“… and that’s why you lose to Vanderbilt.”

Presented without further comment.

This is bad 🏈 and can't happen a bunch of guys just running dumb football gets you beat pic.twitter.com/wdpzIOvahy

— Brian Finneran (@BFinn86) October 17, 2016

“…when Kirby gets it going.”

Over at Dawg Post, Dean Legge is serving the Kool-Aid straight up, but this is by far my favorite quote from his post:

“Man I’m pissed,” one said. “What the f&^% was that? How do you lose to Vanderbilt? That should never happen. It just should’t. What was that play call on the final drive? Running that same play after Vandy called timeout is just insane. Just frustrating. Kirby has got to get better at clock management. Its cost them a game now. It nearly cost them the Tennessee game. The stuff before the half… I didn’t get that. Now, this is what happens with first-time coaches. They have to work things out, too. He’s just doing it at Georgia. Lots of folks do it at much smaller places. That doesn’t mean its any better. It still sucks.”

“I know that Kirby is going to build it – I really do believe that because I know what he’s about from over the last two decades. I know he’s going to get it. He has major drive. He has an edge,” another said. “But I’m not going back to games until he does. When he builds it I will be there. I don’t have time for that stuff right now. I’ve got kids. We are busy.”

Basically, call him when you’re ready, Dawgs.  You can feel the momentum!

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The birds and the bees

Big 12 ADs to go into room at 3 pm to “cross-pollinate” with presidents as one observer put it.

— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) October 17, 2016

I swear, Greg Sankey must get up every day thanking Gawd for the Big 12’s existence.

When the going gets tough, the Urnge start whining.

Alabama whupped Tennessee 49-10.  Know why?

Shoop: "I hear they honor officials of the week in Alabama, too. They were the guys that called our game on Saturday."

— @GrantRamey (@GrantRamey) October 17, 2016

Geez, dude.  Show a little dignity.

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UPDATE:  Evidently it was said in jest.  So Shoop needs to work on his comedy skills instead of controlling his fee-fees.

“That all starts with me.”

What’s that definition of insanity again?

Three of the previous four Georgia coaches also had their first head coaching job with the Bulldogs.

Richt had on the job training with clock management in his first season. Just like Smart who called not getting a timeout before the half at South Carolina a “debacle.”

Richt went 8-4 in 2001 after the Bulldogs went 8-4 in 2000 in Jim Donnan’s final season.

Ray Goff was 6-6 in 1989 after Georgia was 9-3 in Vince Dooley’s final season.

Dooley went 7-3-1 in his first season in 1964 after taking over a program coming off a 4-5-1 season.

Unless Georgia runs the table the rest of the season, the Bulldogs overall record will decline in Smart’s first season…

The Georgia Way’s gonna Georgia Way, y’all.  It’s what we do.

Musical palate cleanser, old guys play the blues edition

If you haven’t heard the news yet, the Rolling Stones are set to release their first studio album in over a decade.  Entitled Blue & Lonesome, it’s a set of covers of ’50s and ’60s Chicago blues standards.  Here’s the set:

Little Walter Just Your Fool (2:25) – 1960
Howlin’ Wolf Commit A Crime (4:11) – 1966
Little Walter Blue And Lonesome (2:56) – 1959
Magic Sam All Your Love (2:56) – 1967
Little Walter I Got To Go (2:44) – 1955
Little Johnny Taylor Everybody Knows About My Good Thing (Part 1) (3:18) – 1971
Eddie Taylor Ride ‘Em On Down (2:53) – 1955
Little Walter Hate To See You Go (2:19) – 1955
Lightnin’ Slim Hoodoo Blues (4:00) – 1958
Jimmy Reed Little Rain (3:16) – 1957
Howlin’ Wolf Just Like I Treat You (2:57) – 1961
Otis Rush I Can’t Quit You Baby (3:40) – 1956

That is some pretty kickass music.  Ron Wood claims the band did little rehearsing before recording the album, but simply picked out the tunes and started playing.  That sounds weirdly appropriate.

The album is out on December 2nd.  In the meantime, to whet your appetite, here’s the opener.

Not bad for a bunch of 70-year old geezers.

Adventures in amateurism: if only the players would behave more like fans

Wisconsin basketball player Nigel Hayes has arrived at GameDay 👀 pic.twitter.com/bPgBT24iH5

— LeadingNCAA ™ 🏆 (@LeadingNCAA) October 15, 2016

Really, this is a perfect reaction to Nigel Hayes.  If you’re someone who thinks every college player is just like them, that is.

“For, me, personally, I think it’s totally bandwagonning,” Escamilla said of Hayes. “I think if he really thought this through, I think he would’ve done it (earlier). Everybody knows it’s been going on for, what, two, three years now?

“I think, personally, I feel it’s going to take away the focus of the team. I just think he should be worried about the season, and everything else tied to the season. If something happened to his family, I could kind of relate. But they should focus on the season at hand.”

Yes, yes, everyone knows these kids can’t focus on more than one thing at a time.  And obviously, other Wisconsin players will lose their focus because their star player has an opinion that fans don’t share.

Why can’t these players just shut up and do their damned job?

Observations from the 35, sad Homecoming edition

It was the ultimate stats are for losers game.

I’m almost tempted to stop there and call it a day, but honesty compels me to admit that there’s more to say about what I saw.  For starters, after the near brush with death in the Nicholls game, it’s amazing that this team can still step on the field not taking an opponent seriously enough.  And if they’re approaching teams like Vanderbilt that way seven games into the season, is there a team left on the schedule that can’t embarrass them?

Sigh.

Here, have some bullet points.

• Look, I get it.  This isn’t a particularly good offensive line.  It’s poorly matched for what Smart, Chaney and Pittman want to do.  But would it kill anyone to try to scheme a little to help those poor kids out?  It’s not like what Vanderbilt did was a huge mystery.  Hell, if a dumbass blogger like me called it, you have to figure Georgia’s coaches knew it was coming, too.  And still, the predictability of the playcalling out of particular formations, especially in the first half, was maddening.
• Forget about what went down on Georgia’s last play from scrimmage.  The real message sent on that play and the play before was that the staff had no faith in the offensive line to block well enough to pick up a yard on two plays.  That ought to build confidence.
• By the way, pass blocking wasn’t bad at all.
• Georgia went from almost having three running backs each gain a hundred yards on the ground against South Carolina to rushing for less than eighty yards total.  The mind boggles.
• On the other hand, the passing game was resurrected.  Almost every receiver in the game caught a pass, except for Blazevich, who’s being wasted in the passing game, and Stanley, who at this point is pretty much a signal for a running play and little more.
• Eason bounced back nicely from his worst game as a starter.  Yes, he missed some wide open receivers — most obviously a wide open Stanley who could have walked in on what turned out to be a sorely needed touchdown — but his mechanics were better.  He also made some heads up plays, particularly one when he picked up an errant snap and threw it out of bounds to avoid a sack.  It’s the kind of progress you hope to see from a true freshman.
• Speaking of true freshmen, man, it’s fun to see how Nauta and Ridley are coming along.
• As far as the defense goes, great game except for that, um, one little 75-yard game winning scoring drive.  Webb didn’t hurt them much on the ground, although that screen pass was certainly a killer.  But they were left in tough spots on several occasions due to special teams and managed not to make a complete debacle out of those.
• Jonathan Ledbetter needs to stay out of trouble.  For a kid making his first appearance of the season, he made a real contribution.  Overall, you can see where Georgia is building a defensive front that has the potential to be formidable next season.  Tracy Rocker is doing a fine job this season developing Georgia’s greenest position.
• Nice game, Lorenzo Carter.
• I don’t give the inside linebackers the props they deserve in pass coverage.  Both had passes defended, and that’s something I’m not used to seeing… which is probably why I don’t mention it as I should.
• Really was a quiet day from the secondary, mainly because they weren’t tested much.  But Shurmur completed well under 50% of his passing attempts, so somebody back there was doing his job.
• Well, we’ve been dreading the day coming when Georgia’s special teams would cost the Dawgs a game and the check was presented Saturday.  Kickoff coverage on the very first play of the game was half-assed and they paid for it.  (Does anybody wonder how the game would have gone if Georgia hadn’t elected to defer?)  Punt returns were an adventure all day, as it looked like nobody had prepared for a rugby-style punter.  Throw in Reggie Davis’ brain fart and you saw Vanderbilt gifted enough points to make the difference, albeit barely.
• Was Rodrigo Blankenship, of all people, the player of the game?  Let’s see:  3-3 on field goals, a couple of kickoffs in the end zone and a tackle.  That adds up to a better day than almost any one else had.  Even the long return wasn’t due to his kickoff, which had sufficient hang time but was poorly covered.  It would be nice if he’s turned out to be a piece of the puzzle that’s been solved, but let’s wait and see how he fares in Jacksonville before declaring victory.
• It’s easy to blame the loss on special teams, but really, this game went the way it did because the staff was outcoached.  Some of it, like the way punt returns were managed (using the term loosely, to be sure), was due to poor preparation, but some of it, like the offensive game plan, can only be chalked up to pure stubbornness.  When the other team is practically begging you to throw the ball and your quarterback is making them pay for that, every run play out of a telegraphed formation is malpractice.  And in a game where there weren’t any turnovers, where your team manages to rack up close to 500 yards on a decent SEC defense, that’s pretty much how you blow it.
• For those of you who think Kirby Smart came in as a fully hatched in game coach because of his lengthy service in Tuscaloosa, the last series of the first half has to be a bit troubling.  For the rest of us, even more than the final series, that was the time it was truly hard to get what the coaches were up to.  If you’re going to try to score with less than a minute on the clock, running Michel into a stacked front was about the last thing to call.  And it cost them, too, as there would have been considerably more time on the clock when they got inside the Vandy 40.  One more play might have meant another ten yards, which presumably would have made a decision to go for the field goal a lot easier.  Instead, Georgia wound up rushing into a Hail Mary play with a strange receiver set that ended predictably.

This season, from a preseason goals point, is toast.  Georgia isn’t winning the East.  If it can’t get a handle on taking every opponent seriously, you could argue that making a bowl looks like a challenge.  What’s left is figuring out who can play and developing those players.  It also wouldn’t hurt if Georgia came up with some more flexibility in its offensive game plan.

The concern I have right now is that with regard to the team’s mindset and offensive game plan, neither are gimmes.  The ride looks like it will continue to be a bumpy one.  Hang on.

Why can’t we have nice things?

It dawned on me leaving the stadium Saturday that one thing is really missing from Georgia football — it’s not fun to watch.  By that, I don’t mean losing sucks.  It does, of course.

What I mean is that watching a Georgia game feels like more of a chore these days than entertainment.

That’s hardly a 2016 development, to be fair.  Last season was a slog for fans, even if Georgia managed ten wins.  The games at their best tended to be grinders (South Carolina excepted, although that turned out to be little more than a mirage) and at their worst were embarrassments.

When’s the last season Georgia football was fun for fans?  Honestly, I’d have to go back to 2013.  Even though the Dawgs finished with a pedestrian 8-5 record and Grantham made himself unwanted by the fan base, games against South Carolina and LSU were among the best times I’ve ever had in Sanford Stadium.

Apparently, what I’m supposed to take comfort in now is program rebuilding.  Now there’s a sexy concept.  As a fan, I’m not there to be entertained.  G-Day gave me the sense that my presence was primarily as a prop for Georgia recruiting.  I’m a means to an end — and, by the way, keep those contributions coming, thank you very much.

Believe it or not, this isn’t a slap at Kirby Smart.  To me, it’s clear he has a strong concept for where he wants to take the program and he’s going to stand by his guns, no matter what that means in the short run.  I may not like what I’m seeing from his approach so far, but I have to respect that level of commitment.

I wish I could say the same thing about the people who hired him, though.  I’ve said before that I have little doubt Greg McGarity is already rehearsing his speech for the coming offseason.  Better things are coming.  Trust the process.  Alabama 2007.

You get the idea.  A joyless explanation for a joyless season, from a guy who really had no clue what he was signing us up for when he made the coaching change.

In essence, Georgia’s marketing plan to its fan base is to put up with the present in the hope of a glorious future.  Generally speaking, selling the ends to justify the means is a tough nut to swallow when you watch games like Vanderbilt.  It’s especially tough when you raise ticket costs well before you get there.

I’m not threatening to quit on this team.  For better or worse, I’m a Georgia fan. But would it be too much to ask to expect a little more in return right now?

SEC Power Poll, Week 7

Let’s face reality here:  Alabama is putting together a season for the ages.  (Now that I’ve said that, the Tide will probably lose.)  The rest of the conference?  Pretty much a complete jumble.  Well, except the East basically sucks.

1. Alabama.  Generally speaking, I’d hate to be a team the pundits claim can give Alabama a fight.
2. Texas A&M.  Nice week to have a bye.
3. LSU.  The Tigers have looked pretty good under Coach O.
4. Ole Miss.  Bert is the Rebels’ Kryptonite.  Go figure.
5. Auburn.  Another well placed bye week.
6. Florida.  This week’s king of the dipshits.
7. Tennessee.  I wonder how many times they played “Rocky Top” last Saturday.
8. Arkansas.  They’ll always have Mississippi.
9. Georgia.  Well, Kirby, you go to war with the identity you have, not the identity you might want.
10. Mississippi State.  Twenty one points in a double overtime game?  Sylvester Croom nods appreciatively.
11. Missouri.  Drew Locke’s passer rating against Florida?  18.20.  Ouch.
12. Vanderbilt.  The ‘Dores get the “they may not be good, but they play hard” bounce.
13. Kentucky.  Suddenly, that Georgia game looks doable.
14. South Carolina.  Who schedules a bye week before playing Massachusetts?