“The bad news is that less passing means more Todd Gurley.”

The best thing about Missouri week is that Georgia gets a lot of attention from Bill Connelly.  Over at Rock M Nation, you can read Bill’s early assessment of Georgia’s offense, but his conclusion is what I want to mention here:

The trick against Georgia isn’t necessarily stopping the Dawgs, it’s simply stopping themenough. The UGA run game is going to do well because it is awesome, but the Tigers will need to take advantage of passing downs. Again, we’ll go over this more on Friday, but UGA is 13th in Standard Downs S&P (unadjusted for opponent) but only 60th in Passing Downs S&P. You can get to Mason with a good pass rush (and lord knows that Mizzou has a good pass rush), and you can make stops if you knock them off-schedule. So give Gurley his random gains; just focus on making them as infrequent as possible, and on taking advantage of the stops you do make.

Now, of course this is easier said than done – keep in mind that Gurley’s worst yards per carry average in a game is still over six and a half – but it’s worth stating the obvious.  Getting Georgia in second-and-long and third-and-long a bunch will slow the offense down.  Call that this week’s first key to the game.

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He lied.

James Franklin is the master of “fine for thee, but not for me”, but he may have topped himself today.

Former Vanderbilt University head football coach James Franklin lied to his team about seeing video from the night of an alleged rape that occurred in an on-campus dorm room in June 2013, testimony revealed Wednesday.

Appearing via Skype, Franklin told the courtroom he has not seen any videos but admitted that during a team meeting held shortly after the alleged rape, he told players he had seen a video because he didn’t want to “water down” his message.

Buuuttt… you can guess what’s coming, right?

After the meeting, Franklin said “the young gentlemen” involved came into his office to “plead their case.” He said specifics weren’t discussed, but he advised his players to tell their parents and to be honest because “you’re going to be dealing with this the rest of your life.”

“All I said to them was I can’t talk to you about the case, you better take this very seriously, you should tell you parents, and you better be honest because you’re going to be dealing with consequences to this for the rest of your life. And that was it,” he said.  [Emphasis added.]

Basically, unless he’s under oath, you probably ought to be careful taking anything that comes out of his mouth at face value.

Richt’s officials records

Some of you will get a kick out of this – AirForceDawg has compiled a list of Georgia’s won-loss records during the Richt era (minus a couple of 2001 games) based on which referee called the game.

And, no, Penn Wagers (13-6) doesn’t lay claim to the most losses.  That honor goes to Tom Ritter (12-7).  Those two have officiated the most games Richt has coached, by the way.

“The East is wide open this year!”

Bill Connelly’s updated conference projections are here, and, yeah, Saturday’s game in Columbia looks like it’s kind of a big deal.

Today’s exercise in gallows humor

Looks good with jorts!

10% off when you use "TWOBITS" as the promo code on check out.. http://t.co/MKdfpCn4Sw pic.twitter.com/7r69W6bfnY

— Gator Content from (@OurTwoBits) October 8, 2014

I hope I see some of those in Jacksonville in a few weeks.

Your friendly Mumme Poll reminder

Poll gets real this week.  There’s still plenty of time to sign up so you can cast a ballot.  So why don’t you?  Head over to the site and register.

Parts is parts.

Missouri’s defensive coordinator’s approach to handling Todd Gurley?  Grab anything that’s handy and hold on.  And by “anything”, he does mean anything.

“We’ve really got to grab body parts,” Steckel said. “If you go high, he’ll run you over. If you go low, he’ll jump over the top of you. The key is grabbing body parts. Yes, I don’t care what body part we grab … as long as it’s not the back of the neck or the facemask.”

If Gurley gets up from a tackle pile ready to shove somebody, I guess we’ll know why.

It takes a village to stop a pass rush.

Georgia has only allowed six sacks so far this season.

Missouri’s defensive ends have combined for 18 tackles for losses and 12 sacks so far this season.  As a team, Missouri is first in the SEC with eighteen sacks.

Something’s gotta give.  Will it be Georgia’s offensive tackles?

“Are they ready to just man on man, pass pro these guys down after down without them creating some problems? I doubt it.,” he said. “I don’t know if anybody can just shut them down. They’re just very dynamic rushers, and you’re going to have to find a way to give them some help.”

Help doesn’t come just from double teams and backs chipping those ends.  It’s from playcalling, too.

Starting right tackle Kolton Houston knows a big reason opposing pass rushers have been kept at bay: a bruising running game.

“When you’re slamming the power down people’s throat, it’s really hard for those guys to get off the ball and get vertical,” Houston said. “If they start doing that, they’re just going to open up huge running lanes. Teams have had to honor our running game so if we can establish our running game that will help us.”

Gurley, Gurley and mo’ Gurley.  And when in doubt, Gurley and screen passes.

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UPDATE:  Here’s the infographic of Missouri’s defensive production.

Mark Dantonio expects to have his cake and eat it, too.

When it comes to chastising students for leaving a game early, Michigan State’s head coach has his athletic director’s back (a game that even the AD acknowledged was “a ‘perfect storm’ with a four-hour game, bad weather and a game that appeared to be over entering the fourth quarter”, mind you).

“When you don’t get what you want at the end of the game, you know, you have to at least let people know that that’s not what you want,” Dantonio said. “You have to at least let people know.”

…

“There’s a lot of things to do out there after 11 o’clock, I guess,” Dantonio said. “So we didn’t have them there at the end of the game. You know, at the end of the game, we needed them there. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking why. Again, we’re 19‑2 (in the last 21 games). We all want a championship. We feed off our fans. Our players feed off our fans. They just do. …If you want to change something, you’ve got to get involved.

“When you look at Mark Hollis and what he asked for, he’s got to make tough decisions sometimes. And I think that we all look at that, sometimes‑‑ how do you change a culture? Sometimes you have to change a culture internally. Sometimes you have to look out externally.”

And sometimes you have to hope folks are glued to their television sets.

But Dantonio surprised many Tuesday afternoon when he suggested that the Spartans might get a boost with the playoff selection committee over something that has nothing to do with its performance on the field — namely, the Big Ten’s continuing television appeal.

Via the Detroit Free-Press, Dantonio’s comments on what the paper termed “the drawing power of the Big Ten as an asset in the playoff system“:

“If we do what we’re supposed to do or what we’re attempting to do and get in the [Big Ten championship game] and win that game, then I think good things are possible. I think we turn on a lot of TV sets, and let’s not be naïve. It’s about who is watching the game, too. And so you’ve got a quarter of the country watching a football game. They want to see a football team from this part of the country in that game.”

If Michigan State students were really supportive of their program, they’d cut on their TVs and then go to the game, damn it.

Wednesday morning buffet

Another day, another buffet.

• Ole Miss has a fundraising campaign going to pay its SEC fine and for new goalposts.
• The next antitrust lawsuit over use of college athletes’ names and likenesses has been filed against nearly all of the national over-the-air and cable television networks that have significant live college sports programming; the five power conferences; and the nation’s two largest college-sports multi-media and marketing rights companies.
• Having to excuse subpar officiating in two conferences?  Nobody said life would be easy, Steve Shaw.
• Catfished!
• ESPN is confident it can spot the nation’s most deserving teams.  (Mark May already knows that.)
• Can anything be sweeter than trolling a stupid Mike Bianchi column?
• What liberals get wrong about football.
• Another Georgia player keeps his cool in a downtown Athens bar.