This is a little on the breathless side, but…
I asked Richt the basic question, because sometimes the most basic question can be the most difficult to answer: “How good is Todd?”
“If Todd is healthy, and Todd is shape he’s… he’s as good as anyone I have ever been around,” he responded. “I saw film of Herschel Walker. I have seen film of other people, but to say who have I coached or had a close-up look at the guy? Todd could be as good as any of them.”
… Richt did’t (sic) mention Knowshon. There was no reference to any star player at Florida State. Richt didn’t say anything about Aaron Murray – a four-year starter at center who was as good for Richt as he was consequential over the last four seasons.
… But he did mention Herschel Walker – the frame of reference to any Georgia running back ever. No one is ever going to be Herschel… that we know, but Gurley might be as close to him as we all see for some time.
I wince as much at Herschel comparisons as the next guy, but, damn, it’s fun to imagine what Gurley might be capable of this season if he stays healthy.
Get The Picture 
Not as fast as Herschel but maybe as punishing. I agree, the mind boggles at the thought of Hurley healthy a full season.
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No kidding…a healthy Elizabeth Hurley boggles my mind too!
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I enjoyed this comment. Have a +1!!
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She crazy
http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity/news/a471106/liz-hurley-had-long-affair-with-tom-sizemore-while-with-hugh-grant.html#~oDAuv1LAfdpW4h
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Haha! Must have been autocorrect! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Though a healthy Elizabeth Hurley would be nice.
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I appreciate your wince, as do, I suspect, any of us who witnessed Herschel live. Now would be the time to insert the waffle part….Gurley will be good if he stays healthy. The truth is Gurley had a rough year physically. Conditioning and just plain old physical maturity should help with that.
And the other thing to point out is that with the exception of the much-publicized separated shoulder and a broken thumb, as far as we KNEW…Herschel stayed amazingly healthy.
In them days of yore, if Vince told a reporter Herschel was healthy, that was pretty much the end of the story…now that ain’t even close to the end of the story, Richt saying Gurley is healthy is pretty much the first chapter of the story.
I spec Mr. Gurley would be happy to just be called a good back and would like reporters to stop with the dumb comparisons to historical figures.
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Look at this way…He is a free agent after this year and he is going to make sure ‘he get paid’.
I can’t wait to watch him demolish people this season.
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Gurley is very, very good..but remember Hershel, as a true freshman, came in and ran over people…He took over the SEC as a true freshman. You just didn’t want to be in his way.
TG is as close as we’ll ever get if he stays healthy.
When defenses knew they HAD to stop HW to have a chance, they still couldn’t do it unless they sold out everything else ..
Will it be the same with TG this year? Will the defenses have to sell out the pass defense and other aspects to stop him?
To a slightly lesser degree than they had to against HW, I think yes.
The sophistication and polish of today’s offense will give Richt much more to threaten defenses with than CVD had running HW out of the “I”, with a QB that might have been comparable to Mason.
I said early last year that UGA would be a #3 ranked team at some point this year and some scoffed…but I believe Georgia will get that or even better.
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To be fair, Herschel wouldn’t be the same Herschel today. The defenses are bigger, stronger, and faster now. That’s the biggest reason we’ll never see another Herschel. It’s just not possible to come in and “run all over people” in today’s game.
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Proly true…Bill Bates probably would be on special teams today.
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Exactly. Bates would have been Connor Norman in today’s game. And I love Norman, but nobody was gonna make a name for themselves running over him.
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Are we talking about the same Bill Bates? Four year starter at uT. Played 15 years in the NFL. Went to the pro bowl in his second year. Tied with Too Tall Jones for the most years in a Cowboy uniform? Three Super Bowl rings.
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That was my take. He’s as close to Connor Norman as Michael Jordan is to Chad Kessler.
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Not only that. “He’s still proud to have received the team’s Bob Lilly Award as ‘Most Popular Cowboy’ four consecutive seasons in the early ’90s.”
http://www.star-telegram.com/2008/04/18/590197/bill-bates-was-the-ultimate-free.html
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I’m beginning to suspect you of using interns and analysts to help with some of your posts. 😉
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I’d settle for even an intern
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/05/monica-lewinsky-speaks
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Word to the wise… avoid interns with berets and blue dress wardrobes.
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a/k/a The First and Second Laws of Risk Management. You know – and I have no idea whether any of this is true – but a very trustworthy and reliable old-timer told me that things were so much better back in the day before they invented the Spermalyzer 1000®™© ℠ for ID and age detection purposes which came along at about the same time as but was a much less heralded invention than the more widely accepted Orgasmatron℠
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Yes and for those 4 seasons he had 123 tackles and 3 interceptions………..total. Clearly the Bob Lilly award wasn’t based on performance. 🙂
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Who is Bob Lilly?
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Haha I admit I had to google it.
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He made the pro bowl as a special teams guy, not as a DB. He played 15 seasons as a DB, and had a grand total of 14 interceptions – less than one per year. He was undrafted. Basically stuck around because he was a decent nickel back and was good on special teams.
I’m probably understating his abilities, but you are probably overstating. My point is that if Bill Bates were playing for Tennessee today, and was the exact same skill level and athletic ability that he had back then, he would likely be much more of a role player in today’s college game.
And trust me, I’m not knocking Herschel. But Herschel had a body of today playing in a game of 30 years ago. If Adrian Peterson had played back then and Herschel played now, AP would probably be considered the best RB of all time, and Herschel would be looked at like we look at guys like AP, Gurley, etc today. Herschel was amazing, but the biggest reason we’ll never see another Herschel isn’t because nobody will ever have the same physical or even mental attributes. It’s because even those physical and mental attributes couldn’t do the same things in today’s game because the defenses are full of guys with size and speed combinations you just didn’t see on defense back then.
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Well he ain’t no Jake Scott that’s for sure. But he played in the NFL for 15 seasons for some reason. Scott weighed 180 in college? I don’t think even Jake would have stopped Walker cold on that run. He might not have broke … but there would have to have been some “Bend” on that play. Just sayin’ But I will say kids today are all bigger and faster. I don’t know if they are better football players. Herschel and Jake had a rare gift. Heart.
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Bill Bates’s son is going to TN this fall
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I agree with this, and with all respect to HW, the best back ever in College, the best Athletes are almost always on D now.
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Yep. #34 was sporting Olympic speed at 200+ lbs back when d-linemen over 250 was rare.
A modern-day Herschel would need to be a 275 lb. man that runs the 40 in 4.15 seconds with a 10.01 100 meter time. Assuming it’d even be physically possible to be that fast at that size.
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Spadlin was a lb for uT in 1980 and was a load and didn’t Reggie White tip the scales at 300? I don’t think anyone of Walkers size ran the 100 M like he did. Not even close.
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Nick Chubb ran a 10.69 100m at 229 lbs. last week I believe
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Fast? Sure. But still too Chubby. Did he not get the Jenny Craig Memo?
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Cherry red, my favorite flavor.
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It is just unfair to use HW as the comparison, not another college running back even in that conversation before or after….100+ years. But Gurley is a fair comparison at all the other greats when healthy, but that was pretty much limited to his freshman season. I don’t feel he was over 90% at any time following the long run against Clem’s Son in the first quarter in last year’s opener. That isn’t a long enough body of work to say he belongs with all the other greats yet but he does seem to have that potential. And no, Knowshon isn’t anywhere near that level of CFB backs.
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Mac, TGII3 was pretty darn good against USCe (136), UNT (91) and LSU (73 before the injury), and Marshall was running tough as well. He was near dominant in the LSU game until he went down, and Marshall picked up where Gurley left off. If Marshall hadn’t been hurt in Knoxville, I think he would have ended up with over 1,000 last year as a result of Gurley’s injury. Gurley wasn’t the same when he came back because he was out of condition and the ankle was never 100%.
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Todd Gurley’s the best running back in the nation, although “when he’s healthy.” now seems to be part of his name. But comparing him to Herschel Walker? Sorry, it’s not even close. Not even remotely close. Todd may well become the best back SINCE Herschel, but that’s as far as the comparison should go.
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Your probably right.
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I agree. It’s not a dig at Gurley to point out that Herschel stayed healthy despite every defense in America knowing he was getting the ball 35 times a game when they played UGA. Herschel missed a game each of his first two years with an ankle sprain, then was limited to start his last year by a broken thumb.
I’m not saying Gurley isn’t tough. But if you saw Herschel, you know he wasn’t just tough, he was damn near inhuman. One thing that always makes me laugh is when a Barner fan tries to tell me “Bo Jackson was better than Herschel.” Compared to Herschel, Bo was as fragile as a china doll. He took himself out of a big game against UT with a thigh bruise. Bo couldn’t stay healthy with the lesser workload AU put on him. He’d never have been able to handle the load Herschel did.
The only college back who deserves to be in the discussion with Herschel for career dominance is Tony Dorsett. Hated that guy, but he was awesome. Barry Sanders had a great junior year, but OSU still sucked. HW and TD took average to bad teams to national titles. UGA never lost an SEC game while Herschel was in school.
Gurley is an awesome back, maybe the best in America this year, but he ain’t Herschel.
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Frankly I’m sick of hearing “when he’s healthy” about Todd. Man was a dominant workhorse his freshman season and even the almighty Alabama had no answer for him in the SEC CG. He got hurt last year and the one injury lead to the rest of this story. But it’s not as though his whole career has been wrought with injury, that’s total bs…
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Yeah… it’s starting to get the “Murray can’t win the big game” feel to it. I was none to fond of that meme.
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Well maybe not “total” but it is the same type of injury that has nagged him since high school
“As legend has it … OK, it’s not legend, it’s the truth, Gurley injured not one, but both of his ankles in the second week of the playoffs. “Actually, on one ankle he had a high and low ankle sprain and on the other ankle it was a low,” Craddock clarifies. “So he had three sprains on two ankles.”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mv-VvoGMu3wJ:www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2012-10-03/todd-gurley-georgia-herschel-walker-freshman-running-back-keith-marshall+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
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Yeah, I’m getting a little sick of that, too.
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Wait….didn’t someone on this blog try to argue that Washun Ealey was better than HW? So is TG better than old # 3?
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I think it was that Washaun was a better driver in confined spaces
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Lets face it.. theres only ONE #34.. but this kid is the best running back we have had besides him. Period. Yes, he is. Dont argue with me. Im right, I always am right….
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I just want to see him be good for selfish reason. Watch great running backs is so much fun. When those guys are great they are the best thing going, today! Wooo!
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It’s not going to happen but let’s see TG carry the ball 40 times a game like HW. Vince Dooley would have retired as a so so coach if he had not had HW to carry the mail. What other Football team since the invention of the forward pass has won a national championship and only completed 1 pass. My Notre Dame friends still can’t believe that game. HW was all we had and he was enough.
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Given the depth behind Gurley (especially if Marshall is at 100%) that’d just be nuts though. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two times this season we see something like the 2012 UF game where they just kept giving it to #3 because no one else was getting any yards on the ground.
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I borrowed DIF’s intern. NOT the one with the beret.
*Reaching the 31, on a fourth-and-11, Oliver came back in for a second kick. Everything appeared routine, until Bulldog Terry Hoage entered the game. Hoage was a reserve defensive back who had five minutes of game time during Georgia’s season and who had made just two road trips. During Sugar Bowl practices the coaches had the backups attempt blocking kicks, simulating game conditions. Hoage had a knack for it and was placed on the Sugar Bowl travel squad.
As the ball was snapped the freshman sliced through the Notre Dame middle, leaped and caught Oliver’s kick in the chest. “I saw kind of a little hole and just sailed through,” Hoage explained.
From that blocked kick, Rex Robinson booted a 46-yard field goal to tie the score.*
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But why complete them if you don’t need them
http://www.allstatesugarbowl.org/site114.php
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I was glad Hoage suited up.
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I remember a long pass by BB down the left sideline (watching on TV) to a wide open Lindsay Scott…he dropped it..right in his hands and he dropped it. Notre Dame got some breaks too.
What I (strangley for some reason I remember this) was Keith Jackson’s call as the team “Down from the red clay hills of Georgia” ran onto the field. It was a great call and only Munson could have topped it.
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In the first half? It was Norris Brown. Keith said Oh Norris, he’s gonna remember that one.
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h/t to you guys for remembering these details. Is there anything like special memory pills you take to be able to pull this off or is it just a gift?
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I agree with everyone else that there’s only one Herschel. I also acknowledge that today’s defensive players are faster–and that Herschel ran behind a very good O Line (as he always pointed out himself) and had very good blocking FBs. Go back and watch those games–each player’s commitment to his assignment is impressive as Hell.
The thing is, in your retro watching, you’ll see impressive commitment to assignment by the D players, too, at least from the better teams. The ’82 UGA-AU game is just textbook (despite a few breakdowns here and there) on all sides of the ball, both teams. Guys knew how to tackle, how to block, how to cover punts and kick-offs. (To these eyes, BTW, there is no more impressive TD drive in UGA history than Herschel’s go ahead TD because he had to do it against a determined, capable defense. Conversely, the Georgia D did what it had to in AU’s final possession.)
So here’s where I come out. If you put Todd G in the line up in 80-82, he wouldn’t put up HW’s numbers, but he’d be damn good, damn good… yeah, if he “stayed healthy”!
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Just thankful we had Herschel when we did. Also plenty thankful we’ve got Todd. Different eras, sure, and also different orders of magnitude. However, as I commented earlier, for my money Gurley’s the best in the nation. Never hurts to have the best at any position, especially running back. Here’s hoping he elevates his team as high as #34 lifted his.
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In my opinion just to be compared to Walker is a complament.
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Maybe we’re only talking about running backs, but for my money, AJ Green is the best player we’ve had since Herschel. I hate that his career was as brief as it was given the injuries and the silly suspension along with leaving early.
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