Sure it is.
Most #ESPN300 signed from 2013-16: #Alabama 71, #LSU 62, #OhioState & #Georgia 53, #FSU 52 & #USC 50. <- Last 4 national champs, no shock
— Gerry Hamilton (@GHamiltonOTF) August 4, 2016
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“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
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GATA
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
Just a little sandbagging!
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Look up the total scholarship numbers on the roster for those previous 4 years……look up the depth/rotation of LBs and DLs of Alabama and Georgia in 2012 when they played in the SEC Championship. Look up the amount of players from the 2013 class that have made an impact….or are still even in Athens…..
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Agreed, how many are on campus? how many recruited scholarship layers were on the team? How many OL and Defensive front 7?
Many factors but there is the point that UGA can recruit at any elite level. Can the coaches manage the roster, keep players focused, give them the need S&C program and call the correct plays?
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Far from bare, but 300 is a lot of players. Wonder what the avg. rating of Bama’s 71 is compared to Georgia’s 53. Guessing it’s something like 51st compared to 189 or something along those lines. Just a hunch. Again, though, plenty of talent left to win decent this year, and big in the coming years.
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The point isn’t that Georgia is on Alabama’s level – nobody, including Smart, is arguing that it is – but that there’s more than enough talent on the roster to fashion a competitive team.
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Yep, I understand and agree with the point.
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What is the definition of “competitive”?
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10 wins.
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Of course we are. And have been. But you can’t show up with a stiff at QB and beat good teams unless you ARE on Alabama’s level. We are not. We need a qb. He’s on campus. Hopefully he’ll be taking some live snaps very, very soon…like the next meaningful one.
You can blame coaching and the roster and strategy and attention to detail and all the bs you’d like. Had Saban coached the roster we had the last two seasons we would not have won more than 20 games, period. We probably wouldn’t have won that many. Why? Our qb play has been mediocre to awful for two straight years.
You can argue that the coach is responsible for having a decent qb and I won’t argue that point, but that is where our issue has been.
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Mason was more than decent. Outside of the Florida game, Mason had no real impact on any other loss that season. South Carolina and tech were losses by Richt and the coaches, not Mason. Without the bonehead coaching decisions we go 11-1 that season and go back to Atlanta.
Btw; don’t bring up the int against tech in overtime. The pooch kick and calling a timeout to give tech time to set up the field goal snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That game never should have gone to overtime.
Lambert, while not what we want, went 10-2 last season and the defense really let us down against Tennessee. Alabama simply stomped us and showed we were/are not nearly on the level they are. The great qb experiment in Jacksonville kept us out of Atlanta last season (that might have been a blessing considering we would have had to face Bama agaijn). Again, that game was not Lambert’s loss. Lambert isn’t going to be in any Heisman conversations but he is serviceable.
I’m hoping Eason turns out to be the next super star qb in the country but if he starts against UNC, we will probably lose the game and lose a lot of games this season. If you watched the televised playoff game Eason played in last year, you saw that he wasn’t exactly facing future SEC competition. He seems to have all the physical tools to be great but he is nowhere near ready to face SEC, or really even D1 college level defenses. I hope Lambert can look acceptable, the running game can control the tempo and build us enough of a lead to let Eason come in and get some playing time.
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Mason lost the tech game by throwing an inexplicable pick to end the game.
Mason had Gurley or Chubb or both the entire season. Lambert went most of the season with neither.
You remember how much Aaron struggled after everyone went down in Knoxville? Imagine Mason in that same scenario. It would be ugly. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have done even worse than lambert after Chubb goes down.
The bottom line is that you can’t win a championship with either. The rest of the roster had potential.
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I agree that neither qb is going to win a Heisman but Richt lost the tech game, not Mason. Based on having Chubb and Gurley or not, your point seems to be that Lambert did a better job, I don’t think I’d go along with that. We’ll never know how Mason would have done with the ’13 injuries so there is no use in even talking about it.
Murray is a fan favorite because he was tenacious and passionate. He was not a great qb. I can recall many games where Murray’s turnovers cost the game, they were usually big games. My most enduring image of Murray is him giving himself that little self hand slap after he threw another int.
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I’m suggesting that Mason had a better supporting cast. I’m just not so sure that we would have been better off with Mason in 2015.
Murray was a very, very good qb. He did have some brutal plays and a few brutal starts. One thing we knew was that we had a chance in the 4th quarter with the ball in his hands. That was never the case with either Hutson or Lambert. (I would note that Murray losing the play clock twice at Clemson as a 5th year senior was frustrating to say the least.)
Perfect? No, not perfect but Murray was heads over heels better than what we’ve seen the last two years. I’d put Murray third on our list of qbs since the re-introduction of the forward pass to our offense in the early 1990s: Greene, Zeier, Murray, Shockley, Stafford, Bobo, Carter, Cox.
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I’d go Shockley, Greene and the rest all lumped together with Carter and Cox bringing up the rear. Shockley and Greene led us to championships, the others just won some games. Stafford was talented but we never even won the East with him. I guess Murray would have to be third since we at least won the East with him playing.
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Shockley just didn’t have enough starts to be higher in my book. Too bad he and Greene’s careers overlapped. I would have loved to see Shockley have three years. He might have been #1. He was perhaps the most talented kid we’ve ever had at the position. In the end though, he just doesn’t have enough of a bio to draw from.
Zeier is far too overlooked. He may not be the most successful QB we’ve had as far of titles or wins, but other than Greene, I can’t imagine wanting anybody else under center on game day. The kid showed up to play every Saturday, was as tough as nails and could sling it as well as any we’ve ever had. Unfortunately for him, he was a bit too short and a bit too slow for the big time.
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I feel like all of them except Stafford were DGDs. Stafford was a pure mercenary, he was there to enhance his draft position and I don’t think he cared too much about the University of Georgia. I feel the same way about Knowshon. I’m glad we had them but I don’t look back on them as beloved past players. All the others really seemed to love Georgia.
I think Lambert is about like Stafford without the talent. I don’t think Lambert really loves Georgia, I think his first loyalty is probably to Virginia. I don’t blame him, most people’s allegiance is to their undergrad school not their grad school.
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You make it sound like Murray was an interception machine or something. Ha.
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Final AP rankings 2013-2016
2013 unranked
2014 9th
2015 unranked
2016 ?
3 Bowl appearances with wins in the Belk and Taxslayer Bowls and a loss in the Gator Bowl.
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It is entertaining. One day we can talk ourselves into thinking the road to atl is easily navigated, the next day we can see 8-4 and hoping for a decent bowl opponent.
I’d say, the team should be highly coachable and if our staff does a good job there should be good results and right away.
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It comes down to the “next” players stepping up. Guys like Trent Thompson, Godwin, the QB, Bellamy, Carter, Catalina, Wims, Staley….even Mecole and Nauta….Chubb and Sony healthy.
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I suspect factoring in attrition, age, and distribution by position would show us to have some significant talent deficits relative to our peers.
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Example: “Since 2011, the Bulldogs have signed a singular offensive lineman in the Rivals100 – John Theus, back in 2012. Over that six year span, Georgia was only able to sign six offensive linemen that were a rated as a four-star prospect or better. That’s hurt them, as signing one Rivals250 offensive lineman a year is rarely gets it done in the SEC.” – Trent Smallwood of UGASports.com
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How are Boss Andrews and Ben Jones doing, a couple of 3 stars that got coached up to starters in NFL. Not always the stars.
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So did Southern Cal underperform worse than us?
Bueller?
Anyone?
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I would say they certainly underperformed, which is why 1 of the 2 head coaches were fired. Although the second HC had on field performance issues, his off field issues got him fired before the alumni could run him out of town. You could also argue that Pat Haden’s AD tenure was cut short due to his inability to effectively deal with the coaching problems. I suspect the current HC (Helton) may not last more than 2-3 seasons either.
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In terms of whether they were worse than us, it’s about a wash IMO. Their record wasn’t much different than ours over that period of time.
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Who on our current schedule has recruited better than us the past 4 years…. noone.
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Peter Noone, of Herman’s Hermits?
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LOL
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I tend to put more stock in the total number of blue chip players (4 and 5 star recruits) a team has on its roster. A few articles ran last year that showed the correlation between the percentage of blue chips a team had and championships. Duh. And contrary to what some people like to believe, stars do matter. Very few guys slip through the cracks with recruiting and evaluations the way they are today. Sure a few blue chippers don’t pan out and several 3 star players end up having stellar careers, but the ratings are generally spot on.
I prefer to use the 247 composite ratings system because it is an average of the three main recruit rating services. I’ve gone through the rosters of several teams and added up the total of blue chip players. This is tentative because most team sites don’t have the current 105 man rosters released August 1. I took returning players and enrolled signees to come up with the numbers. As of this moment, UGA has 78 recruited scholarship players on the roster( I’m counting Ledbetter even though he isn’t listed on the active 105 man roster), consisting of 8 five star and 37 four star players, for a total of 45 blue chippers. Here is how the rest of the conference lines up:
Bama- 65 blue chippers, with a whopping 18 five stars
LSU- 58 (7 five stars)
Auburn- 47 (7), lost a 4 star player yesterday
UGA- 45 (8) , second most five stars in the league
A&M- 44 (6)
UTK- 40 (1)
Ole Miss- 32 (4)
Florida- 29 (3), this was kind of surprising
So Carolina- 25 (0)
Ark- 18 (1)
UK- 12 (0)
Mizzou- 9 (1)
Vandy-9 (0)
Some other teams of interest:
Ohio St- 70 (3), two of their five stars are from the state of Georgia
Notre Dame – 62 (4)
Mich- 59(2)
Clemson – 43 (4)
UNC -12 (0)
Ga Tech- 3 (0)
Sorry this is so damn long. Pretty bored tonight.
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Thank you for the very thorough analysis TDA. It looks to me like your review tells a similar story to the ESPN 300 comparison. Although depth is a concern at some positions, the cupboard is anything but bare and on paper the Dawgs have enough talent to win the SEC East this year. It’s also interesting that Clemson made it to the MNC last year with essentially the same talent level as us, which tells me that strength of schedule is also a factor and this works in our favor again in 2016. I tend to agree with the majority that 8 or less wins is a disappointment, 9 is expected and 10 or more wins exceeds expectations and likely puts us in the SECCG.
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” 8 or less wins is a disappointment, 9 is expected and 10 or more wins exceeds expectations”
I’m in the group that expects 9 wins to be the bottom for us…but that is not based on talent…overall talent to be specific. UGA is ahead of everyone they play on that list except Aub and we’re close to them. So our expectations of having at least 2 losses this season is NOT based on team talent. Simply put, the odds of winning 12 games with the concerns at some positions seems improbable. Somewhere along the season we are expecting to lose a game against teams with less overall talent. Truth be known…I think it is the uncertainty of one position that holds us back from saying we can win them all. One important position.
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You show that UGA has second most 5-stars in the SEC with 8. But do they not in fact have the second most in the entire nation? You “other teams of interest” you mention don’t have near the number Georgia has.
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So far it looks that way. Some teams I haven’t looked at include Oklahoma, USC, Texas, FSU and Miami. I also left out Miss St- 15 blue chips with no 5 stars. Also noticed that UNC and Kentucky have the same amount. Fedora is obviously doing a good job coaching up what he has.
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This article and it’s comments really show how little the previous coaches were doing with what they had.
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Great work The Dawg Abides. You shouldn’t be surprised at UF’s weakness in recruiting though. Their geographical recruiting position is not as strong as you might think. The state of Florida is the strongest or second strongest every year, true, but the Gators have FSU on the north and Miami on the south, hemming them in. The panhandle belongs to the Seminoles and everything south of Tampa, Lakeland, Melbourne goes to the Hurricanes. Also, Florida is a long skinny state so it’s not easy to recruit outside of one’s territory. For instance, if the Gators wanted to recruit someone from the city of Miami, that would be almost the same distance to their campus as a recruit from Danville Virginia would be to Athens! Lastly, a lot of transplants from the north come to live in Florida, making it easier for the B1G and others to recruit there.
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Are we trying to miss the point ? The point is that the people who are ready to be satisfied with anything other than 11 wins or an SECEastC are ignoring their own original premise. The premise to remind those who are trying to deny said premise was as follows: : we’ve got good talent an easy schedule and the only thing holding us (UGA) back is a Coach who is either too nice ,too stupid ,too complacent or just wants to lose so he can go back to his Alma mater (take your choice) so now that you’ve got the new Coach the anti-Richt crowd is saying wait we don’t want to have to meet the 10 win standard that has been set. They try to say we have a harder schedule even though we took the National Champs off our schedule and than grasping at straws say that Richt left the cupboard bare. The point of this post is just as the schedule argument is bogus so is the cupboard being bare. Stats show a cupboard that staving children in the PAC 10 or Big Ten/12 would kill for. No Championship ,,,No Peace.
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For 2017 and beyond I agree with you completely. This year might encounter some transition friction. On the other hand, if they get good QB play this year they could conceivably win it all.
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Richt is gone and ain’t coming back. All arguments involving him are neither here nor there. There is no pro- or anti-Richt crowd, only those who live in the past and those who don’t.
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