Less than two weeks to the mid-terms and I’m sure nobody has an opinion about it. Or maybe you’re wrapped up in fear of Middle Eastern hordes funded by George Soros heading towards the southern border.
Have at it in the comments.
Daily Archives: October 24, 2018
Jesse Palmer has instincts.
You will be shocked, shocked to learn that Former Gator Favors The Gators Saturday.
How does he know the level of each team’s confidence? Dunno. Maybe he’s connected with them on the astral plane.
Me, I’ll look at something more concrete. Like this.
Georgia is a more than solid team coming off a crappy game. I’m probably more confident the Dawgs won’t repeat that effort in Jacksonville.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football
Size matters.
How many of you saw this coming?
Georgia’s struggles with run defense this season are well-documented. But there is some hope for improvement, and it comes in the form of Jordan Davis.
Davis is just a freshman and he plays noseguard. That in itself makes him a rarity, that he’s playing at all. But Davis has something none of Georgia’s other options at the position offer.
He’s big. Really big.
Too big, in fact. At first, anyway.
Davis showed up from Charlotte’s Mallard Creek High carrying 350 pounds on his 6-foot-6 frame. Upon the opening of preseason camp in August, coach Kirby Smart immediately declared that Davis would have to drop 20 pounds to have any hope of playing. He was jettisoned to the scout team, where he opened the season.
What has impressed Smart and Davis’ teammates so much is he not only dropped that weight, but then some. And he did it totally on his own. He did it by running on the side, mornings and afternoons.
“Jordan’s development has been a big bonus for us,” Smart said after the Bulldogs’ practice Tuesday. “… He may be one of our best conditioned players now because he spends all of his time conditioning.”
Davis is not just well-conditioned. Apparently he can play some as well. He had seven tackles in the Bulldogs’ 36-16 loss to LSU. He’s now 13th on the team and fourth among down linemen with 15 tackles. He also has a quarterback pressure to his credit.
This is after not making Georgia’s travel roster for its first two away games and playing only sparingly the first third of the season.
From the coaches’ perspective, necessity is the mother and all that, but it’s impressive to see the kid step up and take advantage of the opportunity. Now, if the inside linebackers can take advantage of the opportunity…
Filed under Georgia Football
Hot takes! Get ‘yer Cocktail Party hot takes!
Shorter Matt Zemek: Gators, win one for the Zooker.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football
One day, we’ll all look back on it and laugh.
For Chas Henry, that day is now.
A visitor dropped by Todd Grantham’s Florida defensive meeting room in August during his first preseason in Gainesville. The veteran coordinator was told someone wanted to say hello.
“I walked in there and I started giving him the choke sign and all of the coaches just started dying laughing,” Chas Henry said.
Henry told the story on the same day Grantham began the first game week preparing his Florida defense to face Georgia, where he coached against the Gators for four seasons on the other side of the rivalry.
It was back in 2010 that Grantham again showed his unvarnished fiery side. He put his hand on his neck on the sideline as Henry prepared to attempt a 37-yard field goal in a tied game in overtime.
Tee hee!
I wonder who will get the last chuckle on third-and-Grantham this Saturday.
Dawg fans weren’t exactly thrilled with his tenure, an up-and-down stretch in which UGA held up really well against third down in one season and not so great in the others.
- 2010: 42 percent
- 2011: 28.9 percent (No. 3 nationally)
- 2012: 36.5 percent
- 2013: 39.5 percent
That led to #ThirdAndGrantham becoming a thing on social media.
The easy assumption is that Grantham’s defense was blitzing on basically every third down and allowing his defense to get carved up. Perception about Grantham became reality, but regardless of how it happened, his defenses weren’t great on third-and-long.
The Gators aren’t exactly elite on third down overall this season, but have been getting better over the last few games.
Those stats offered by Florida miss an ounce of context, because two of the last three opponents (LSU and Vanderbilt) are among the worst third down teams in the country. But the sentiment is there. For now, Florida is enjoying third/fourth-and-Grantham. It remains to be seen if Florida will continue on this trajectory, or if they’ll regress to the mean on third down.
One could ask the same question of Jake Fromm, who hasn’t exactly been tearing it up on third down this season (passer rating: 101.41). That especially goes for third-and-long, where Jake has thrown three of his four interceptions on the year, on less than eight percent of his total pass attempts. If I’m Jim Chaney, I’m pulling a crayon out of Mike Bobo’s box and sticking to the draw on third-and-ten.
You have to figure between Todd and Jake, though, something’s gotta give.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Today, in ox goring
Collusion is a bridge too far for me, mostly because I don’t believe the parties involved are smart enough to hide a conspiracy that significant, but the fact remains that the SEC botched a ruling and doesn’t seem to interested in fixing the situation. Which calls the legitimacy of its decision-making processes into question. — Billy Gomila, And The Valley Shook
Billy’s a great guy and all (thanks for that Lula recommendation!) and I get why LSU folks are hot under the collar about the targeting call, but ultimately, I can’t muster up much of a sense of outrage against the SEC office over it, mainly because my mind keeps wandering back to this classic:
It was a bullshit call — followed up by a similar bullshit call a couple of weeks later from the same bunch that actually led to a weakass disciplinary measure from the league — yet Marc Curles still calls SEC games today. I didn’t see Miles turn the penalty down out of a sense of correcting a wrong, nor did I hear anyone from LSU petition the SEC office to do anything about it afterwards.
Funny how that works sometimes.
Filed under SEC Football
Uncle Verne ❤ Athens.
One scene between the hedges, one in which he described no action, but was the centerpiece, however, brings him to tears. It was the 2016 Georgia-Tennessee game in Sanford Stadium. Georgia paid tribute to Verne in what would be his last season with CBS and the SEC.
In the beginning he and CBS did not promote a farewell tour, but you know the rest of the story. As CBS made the rounds that season, everywhere the broadcast crew went, they discovered that the host school would be showing appreciation to Verne for his having come the league’s way.
Georgia’s happened to turn out to be his favorite. “When the scoreboard reflected tributes from Gov. Nathan Deal, Greg McGarity, Kirby Smart, Jim Nance, and ‘omigod’ Jack Nicklaus, I was overwhelmed. But then Gary Danielson tapped me on the arm and pointed to the field. The Georgia Redcoat Band had formed ‘Yessir!’ I almost lost it right there in the booth.”
Mike Robinson, director of UGA’s Redcoat Marching Band, had organized the band’s routine to where the Redcoats spelled out “Yessir,” Verne’s famous call when Jack Nicklaus made that legendary birdie putt at the 17th hole at the Masters.
As he spoke in Atlanta, Athens and LaGrange this week, Verne choked up, especially in Athens where there was video accompaniment of the Sanford Stadium scoreboard and the band’s “Yessir” alignment on the field. “All that has a lot to do with why I love this place,” Verne said as he wiped his eyes which prompted a standing ovation.
And yet there are plenty of Dawg fans who will swear otherwise. Strange.
Filed under Georgia Football
Bafoonery
All you need to know about the latest embarrassing development in Zach Smith’s life is that he put the word guilty in scare quotes.
McMurphy, as is his wont, has the receipts, by the way.
Is it unreasonable to expect that if Ohio State’s season unravels any further, somebody’s gonna start blaming McMurphy for it?
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
Show of force
You know, I’d feel better about this if they’d come out and say whom they’re protecting.
I keed, I keed… I think.
Filed under Crime and Punishment, Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football
Get The Picture 