Good news on the Thompson front

Smart expects to have him back for the opener.

Smart believes Thompson will be back on the field for the season opener as long as his health continues to progress accordingly.

“The expectation for Trenton is to be better than he was last year, to show improvement, and that’s his goal – to get a step better, get more physical. He’s continued to rehab that shoulder so he can be healthy in the fall and give us some quickness and speed on the defensive front that we’re lacking sometimes.”

Given what he’s gone through, that would be a welcomed development.  Keep plugging away, young man.

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“I’m not really big on humiliating assistant coaches in front of everybody.”

We’ll always have the Laner and his smart mouth.

Kirby vs. the media

Oh, it’s on now.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart alluded to a new player injury Tuesday during a radio appearance, but an addition to the school’s media policy he planned to implement that day would have kept the media from reporting on it from observations at that afternoon’s practice.

The policy emailed Tuesday afternoon hours before practice said that media members can’t report on players wearing non-contact jerseys, working with the training staff or becoming injured during open portions of practice unless Smart provides information about their medical status.

Five beat reporters who cover the team informed Georgia athletics that they would not comply with the restrictive policy because it “goes too far beyond the scope of what is acceptable in our eyes .” So Tuesday’s practice—scheduled to be open for 11 minutes—was entirely closed instead.

Georgia doesn’t open its season until four and a half months away on Sept. 2.

It now is expected to delay and perhaps make minor adjustments to the injury policy until preseason practices, meaning Thursday’s final practice before Saturday’s spring game would be covered without change. Further discussions about the policy with the media will continue.

We live in Trump’s world, so I know for a certain segment of the fan base, this face off rates anywhere from “who cares?” to “hells, yeah, Kirby!”, but for me it’s just sad for control freaks to be allowed this much free rein.  If you’re reading a blog like this (let alone writing one), then you’re interested in what’s going on with Georgia football and significant media restrictions are a blow to that flow of information.

Or, to put it another way, any policy that’s good enough for Booch shouldn’t be good enough for Georgia football.

If there’s no resolution to this, my guess is we’re headed to a point where all practices are completely closed to the media.  And, yeah, ultimately if Smart wins big, that’ll be no skin off his back; if he doesn’t, just add it to the list of grievances.  Treating the fan base as being on a strictly need to know basis isn’t the best way to encourage interest, but as long as we keep responding to G-Day challenges, it’s all good, no?

The reason they raise ticket prices

Those cupcake games ain’t gettin’ any cheaper, pods.

Room for improvement

To be fair to Kirby Smart, one man’s throwaway season is another man’s working up the learning curve.

Georgia finished the 2016 season 87th in the country in yards per game and 102nd in points per game. On 680 the Fan Tuesday, Bulldogs’ head coach Kirby Smart gave his take on the first season under offensive coordinator Jim Chaney.

“I think it is a combination of a lot of factors,” Smart said. “When you think about a third offense in three years for a group of offensive players. When you think about a quarterback who is a true freshman – straight out of high school walking into what is arguably the best defensive conference in the country. It is not easy to walk in and play quarterback.”

There is definitely something to be said for that as an explanation for Georgia’s 2016 offensive woes.  Logic suggests, though, if the staff knows what it’s doing as it goes about its business, that, with coaching continuity for the first time in several seasons and a year under Jacob Eason’s belt, there should be some obvious progress made on that front in 2017.  We shall see.

Is it happy talk when Nick Chubb says it?

Be skeptical of the offensive line’s progress, if you must, but Chubb isn’t.

His first season back from a season-ending knee injury played a part, but so did an offensive line that underwhelmed in the run game.

This spring that has changed as the Bulldogs are getting surprising push from a unit that lost three starters.

“It’s kind of what I’ve been used to,” Chubb said Tuesday after practice. “It’s great for us getting back to what we once were.”

Chubb says he sees the holes open up and he hears the offensive line working together on their steps and pointing at their blocking assignments. It shows, he says, with the way they get off the ball.

“It’s a big difference,” said Chubb, who enters his senior season with 3,242 career yards. “From a running standpoint, I can see it all happening. The holes are there and they’re getting movement. They’re communicating a lot better and it’s obvious that they are making progress.”

Man, do I want to believe with you, Nick.  A Georgia team with a competent offensive line could go places.

You have to like these odds.

I don’t know about erecting fences, but it sure seems like Kirby Smart can make a nice living off recruiting homegrown talent.

States w/ highest % of HS football players recruited by a DI school:
1. Florida
2. Georgia
3. Louisiana
4-8. (DC), MD, TN, SC, NC pic.twitter.com/N6wNkEQT57

— NCAA Research (@NCAAResearch) April 18, 2017

8.6% of the talent in a fairly populous state like Georgia is nothing to sneer at.  Unless you’re Georgia Tech, that is.

Same old song

Former Georgia beat writer David Ching sounds a bit jaded in response to a question about what’s been learned from this year’s edition of spring football:

This isn’t necessarily a lesson I learned this spring, but the last several weeks have provided another reminder that no SEC program seems to get more of an annual offseason buildup than Georgia. I’m not even saying this year’s optimism is totally unfounded, but once again we have the Bulldogs getting SEC East championship hype in April. Last year actually marked the end of an eight-year run where media members picked Georgia to finish either first or second in the East at the conference’s annual media days extravaganza (the Bulldogs finished in a three-way tie for second at 4-4 in conference play). But even after a mediocre debut season for coach Kirby Smart, an outstanding signing class has optimism brimming again in Athens. Folks seem to be diving head-first back into the Georgia pool despite reasonable questions over whether this is a championship-caliber team. It would not be at all surprising to see a new streak start at media days this year, whether the Bulldogs deserve it or not.

Ouch.

On the other hand, doesn’t the law of averages suggest that sooner or later this take will wind up being the correct one?

Winning hearts and minds in SEC Country

I’m gonna crawl out on a limb with this thought, but it strikes me that arguing college football ought to be banned to avoid race-mixing probably isn’t the strongest pitch a neo-Nazi can make to an Auburn University audience.

“That’s coach’s decision. I don’t know.”

From Bobo to Schottenheimer to Chaney…

Back when he was a freshman, Chubb caught 18 passes for 213 yards and two touchdowns. That was when he was Todd Gurley’s understudy the first five games, then the starter the rest of the way. But Chubb only caught nine passes the next two years, including five last year, when he played in every game.

Throwing to Nick Chubb in open space in the flat would sure seem like a useful option for a freshman quarterback breaking in to have, but what do I know?