I think the word that best summarizes Jim Chaney’s career as an offensive coordinator is checkered.
Some of that I would honestly say goes with what he had to work with, both pro (Drew Brees) and con (Derek Dooley’s personnel and Georgia’s last season). As I’ve noted before, given the way he resurrected Nathan Peterman’s college career at Pitt, I also tend to think he’s a better quarterback coach than we give him credit for. There’s little question overall, though, that the results have been spotty and a lot of that falls on him.
The frustrating thing about reading Seth’s piece is that we get very little from Chaney himself about what his current offensive philosophy is.
“You’d love to be a downhill team, but you do have a young quarterback that has played in the gun more,” Chaney said last December. “So you have to find some happiness there. As we work through that sometimes it didn’t work out as well as we’d like to. There was a little contradiction with philosophies in regards to that, as we worked through it.”
That sounds like somebody who wasn’t doing things the way he preferred last season.
A few weeks later, on signing day, Chaney said he was looking to “freshen up” the offense. And there were signs of that this spring, using tailbacks, tight ends and receivers alike in the slot, indicating something new.
While that sounds like somebody who did some soul searching about his direction and recognized a need for change. Who knows what Chaney really wants at this point?
Get The Picture 
Not surprised about the contradiction comment (philosophies), it was obvious on the field….but did not know about Kiffin calling plays at UT. A first year OC I could understand, but not an experienced one. Can’t imagine what it would be like if Smart took over play calling in the middle of season.
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I’d want Kiffin calling the plays, too, if I had to choose between Chaney and Junior. Much as I despise him personally, he knows how to run an offense. In my opinion, Saban would have been better off keeping him on the sideline for the Clemson game, irritating and insufferable as Kiffin is.
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Agree, I would too….also agree on Bama. My only point was, if you have an experienced OC and you are not going to use him…why have him?
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Point taken .
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The next time I get overly optimistic, I’m going to look at that chart again. Wow, what a wet blanket! Does Drew Brees get a percentage of Chaney’s contract? If not, he certainly should.
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Thinks that is part of the “wait and see” attitude on some of the recruits.
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What a waste of Eason.
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There doesn’t seem to be much accountability in those comments. Another uninspiring year on that side of the ball may put some fire under his seat. I know he had a 3-year deal but Kirby saw firsthand what happened when Saban made a switch to McElwain early in his Alabama tenure.
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Only thing I can think is, Smart must have seen something he really liked when coaching against him? Chaney’s offense flat tore up a good Georgia D in 2012 when we beat UT 51-44, and he managed to coach Tyler Bray to the NFL.
Of course, some dumb shithead will say he can’t coach because he’s fat.
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For some reason, the “shithead” comment reminds me of this little feller:
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If I remember correctly, one score was a pick 6 and 2 scores were due to Gurley and Marshall fumbles inside our 20. Without a number of gifts, we run them off the field in 2012.
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I also remember running his offense off the field in Little Rock. IMO, the best I can say about Chaney is he’s serviceable.
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I’m not here to defend Chaney but isn’t “checkered” anybody who has lived long enough? You live and learn as they say. We will never know exactly what was the meeting about with Nick and Sony last season, but those guys didn’t choose to come back if they think the OC is nincompoop. My 2 cents.
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Put Bobo’s numbers up there and you’ll then understand the difference between being checkered and being good. Chaney is a journeyman assistant who a team signs when they can’t get somebody good and has to settle for a warm body placeholder. IMHO hiring Chaney is the second biggest mistake that Kirby made. The biggest mistake by Kirby was keeping Chaney after his display last season. This is all as a direct result of Kirby hanging around Tuscaloosa to help the Red Elephants win another nattie when he should have been on the job in Athens putting together a staff and all the really good assistants being snapped up before Kirby got around to finally doing his job. IMHO that was only to feather his own nest for the future. If Kirby ends up being a success in Athens he will be packing his bags for T-town as soon as Saban retires. If Kirby is bad or mediocre as a HC (which is what I am seeing) he’ll be back in T-town as an assistant after he gets canned. Any way you slice it Georgia takes it in the ear. Worst hire that could have been made.
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Hoping for a lot more like the second half of the bowl game last year.
I know it was against a poor TCU team with no SEC linebacker speed, but the offense got going when he swapped to a shotgun/pistol look.
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A head coach with a defensive background and a muzzled offensive coordinator will always keep us guessing. Three months of seeing what we see and nine months wait and see will be our norm.
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I’ll give him a mulligan on last year. However, the litmus test this year is pretty simple.
Like last year, I expect every team to load the box and dare us to beat them over the top or just man on man in the run game.
I know they will do that. Chaney knows they will do that. Every single person in the world knows they will do that. He’s had 12 months to scheme. If we go out and routinely and get stoned in the run game and have no answer, he needs to be fired. Period.
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He lost his mulligan with me with that idiotic 4th and 1 call against Vandy. The day he leaves Athens our offense will improve.
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Aah, I know how you feel ee. One bonehead play does not a career make. But I still haven’t forgiven MB for getting a case of the “cutes” that day against SC.
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I understand … MB will be sitting on his back porch one day and still be haunted by that call even after he hangs it up.
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The coming to conclusions that Cheney can’t coach is pretty damn dumb at this point. You had a true freshman at qb, a really bad OL, not a great wr crew and a head coach wanting to instill a style of play not suited to the personnel. Not a great recipe for offensive success.
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And your conclusion is….he is a “good” coach?
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My conclusion is that like most coaches he’ll look good when he has good players.
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In general, yes….but there is such a thing as game planning, good play calling (situational and etc.), fitting players to who they are and not who you want them to be (zone blocking versus man to man, shotgun or under center & etc.), developing players, motivating players, communicating with players, leading players and etc. So far, I can’t say I am exactly comfortable with Cheney….I have to see it first (results), but I am hopeful.
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There only one person responsible for man blocking and that’s the head coach. If you think that Cheney convinced him that those guys could do that and he just went with that suggestion then we’re in a lot of trouble. My going assumption is that we went to man blocking despite the talent we had. That’s on the head man or we really, really have issues.
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It is all on the HC, you are who you hire. My guess is, that was some of the “philosophical” differences that we read about. They did flip back to zone toward the end of the season. Hopefully everybody is on the same page now…
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The O-line and offense has had 3 coaches in three years. This will be the first in four years that the same coaches were teaching them two years in a row. I think this year we should see substantial improvement. However, it will be years 3 and 4 that this offense will be lethal. After the young line matures with experience, Swift, White, Herrien and Holyfield (and Cook possibly) get meaningful playing time and we will have experienced quarterbacks and receivers. #UGANation
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What I take from it is that he’s not going to be a guy that comes in and does a whole lot with very little, but given time and the right pieces, he’s very much a guy who can do some good things if he has the right pieces in place.
That might sound overly simplistic, but then again, that’s why you recruit to what the OC and HC are trying to do.
Auburn is a good case in point. Malzahn set the world on fire when he arrived as OC and HC, given some key players. But, they’ve been very pedestrian the last two years, as he’s struggled to find the right pieces.
I still place little to no stock in last year’s performance at Georgia, given all the obstacles we faced. I’d be shocked if we don’t see a marked improvement this year, but if we are still ranking in the bottom 25% of offenses nationally, then I’ll definitely begin to wonder.
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Looks to me like given the choice Cheney likes to run the ball… rather unsuccessfully it appears. When he throws it successfully he is successful. Don’t know what that says without taking the personnel into consideration but that’s what the statistics say.
September will tell the tail if not App State. I’ll repeat… I sure hope we don’t try and save anything for week two. We need to practice being deadly on offense and defense… as much as we can get.
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Well, I guess it’s something to do but he’s going to be the OC this year no matter what the worldwide internet says.
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That’s what Hugh Freeze said..😏
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Chaney has been calling escorts? Please do tell…
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My opinion is everything he did was due to Drew Brees and Joe Tiller’s offense at Purdue. He has never really even been mentioned for a head coaching job in 20 years. For those who still suffer from Bobo Derangement Syndrome, you should be on alert for how good an OC I Haz A Fat Pencil is.
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Our OC is a poor man’s Charlie Weis.
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I am still optimistic on Chaney. Eason had a successful year, especially given he played very little under center if at all in High School and fewer INTs than Stafford. OL was a year in transition personnel and scheme. The biggest improvement i hope for is Eason’s ability to be productive under center.
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“I am still optimistic on Chaney”
I’m there as well. I would hope one year was not enough to judge him and we’ll see much improvement. Especially if KS had his hand in the play calling. Could be KS held Chaney to “You can call the plays but it MUST include forcing our will in the running game 92% of the time!”
“The biggest improvement i hope for is Eason’s ability to be productive under center.”
I get your desire and hope he develops in this area, but…if it don’t fit, I hope we don’t force it. Let’s play to our strengths if our preferences are not producing wins.
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Just my opinion, but I don’t think it makes much sense to judge an OC on one year of work at UGA. If Chaney had kicked ass last year, every Richt disciple here would have claimed it was because of what he inherited from the previous staff. Since he got his ass kicked, they now say he sucks….and it has nothing to do with the previous staff. Whatever. Rome was not built in a day. If we see Chubb running into a wall this year, I will join that chorus, but not until then. Otherwise it is just plain dumb.
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Nothing differentiates Chaney from literally dozens of other mediocre offensive coaches. At 55, one can only hope he’s hitting his best years. Awe, who am I kidding? If our O finishes in the top 40 it would be amazing.
One can hope Beamer improves the ST coaching. That’s another ‘I’ll believe when I see it’.
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Hopefully the play calling won’t be so damn predictable this year. Throw the damn ball on 1st down at least occasionally. Some quick strikes downfield = our running game eating their lunch in 2nd halves. Keep ’em honest, big guy!
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So his better teams are the teams that passed a lot. Let’s do that
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We want to run downhill with a QB who likes the gun. I think the formation for this is called “The Pistol?” I could be wrong, though.
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For a point of reference, I checked out Bobo’s stats on this front, but ended up focusing on points per game and also took a look at points per play.
In 2014 we scored .61 points per play. Baylor lead the country in total scoring but only had .55 per play.
Our overall scoring ranks were 35, 29, 51, 30, 33, 18, 12, 8 — all in an era where we ran a pro-style offense in the era of the hurry up spread.
We had it very, very good.
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I saw the stats. The only ones that are respectable were from that period when he was working with Joe Tiller and had Brees as QB. Remind me: Exactly how many conference championships–any conference anywhere–has Chaney won as OC? I think you already know the answer to that but please, all of you, take the time to look it up. The first time I ever saw Chaney coach was as OC for Purdue against Georgia in a bowl and Donnan beat his team. I rest my case.
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