Chip Towers unearths an interesting stat:
Speaking of scoring, here’s some interesting food for thought from UGA’s resident stat man, Dave McMahon. McMahon points out that Georgia has led the SEC in scoring nine times in history. In six of those nine years, the Bulldogs won the SEC.
Year … PPG … Record
- 1941 … 27.9 … 9-1-1
- 1942 … 33.4 … 11-1*
- 1944 … 26.9 … 7-3
- 1946 … 37.2 … 11-0*
- 1968 … 28.2 … 8-1-2*
- 1976 … 29.5 … 10-2*
- 1981 … 32.0 … 10-2*
- 1992 … 32.0 … 10-2
- 2002 … 32.1 … 13-1*
- 2014 … 43.3 … ???
- * SEC champion
Geez, that ’92 team. Five points away from playing from a national title.
Anyway, you have to like the odds, no? Just need a little help from Arky.
Get The Picture 
Please don’t remind me of the 92 team. That was my freshman year and that UT gave me PTSD.
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I was a sophomore. It sure seemed like bright days were ahead for the Dawgs. Yeah, not so much.
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That was my Sophomore year also. It was a fun team to watch (and the last fun UGA team to watch for many years).
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Nightmares of Hastings placing the ball every so gently around midfield to seal our fate…
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I was a senior and it was gut wrenching…
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I was at the UT and Ole Miss games that year. If Hastings had just went down on that kickoff return I think we could have won. The Ole Miss game and the Clemson one from the year before were up until Richt the best I had seen Georgia play. (I only started really keeping up with the Dawgs in 1991 when I moved to Athens.)
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UT game I mean
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That ’92 team was a wrecking ball for an offense. We scored 30+ against UT with 6(!) turnovers. We played a terrible game offensively against Florida to lose by 2. They led the SEC in every team offensive categories not just scoring. If not for the defense, that team would have given the eventual national champions all they wanted in the 1st SECCG.
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After you sent the buffet link to the analytics piece, I spent a few minutes on a few of the linked sites, mostly Football Outsiders, and the consensus for Georgia is:
Top 10 Overall
Top 10 Offense
Top 10 Special Teams
Top 25 Defense
Top 5 Offensive Line
Top 5 in Field Position Advantage
Impressive. If asked to predict these at the start of the season, I probably would have said:
Top 20 Overall
Top 25 Offense
Top 60 Special Teams
Top 50 Defense
Top 35 Offensive Line
Top 50 in Field Position Advantage
The coaching staff is solid, and their work is great. The future looks good.
Yes, the program year after year, seems to have 1-3 games where they are not psychologically at peak performance. We are not alone – see Oregon, Ohio State, LSU, Clemson and just about every other team in the land. We are talking about 18-22 year olds, after all. Can Richt & Co. improve the approach to managing the team’s psychology, particularly with how they handle success? Maybe, but I doubt by much. Human nature and all that. This is why I think the deranged Georgia fans screaming after every loss or too close a call are truly ignorant, they don’t care to understand the aspects of players, teams and the overall sport that are beyond a head coach’s control.
Aside from falling into Auburn-level luck, Georgia has to do it the hard way and recruit, develop, and coach top talent across an 85+ deep roster so that the team’s worst day is still better than the opponent’s best day. That is the Alabama “process” – anyone who doesn’t think Alabama comes out flat and under-performs 1-3 times a year is kidding themselves, they just happen to survive a higher percentage. With the recent improvements in Georgia’s roster management, coaching staffs, conditioning, and the visual improvements in disciplined and fundamental play, I like the direction of our program.
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+1000
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Good, well reasoned and accurate post. You’re new around here and must not understand the rules.
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haha
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Literally laughed out loud. Well done.
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Flantastic!
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Exactly. And those same deranged fans seem to forget that St. Nick has only had one undefeated season despite #1 recruiting classes. What a total underachiever. People don’t seem to understand how difficult it is to go through the SEC schedule without a loss. The lack of predictable outcomes is what makes college football what it is – which is awesome.
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In 8 years, counting this one, Saban has made it unscathed to the SEC title game twice. He’s lost once in conference to top 10 conference opponents two other times, and this would have been the third time if Ole Miss hadn’t fallen apart down the stretch. In 14 years, Richt has made it to the SEC title game with one loss twice. I and others may be proven wrong eventually, but can you sunshine pumpers drop this inaccurate comparison?
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What’s the opposite of a sunshine pumper? An acid rain pisser? Sure, your win-loss statistics are correct, bot no one is arguing those stats, or trying to inaccurately compare anyone. My observation is actually compatible with yours. Most teams, UGA and Bama included, tend to underperform 1-3 times per season. The difference has been Saban’s attention to roster management, recruiting, and focus on fundamentals. They have been deeper, more talented, and (certainly on the defensive side of the ball) better coached. I’m simply of the opinion that Richt has been smart enough to identify these issues, and that recent tactical, strategic, and personnel changes are beginning to bear this out. I like our trajectory. If I didn’t, I would be reading and posting on other non-UGA Football sites, because life is too short to be an acid rain pisser. Pump me up.
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I would like you to point out to me the 1-3 games each year where Alabama has come out unprepared. Losing close games to good teams is not a sign of unpreparedness.
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I would like you to point out where I used the word unprepared. Having a team that comes out flat and under-performs for 2-3 quarters is distinctly different from having a team that is unprepared. I have gone out of my way to say that Alabama’s depth, talent, and fundamentals coaching (read:preparation) have been the difference that have allowed them to survive those games when the team is not operating at peak performance.
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They are there, you do the research. Arkansas was the one this year, and they were unimpressive against LSU, Miss, and MSU….so far. And their recruiting classes are far ahead of UGA, plus they are deeper because of disciplinary reasons and over signing. That isn’t knocking them but we played them in 2012 SECCG with under 70 scholarship athletes….who underperformed in that game. Dawg Flan knocks it out of the park on this subject, but the main point is every team has off days, only UGA fans decide to burn down the house as they pout. None of us like to lose but many need some perspective to their childish rants. There is so much more to celebrate than to mourn at UGA but some would have us toss our team/staff to the wind.
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You and Dawg Flan are arguing a different point than the one to which I was originally responding. Nobody brings their A game every week. Teams struggle with lesser opponents. Sometimes they lose. But the idea that struggling on offense against Arkansas is even remotely similar to the way Georgia played against Florida or against South Carolina in 2012 or in any other number of games in the back half of Richt’s tenure is ludicrous. I was hoping those meltdown games were behind them, but they’re not. And I don’t think they ever will be under Richt.
And while I will concede that Alabama has more talent than Georgia as you get further down the depth chart, that doesn’t make as large a difference as you’re trying to argue. Depth and lack of talent has absolutely nothing to do with Georgia’s loss to Florida. Why I think the Florida game is so unacceptable is because the team has played at an elite level from Missouri on aside from that game. They had a chance to do something special this year, and they wasted that opportunity, not because they aren’t good enough, but because the coaches could not get them ready to play in a rivalry game.
Maybe Richt will prove me wrong. Maybe the new defensive staff will indeed fix the problem going forward. But I’m not optimistic it will happen.
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Wow. That 1946 team. 11-0 with a 37.2 scoring average back then. It made me wonder “how the heck did that team not win the national title?”
So I looked up the final rankings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_NCAA_football_rankings
Notre Dame finished #1 and Army #2. Both of those teams had a tie (ND: 8-0-1, Army was 9-0-1). They played each other to a 0-0 tie. Dang.
So then I still felt like it was lame that the 11-0 Bulldogs got passed over by two 9-0-1 teams.
But then I looked at that 1946 Notre Dame teams games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Notre_Dame_Fighting_Irish_football_team
In 5 of their 9 games, they shut their opponent out. In the other 4, they gave up 6 points. That’s an insane defense.
Then again, UGA played 4 ranked teams and never lost or tied. Looks like we got jobbed.
Dang, how far does this go back with UGA getting screwed? 😛
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Northern bias used to be a thing. How times have changed. That ’46 team also didn’t play a game closer than 10 points, and that was in the bowl game against North Carolina.
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The 1992 team would still have had to beat a pretty good Alabama team (13-0; National Champs) in Birmingham to get to a title game, but it would have been been nice to have gotten that shot. As that was the year after I graduated, I was only able to see two games live that year. You can guess which ones. Fun. I remember watching Frank Harvey go 80 on the first play vs. Florida thinking “hey, we’ve got this.” Not so much.
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The Florida game that year was when I began to suspect Goff wasn’t going to get it done, as Florida sold out to stop Hearst and they stubbornly refused to throw the ball until it was too late. The first game.in ’93 confirmed that suspicion.
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sco’ and sco’ so mo’…..damn Senator you’s a poet…what says the Weez?
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It continually amazes me how much time folks will spend doing research just to post excuses (not directed at you Senator…not today). It is always the same, blame the players, refs, press, or administrators. The list goes on.
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