray developed a noodle arm, or his game was affected by all the injuries to his receiving corps. Which do you think?
Get The Picture 
The Mitchell injury is a big part of that. 26 was the only guy that Murray really felt comfortable with throwing the deep pass and letting him win the 1 on 1 for the ball.
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Mans Tavarres King graduated.
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It definitely was kinda frustrating watching games in the latter part of the year where we didn’t go deep at all. But when you don’t have a deep threat, you don’t have a deep threat.
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Yet, I’d bet the worst stats are for the Vandy game, when the running game was really its weakest. The lack of running threat affects YPA too.
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Don’t forget the pass-rush pressure Murray faced in most games as well.
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Losing Justin Scott-Wesley changed everything for the passing offense. We adapted to losing Mitchell (another big loss), but when JS-W and Bennett went down in Knoxville, our passing offense had to change. Without Gurley and Marshall, teams could lay back in two deep safeties and keep everything in front of them. Even with Gurley back, teams weren’t committing a safety to the box consistently. The o-line had trouble with consistency. Even with all of that, we still scored enough points to win every game we played except for that pesky thing called a Grantham defense.
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Indeed. Which makes Murray’s efforts in 2013 even more impressive. Ds could stop the short or intermediate stuff even though they knew it was coming. I worry that Mason not only lacks Murray’s arm strength but accuracy and field vision as well. We’ll see in 2014.
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+1 – anyone short of David Greene, DJ Shockley or Matthew Stafford will be a step down this year at QB. I’m not as concerned about Mason’s arm strength as Greene showed you can be very productive without a great arm as long as you play within the system. Regarding accuracy, it’s going be hard to do what Aaron did the way he would “throw guys open.” Murray had good field vision, but it wasn’t the best because he would lock on to a guy off a pre-snap read and throw into coverage. I want to see what Mason can do outside of a game in a stadium where rain is coming down sideways where his guys also were having a bad case of the drops.
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the main thing that stat says to me is this: Aaron Murray was awesome.
IF we had lost one more WR last year, I’m pretty sure the Senator was the next guy up on the depth chart. That AM was able to keep the offense churning with a so-so OL and the lame, the halt and the blind at WR and RB for most of the season is remarkable.
If he comes back from his knee injury at 100% (and if hard work will assure that, it’s as good as done), someone in the NFL is going to get a steal at QB. It’s interesting to me that despite his year to year improvement, his smarts, his work ethic, and his on field production, nobody mentions him in the same breath as “the top QBs” in the draft. I realize the scouts have determined he’s four foot nothing and has the the hand size of a healthy second grader, but sheesh.
Oh well. Joe Montana was a third round pick once, too. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
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+1
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Sorry, but my eligility’s exhausted.
And that’s not all that’s exhausted. 😉
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Bobo had new crayons in 2011 but by 2012 the points were rubbed down to little nubs and many had the paper label torn off.
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+1 – well played or the iPad had a cracked screen by the end of the season
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I read on the interwebs that it was all Mason’s fault our averages came down.
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How about Murray’s passing percentage as a driving reason for short passes? Wasn’t it at 59-60% and Bobo said he had to be in the 62% range to be considered in the Pros? Maybe Bobo put a lot of short passes into the playbook in order to help in the passing % category. He stated that was an objective for Murray in his last two years. And he made it.
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Goodness.
“Maybe Bobo put a lot of short passes into the playbook in order to help in the passing % category. He stated that was an objective for Murray in his last two years. And he made it.”
“Smoke on the grassy knoll”…. pun intended.
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P.S. This makes me miss David Hale again. He was always a great read.
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And he has a strong resemblance to Burt Reynolds…
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turnover margin is 5 zillion x more important than the “injury excuse”
offense turnover the ball over too much, defense didn’t force enough. simple.
and murray was not a good qb.
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Troll hard, dude.
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His comments were so idiotic that they didnt really anger anyone. Must be a troll jn training. Harmless litte kid.
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He set several SEC records and he’s not a good QB……your stupid as fuck!
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Or the O-line regressed
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