If you’re looking for the silver lining in the dark cloud that is Georgia’s current defensive line situation, Smart’s got one for you:
“The good thing is we don’t play an LSU, Arkansas type that’s just going to break your neck, but we do have to play fast-tempo teams.”
On top of that, most of the offenses Georgia will face before season’s end don’t deploy particularly productive rushing attacks.
After the opener, the Bulldogs will face only one opponent — Tennessee on Oct. 1 — that ranked in the national top 40 in rushing offense last season before taking on Auburn and Georgia Tech in November.
Sure hope some of the true freshmen have developed by then, and maybe Jonathan Ledbetter, of whom Smart says “it’ll surprise everybody” when they find out how many games he’s suspended for, will be reinstated. In the meantime, fingers crossed.
Get The Picture 
Looks like Ching is expecting 8-4.
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So am I. There are a lot more reasons to expect a regression toward UGA’s mean than there are to expect to maintain the recent 9- to 10-win status quo.
Do I HOPE for 9+ wins? Of course. But expect something closer to what Georgia has always been (with rare exceptions over the course of the program’s history).
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Isn’t the mean 10 wins per season? I’m cool with regressing to that this year. I see 8 wins as worst case. I don’t see how we lose to any of 7 teams). I only see the outcome of UNC, MISS, TENN, FLA, and AUB as questionable and I doubt we lose more than 3
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“it’ll surprise everybody” Ugh, I don’t like those kinds of surprises…
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Maybe “it’ll surprise everybody in Alabama”?
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I have a feeling Ledbetter isn’t seeing the field this year. Dude has a problem he needs to address.
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Absolutely and for his sake I hope that he gets the help he needs and gets well. If it takes all season for him to get well, let him do it.
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I’d rather see us get run over than him kill someone or get liver cancer some day
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What happened to Ledbetter’s brother? Is he still on the team?? I would have figured he took on his “brother’s keeper” role after the first incident.
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I haven’t studied this problem closely, but I do wonder how this was allowed to happen. We lost a ton of defensive linemen last year, so who was supposed to replace them? Suspensions only tell part of the story; this was an area of concern even before all of this stuff.
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Richt’s Recruiting is the reason, just as we are Light in the Silver Britches on the OL, neither were prioritized. Mr. Offense Richt never really deviated from his F$U roots of Out Jocking the others. While never really adopting the Chunk & Dump due to the proliferation of Defense as a weapon in the SEC, UGA had some good Seasons with our LOS but the majority were, for a lack of a better way to put it, just serviceable. The emphasis was always on ball handlers but never focused on building all three components.
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Totally agree on the OL – totally disagree on the DL
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We’ve had some great DL talent but until Rocker arrived, Garner wasted most of it. Besides being a lazy ass in recruiting and a troublemaker on the staff, Garner was a mediocre, at best, DL coach.
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But…but…but he was our team assistant coach, right in line after Richt.
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Garner wasted a lot of talent on the DL. We had some guys who were successful in spite of him.
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You only had to watch the way our future NFL greats played to know that RG was a terrible DL coach. We bull rushed 90% of the time. There was no crossing or stunting. If we could not move the offensive lineman back then we danced. RG’s defensive lineman would have won Dancing with the Stars.
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Yet UGA under Richt has more NFL DL/DE than any other program including AL that Smart coached at …. Facts just do not back up the claims
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Our 2013 defensive line recruiting class was slightly above awful. That was followed up in 2014 by an even worse effort. It seems inconceivable an sec HC could sign three or less DL’s for a couple years in a row and expect to remain competitive.
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I thought Vince could cry with the best, but Kirby and some apologists on here are a close second”. Julian Rochester 6′ 5″ 321, Chancey Manac 6′ 3″ 250, Michail Carter 6′ 4″ 302, Tyler Clark 6′ 3″ 290, David MarshLl 6′ 3″ 275, DaQuan Hawkins 6′ 4″ 302, Trent Thompson 6′ 4″ 311, Justin Young 6′ 4″ 260, Jonathon Ledbetter 6′ 4″ 260, Lorenzo Carter 6′ 6″ 245, Davin Ballamy 6′ 5″ 245, Michel Barnett 6′ 4 276, John Atkins 6′ 4″ 300. Thirteen guys to play 4 positions, 12 of 14 teams in league would kill for that kind of talent, yeah cry me a river.
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You’ve lumped OLB’s in there with DLs. But I think the argument isn’t about numbers, it’s about experience. Of the DLs you list only Atkins has more than one season under his belt.
We’ve had pretty good DL recruiting classes back to back now. The question is whether the youngsters can be expected to give us meaningful production from game 1.
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You guys all need to relax and go enjoy the summer break. The Dawgs will be fine….balanced, tough and focused.
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