It’s a good question, but the more relevant one is who blocks for who replaces Isaiah McKenzie?
Even with McKenzie, Georgia’s return teams have been substandard for years. Here’s how they’ve ranked in conference play for the last four seasons:
- 2016: 9th
- 2015: 12th
- 2014: 7th
- 2013: 14th
- 2016: 6th
- 2015: 5th
- 2014: 5th
- 2013: 14th
McKenzie certainly had a noticeable impact on punt returns, but overall, that doesn’t exactly paint a picture of excellence for Georgia’s special teams.
As Seth notes, it’s not as if Smart lacks for options when it comes to returners. But it won’t matter much if they can’t find some players who can set up the returns with consistent blocking.
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Big difference in 2014 – Todd Gurley
Of course, the 2nd one was called back, but the guy never hesitated.
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He was a beast
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No holding on the second one. Another BS call from the SEC refs.
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I agree. It was very marginal and had no influence on the outcome.
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Good article on Breitbart that I thought you might have linked this morning… lol. Sorry for hijacking thread.
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brietbart using pedophile and gay…didn’t take long to become part of the lame stream media, did it?
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Why are we going here in response to a post about special teams?
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What does it have to do with anything, actually?
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Good point.
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can we bring back Logan Gray?
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How far is yonder…..
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In “reasons why you read, not skim” I saw the rankings and was elated that we were ranked so high nationally. then re-read that it was conference ratings.
WHAH-waaaaa
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I thought McKenzie was really good…but when you go with a small, speed guy…my uneducated observation is that it is usually big hit or big miss. I think Hardman looks the part…but I hope on kickoffs we can get someone back there who can get an extra 3-5 yards on the return with some size.
Reggie Davis is a DGD…but again to my untrained eye, he fell over if he was brushed by a tackler. Give me Mecole and a RB back there and I think it will get better.
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On kick-offs I’d prefer to have somebody with enough sense to go down on a knee in the endzone, and go with 1st down on the 25. If that alone doesn’t get us in the top 3 in the conference, nothing will.
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Not sad to see Reggie Davis graduate.
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I get that our Special Teams have been “Special” but McKenzie was also our only real WR threat. He was Eason’s go to guy. I’m not sure what percent he made up of the WR/TE catches or TD but just thinking of his big plays it had to be a lot. The way we execute on special teams we might as well have Logan Gray back there.
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Kind of looked like Nauta was the go to guy last half of the season.
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Put Sony on the field.
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Until we get a ST coach worth a damn the problem will persist. First we had no ST coach. Then we got a bad ST coach. Can we at least improve to a mediocre ST coach in ’17?
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Think positive, Mayor. If we have to return a lot of kicks, the bad guys are punting or we are scoring.
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