Damn it, Schottenheimer!

Evidently, some portion of the fan base’s reputation precedes it.

Kublanow on how many 3-and-outs before Schottenheimer booed: "Remembering from Bobo, probably be a first 3 and out," before call for firing.

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) September 1, 2015

Hell, there will probably be some folks in the stands still cussing Bobo after the first three-and-out.  A knee’s gotta jerk, y’all.

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Hey! Look over there! It’s a depth chart!

There are actually position battles that have taken place outside of quarterback and now we have a few answers on some of those with the depth chart that’s just been published for the opener.

No real surprises on the offensive line and Thompson and Godwin are already ensconced in the two deep.

I love seeing Leonard Floyd’s name on there at two positions.

The surprise, if you want to call it that, is Rico McGraw’s name at co-starting corner.  He hasn’t gotten a ton of press, but I’ve heard a lot of background chatter about how impressive he’s been this month.  (Pruitt didn’t chase him for nothing.)

And some potentially good news is the absence of a name:  Rodrigo Blankenship.  If the coaches are trying to redshirt him, it means they’re satisfied with Collin Barber’s progress.

What else do y’all see?

Looking back at Lambert

Those of you who would prefer to chalk up Lambert’s struggles in 2014 to a sieve-like offensive line and who think Lambert’s size means he can run a little probably ought to skip this piece from Seth Emerson.

For the rest of you, it’s more context for evaluating what to hope to see from him in red and black.

GATA in the opener

Yes, I know Louisiana-Monroe has a well-deserved reputation for scaring SEC teams.  But let’s dial that back a little.  The last acclaimed win was against a John L. Smith-coached Arkansas team that was a mess.

UL-M is a decent defensive team, particularly by Sun Belt standards.  Offensively, though, when you combine starting a redshirt freshman quarterback with this…

Louisiana-Monroe, which plays at Georgia Saturday, was one of the most feeble rushing teams in the nation last year, ranking 123rd of 125 FBS teams at 69.5 yards per game.

… it’s hard to see where points will be coming from.

Unless Georgia chooses to be a generous host, that is.  We’ll at least get a feel for the team’s mental preparation in that regard.  And here’s a benchmark by which to judge that.

During Richt era, Georgia has entered 12 games favored by 35+ pts; 4-8 against the spread. Dogs -35 over ULM. pic.twitter.com/gK0b6L4qq5

— Patrick Garbin (@PGarbinDT) August 30, 2015

“We’ll start playing ball that way and see how it goes.”

If you don’t think there’s a sense of relief the coaches have about picking a starter, note that Richt drily managed to crack a couple of jokes in the first minute of yesterday’s presser announcing the call for Lambert.  And that gets back to my first reaction to the decision – Richt and Schottenheimer, more than anything else, wanted to get a starter in place before the opening game.  (A good move, in my humble opinion.)

That may be the big picture observation I have, but here are a few smaller ones.

• If picking Lambert is a surprise, more than anything that’s because, as I’ve said before, it cuts against the grain of how Georgia’s named starting quarterbacks under Richt’s tenure.  But if, as I suspect, this was Schottenheimer’s call in the end, what’s not surprising is that he was given the choice to make it, as Richt has always given his coordinators pretty wide latitude.  After all, this is part of what they’re paying the guy the big bucks for.
• Feel free to minimize Lambert’s statistical story from last season, if that makes you more comfortable.  But, as Tyler highlights in this post, it’s a little concerning to see how anemic his passing game was.  I’ll be the first to concede that some of it falls on the coaching and talent level at Virginia, both of which are short of what Lambert’s walked into in Athens.  However, some of it falls on Lambert.  How quickly old habits can be changed is something to keep an eye on.
• Ivan Maisel tries an analogy:  “Major League Baseball is full pitchers who languished with one team before blossoming with a fresh start elsewhere. Georgia announced Monday that its starting quarterback for the opener is graduate transfer Greyson Lambert, the Virginia starter a year ago who lost that job in the Cavaliers’ spring practice. Dawgs coach Mark Richt’s endorsement of Lambert sounded tepid. “There may be others that get in the game,” Richt said, “but he’s the starter.” Maybe Lambert is college football’s R.A. Dickey, who bounced through five organizations in 16 seasons before he won the 2012 Cy Young Award with the Mets.”  Maybe.  Or maybe he’s not.
• That being said, if Lambert proves himself to be a functional SEC quarterback this season, as much good as that would say about his abilities and his coaching, it would probably say even more about the program he left, which, if you’ll recall, demoted him from the starting position there.  David Wunderlich:  “That the best guy for the job now is the guy who lost the Virginia quarterback battle is a little troubling, but at the same time, the UVa staff might all get fired while UGA’s present head coach has been cranking out good to great quarterbacks for 25 years.”
• I wonder how those of you who object to the graduate transfer rule are coping with this decision.  From my selfish standpoint, it’s a perfect example of how the rule should work –  a kid succeeds academically and is rewarded for his efforts with the choice of being able to leave a program that no longer wanted him for one that has a place for him.  Your mileage may vary, of course.
• I also wonder if the message we’re missing here is that Richt is comfortable enough about another area of the team that he feels he can afford to place the offense in Lambert’s hands.  And by that, I’m not referring to the running backs.  I’m thinking about Jeremy Pruitt’s defense. From a game management standpoint, maybe we’re about to see the clock turned back to the 2002-4 era.  (In which case, Marshall Morgan better be ready.)
• Richt is still hedging his bets on the call, I think.  (“There may be other or others get in the game but right now the thing that I know is he’ll start the game,” Richt said.)  Grayson may not have as much experience at Georgia as Bauta or Ramsey, but one area where he definitely has experience the other two don’t is having coaches looking over his shoulder.  That was his story in Charlottesville all season.  That’s not a snarky observation on my part; it may very well contribute to a mental makeup that Richt and Schottenheimer find appealing right now.

We’re all chanting the mantra that we trust the coaches to make the right call here, but that begs the question that is at the heart of the matter.  Is the decision based on Lambert’s response to better coaching and surrounding conditions, or is he merely the best choice in a less than optimal setting?  We’d all prefer for this decision to be about good coaching rather than bad options, but there’s simply no way to tell yet.

Give the people what you think they want.

It never occurred to me that what SEC fans have been clamoring for is “Super Bowl styled performances” at halftime.

Just shoot me.

The Georgia Way is alive and well.

As expected, the cost of the new IPF is projected to run about $30 million.

Also as expected, Greg McGarity wants you.  Er, your checkbook.

The board approved a cost of $30.2 million for the project, half drawn from the athletics department’s reserve fund, and the other half via fundraising…

The Board of Regents, which oversees all state universities, still must formally approve the project in a few weeks. But UGA can now start a full-fledged fundraising campaign now that the project has been formally green-lighted.

McGarity said there were already some “verbal pledges” for the project. Ideally the facility would be named for someone who provided a large donation.

“That’d be very nice,” McGarity said. “That is a priority.”

And if they can raise more than half on the side, that would be cool, too.

In fact, McGarity added, they would hope to raise even more than $15.1 million, as there are other facility projects for other sports the school hopes to build. Any extra money from the football facility fundraising could then be put toward those other projects.

Hopefully, whatever those “other projects” might be, they’ll have a longer shelf life than this one did.

The team’s current, smaller facility, which was built less than a decade ago, will be demolished to make room for the new facility.

Old IPF, we hardly knew ye.

“We’re going to take the highest paycheck, because we need the money.”

Louisiana-Monroe’s Todd Berry gets down to the essence of mid-majordom:  need paycheck, will travel.

“That’s the way it is, and we kind of knew that coming into it. We’re not funded very well, which has been pretty well documented, so we need those checks, and generally the people who tend to pay the most money are the ones that can’t get games.

“Whether it’s Georgia or Alabama or Oklahoma or Texas A&M or Florida State or TCU, they tend to pay the most money. You don’t have a ton of control over your schedule, because they pay the most money, and you will play them whenever they tell you to play them. We’re also talking to Tennessee for somewhere down the road, too.”

And since I’ve always been a sucker for gallows humor, I can’t let this pass:

Louisiana-Monroe traveled to LSU, Kentucky and Texas A&M last year, which caused sixth-year Warhawks coach Todd Berry to joke Monday about not getting an invitation in July to SEC Media Days. Perhaps an invitation will be awaiting next summer, because the Warhawks not only open Saturday at Georgia but visit Alabama on Sept. 26.

Man, that’s a tough September for anybody, let alone a Sun Belt squad coming off a losing season.

Strength of schedule, in charts and pictures

Brian Fremeau lays out his strength of schedule ratings here.  Nine of his thirteen toughest schedules belong to SEC schools.  Georgia isn’t among those, although it still comes in at a respectable 31st.

But if you really want to get a flavor for where the real scheduling advantage lies in the conference this season, you need to see this Chartball.com visualization of Brian’s rankings.  Click on the “Sort by conference” tab to see which ranking is unlike the others.  It’s not subtle, that’s for sure.

Paul Johnson, ladies and gentlemen. He’ll be here all season. Try the veal.

Sure, the book “The Comic Stylings of Paul Johnson” is awfully thin.  But I know funny, and I have to admit this qualifies.

Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson dismissed the possibility of the school fining players out of their cost-of-attendance stipends Monday...

Johnson joked that Tech couldn’t entertain the notion because “our stipend’s not big enough.”

Win a few games and your sense of humor shows up.