A year ago, if you looked at one of those ubiquitous coach rankings, Kirby Smart showed up in the lower half, whether it was for the SEC of D-1 as whole. Now, you see stuff like this:
TIER 1: NICK SABAN
- Nick Saban (Alabama) – Six national titles. Successfully held off the heir apparent by making a personnel change that no one without Nick Saban-level job security would. Is still Nick Saban.
- Kirby Smart (Georgia) – Technically is not Nick Saban…but still. Kirby is hoarding elite quarterbacks like my father hoards soy sauce and hot mustard packets. Clearly that team has all the talent it needs to be a juggernaut and keeps bringing in more. It’s only a matter of time before they are the big bully of the conference.
Those “Dan Mullen is the second-best coach in the SEC” takes seem kind of quaint now, don’t they?
Get The Picture 
” I can’t believe Georgia hired Derek Dooley part 2, why couldn’t we have hired Tom Herman or some other big name”…I guess some of the Bloggers were wrong…..AGAIN
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I agree with Dawg tired below. I’m certainly happy to be proven wrong if it means it turns out good for Dawg Nation. But you can’t argue that the concern wasn’t legitimate.
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I argued it from day one..we got our guy.
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Of course, PTC. You knew exactly how everything would pan out. Because you had seen it work somewhere else, I’m sure.
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Did we not get our guy? We targeted no one else…we put our eggs in one basket. So far so good. Y’all keep whining about who we should have interviewed…
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I’ll admit as I walked out of Sanford Stadium on October 15, 2016 after watching a team lose a game in which they gave up fewer than 200 yards of total offense to a perennial SEC doormat, I had doubts about whether Kirby was going to be successful especially with Jim Chaney as his offensive coordinator. If you knew we would play for a national championship 15 months later, I hope you went to Vegas and put every dime you had on the Dawgs to win the SEC championship and appear in the national championship game.
I’m glad he has turned it around, and the team has done well this year and is poised for an excellent run in the future. This year was a hell of a ride. There’s no way to dispute that.
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Well, as I’ve said many times, the crow I now eat is so sweet. It’s one of those things where the ribbing about being wrong has no sting because the outcome is so much more satisfying.
I felt like if Kirby could surround himself with the right assistants, we would be okay. But we are far more than okay.
The staff’s ability to bring in top talent maybe the key but the thing that has been the pleasant surprise for me is their coaching success with ‘in-game’ adjustments. The adjustments made in the Rose Bowl and in game 2 against Auburn gave me confidence that these coaches bring the full package of what we need. Going forward, we will see if they have the ability to adjust with the game on a larger scale. CFB is ever evolving so the staffs have to keep up.
Also, we’ll learn if Kirby can maintain a dynasty as assistants come and go.
As of right now, I have the confidence that Kirby will keep UGA very near the top in the SEC on a regular basis.
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Pass me a helping of that crow. I’ll just sprinkle some rose petals on it to choke it down.
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Crow pairs well with a good dark stout. Turbo Dog is my current choice.
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I’m old enough to know not to make flat ass statements..so I insist that I think I remember being on the positive side of “cautiously optimistic” about the CKS hire.
The biggest change I’ve noticed is that this team has the attitude they they are going to prevail come hell or high water. That’s the “culture” change that I’ve been looking for, posting about, since the early days of the blogosphere BB (Before Blutarsky).
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^^^This. I KNEW we were going to come back in the Rose Bowl when I heard Lincoln Riley’s halftime interview of “our players know / we told them, it’s going to be a 4 quarter war.” We’ve talked about that mindset here before…..and on the surface it seems like a good was to humbly motivate a team with a lead. But it also has the effect of being a negative self-fulfilling prophecy—you’ve just plugged into your players brain that the shoe is going to drop.
Kirby treats every moment like its 0-0…..he doesn’t necessarily intend to stomp a mudhole in the other team, but that’s what happens when you DEMAND the highest level of execution from your 3rd string players.
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Does anyone else think Saban’s getting a little too much credit for making the QB change? I was at the game and I heard Bama fans clamoring for Tua to go in during the 2nd quarter. Hell, the friend I went with (a Bama fan) was telling me before the game how he thought Tua was better than Hurts.
I know it’s semantics, but if anything I think he deserves more credit for keeping Tua in after his first couple of series didn’t go anywhere. It would’ve been easy to say “okay, he’s had his shot, put Jalen back in.” But I think there are a lot of coaches who would’ve made the change given what was at stake and Hurts’ performance in the first half, not just those with “Nick Saban-level job security”.
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It was desperation pure and simple. We had shut down the Hurts offense and made him ineffective.
Did Tua play well? Yes. Did we help him out by missing tackles and missing assignments? Yes. If we get him on the ground on that 3rd and long, he goes back to the bench. Did the officials help him out multiple times? Yes.
Fromm was the best QB on the field that night, and I’ll go to my grave believing that.
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Spot on EE. He had to make that move to Tua or they were, IMO, about to take an overdue visit to the woodshed. It was a low risk, high reward move that worked out for him with the help of some questionable officiating.
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Enough said.
https://mobile.twitter.com/wesj_42/status/953645079830425600/photo/1
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Yeah, but it should’ve been a false start for Bama. So the block still wouldn’t have counted, unless we’d managed to block it again, and Bama would’ve just had to punt from 5 yards deeper.
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The false start was only noticeable in slow motion replay as they were showing whether Simmons was onsides.
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Had it been called, couldn’t UGA have declined Bama’s offsides? The play stands?
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No, a false start is a dead ball foul. Play stops … if they had been in an illegal formation (also illegal procedure), it’s a live ball foul and can be declined by the defense.
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That’s exactly what I was going to post.
Hurts was 3 of 8 for 21 yards in the first half and Saban knew he was going to have to start throwing it in the second half if they were going to have a chance. I don’t know if I would call it desperate. More like a major halftime adjustment to the plan.
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Many Bama fans had urged a change from Hurts since the loss to Clemson the year prior. Saban had no choice in the 2nd half, was nothing brilliant about the move given the circumstances from the first half. Credit to him for not being afraid to make the offensive change required but that is far from him being a genius for thinking of it. Every analyst on the radio and TV was discussing that before they went to the locker room. We did our part and helped the decision lo look really good.
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Fire Chaney!
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The only part of Kirby’s staff that I’m not sold on. A lot of our offensive performance this year was due to the sheer athleticism of Sony & Nick.
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Mehhh. You unleash the beasts and let them play….if not, we’d be bitching about him not playing to his strengths. From too cute in the first half of the rose bowl to too conservative in the 2nd half of the Natty, it’s pretty tough to win over your fanbase as an OC.
We plugged in throw-to-run after Auburn#1. It worked very well in Auburn#2 and the Rose Bowl. And as some said, we maybe could have just straight up more often in the Rose Bowl. But my thought is that the Rose Bowl game plan was a good warmup plan for Alabama…..and that’s what we did, but it just didn’t work. I suppose with the benefit of hindsight we just keep throwing the WHOLE game against them, but it’s not like our game plan was that of a guy who didn’t know his team (which is a common complaint of many OCs). And I’m of the belief that if you can’t run at all, ever…nada….you’re probably just screwed.
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“I’m of the belief that if you can’t run at all, ever … nada … you’re probably just screwed.”
We had shown that we could throw on early downs to set up the running game throughout the first half. When the game tightened, it was clear that Kirby and Chaney decided to try to run the clock out and only throw on passing downs. It didn’t work … maybe it was poor strategy, maybe it was Alabama took away a lot of the things we wanted to do. Up 10 entering the 4th quarter wasn’t the time to go into a shell.
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Spot on. We had two players who made things happen with the ball in their hands throughout the 1st half and played keep away during the 2nd half.
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Sony was hurt…
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“It’s only a matter of time before they are the big bully of the conference.”
Those are some mighty big words.
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Auburn’s write-up is hilarious.
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Yep, but it’s dead-on.
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Auburn fans are a weird bunch.
You don’t ever get to use the words “Auburn fans” and “understated” in the same sentence, but here we are.
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The one coach I think is under rated, believe it or not, is Boom. He is one determined and focused maniac. He will have the Gamepeckers playing at a very emotional and determined level, and UGA is circled more heavily on his schedule than even Clemson. That game will be a war. Hopefully, with our line and running backs, we pound it out and get a solid if not spectacular win. Lose it and we’re behind the eight ball very early. Boom will be ready and I think he will have the second best team in the East this year. If can beat us and win the
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(computer hates me and I hate it)..SECE, he will be the toast of the pundits this time next year. I think we beat them, but he’s going to do well at USCe.
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If that’s true, which I doubt, he’d better not admit it publicly.
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I think it is. If he can make it to Atlanta, his fan base will forgive a loss to Clemson.They expect to lose to Clemson anyway. Not saying they’re happy about it. GT hates losing to UGA, but if they still win the ACC they’re salved, no?
UGA is a home game and early in the season..As much as I hate GT..conference games are more important. We can’t really compare it to the Iron Bowl hatred because it’s between two conference teams.
I’m sure they’re both circled heavily, but the conference means more than the South Carolina State Championship, doesn’t it?
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Not from what folks from SC tell me.
BTW, SC’s beaten Clemson a lot more in the last 20 years than it’s been to the SECCG.
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Obligatory wish-we-could-drop-Tech plug from me. That is all.
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Even if he doesn’t admit it publicly it better not show in W/L column.
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If he doesn’t beat Clemson in the next couple of years, he’ll be back at Auburn as defensive coordinator for the eleventy millionth time.
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Maybe it’s just me, but I think Boom is overated, not to mention he’s a douche to boot.
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