Jim Chaney said out loud what many of us thought was the team’s biggest problem over the first half of the season.
“We were having some good things come our way, but I’m not necessarily sure we were working as hard as we should have. It kind of opened up – like you said, it opened our eyes a little bit. Hopefully, we’ve all learned from that.”
It was obvious to me at the time that the team was coasting on its talent edge, until it showed up — maybe didn’t show up is more accurate — in Baton Rouge.
Which kind of makes you wonder what might have happened if the Dawgs had somehow managed to coast to a win against LSU. Not showing up in Jacksonville would have sucked beyond words.
Hopefully, it’s a lesson that sticks.
Get The Picture 
Soft early schedule and playing so many guys spelled doom going into that LSU game. Both the players and coaches panicked when they got hit in the mouth. The cohesion and leadership was just not there and the reality check was huge. Never again open with Austin Peay.
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I think you nailed it at “playing so many guys”, particularly the offense. We were substituting as if the cfp championship was a participation trophy.
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I like Bama’s approach to this. Blow them out of the water for 3 quarters, then let the subs have at it for a full quarter uninterrupted. The key is once the subs go in, let them run the full playbook. If you run up the score further with the 2nd string in, it is pretty hard for the other side to bitch and moan.
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Probably is better.
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This might be true, but I also think our WR’s had a couple bad drops early in that game and our team didn’t have the mental toughness to fight through that in a hostile environment.
Significant shrinkage – the kind we saw in Auburn last year.
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I dunno. We clearly weren’t in sync offensively until after the bye week, post-LSU, but that was always going to be the toughest test of the season to me. Coming off the loss in Gainesville, program with its back to the wall, raised their intensity making them, with good athletes, doubly dangerous. Add in the significant trench injuries we had on both sides of the ball, we were vulnerable. I wish our bye week had come before LSU, and not FU this year.
People get too hung up with the “20 point loss” aspect and forget that with around 7-8 minutes left we failed on an key offensive drive, and then game them a cheap TD at the end. It was a loss either way, but would have been viewed much differently by everyone, and might have come down to a chance to win at the end. I also think the whole QB tryouts thingy was in full distraction mode that week and had contributed to our stumbling offensively at that point.
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yes. Baton Rouge 18 was no Jordan Hare 17.
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Going undefeated ain’t exactly easy.
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Thanks, Tony….
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I’ll take the way it turned out. Better to get an attitude adjustment in Baton Rouge than Jacksonville.
BTW…next year it’s going to be a tough nut to crack…whole schedule is looking tougher and tougher..if UF and the Barn’s bowl performances are any indication.
Task one for Cheney and the offense will be to get over the Fields’ fiasco and settle down behind Fromm.
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Kirby’s obviously closed the gap on Bama, but is far from instilling the win every moment mentality Saban is so successful with. Improvement starts with Kirby himself. Saban can recruit a Justin Fields, but is willing and able to keep him benched until needed. Kirby never got the formula right for how to handle our QB situation until after LSU when it became clear the team needed to coalesce around the clear starter in Fromm. Although we still toyed around with using Fields (just for show in most situations) we also honed in on sticking with Swift and Holyfield and some key defensive positions.
I’m betting 2019 will be more about winning your position in practice and proving it in games. Less future thinking by players and coaches and more winning each moment. As Texas coach Tom Herman preaches, just go 1 – 0 each week and don’t stack pressure on yourself about going undefeated.
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I agree that the team kind of coast through the schedule until they got to Baton Rouge, but they still could have won that game. I see where some want to blame the former back up qb for the loss. I don’t recall him seeing the field much in that game, but what the heck, Fields is cause of all of the world’s problems if we let some people tell it. Bottom line, that loss is on the coaching staff, because they went away from what was working. We were pounding them with Swift and Holyfield and then they decided that they wanted to air it out after horrible special team fake call number 1.
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Me thinks thou doth protest too much.
Nobody is blaming Fields. The underlying criticism is the way he was used. Basically, the offense would trade a down for a one yard gain almost every time he went in. Some of us hoped we were seeing a set-up for him doing something spectacular in the Alabama game, but the trend of one play, one yard, and back out continued.
It’s hard not to imagine that Fromm would have done more with those opportunities had he stayed in.
Fields didn’t make those decisions, the coaches did.
I don’t recall anyone saying the loss was Fields’ fault.
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Above post (at 4:16 PM) is a reply to dawgman3000.
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I agree. I know some people think that Fields was upset about not being the starter, which I’m sure he was disappointed about. IMO, I think he was more disappointed in how the coaches were using him. Give him a couple of series a game or let him run the offense in mop up instead of letting him hand the ball off. There is no way Shockley stays at UGA if Richt used him like that. Did it cost us a loss in Jacksonville in 2002? It probaly did, but it also gave us the SEC championship in 2005. That one play in and out deal did neither qb any favors. Say what you want about Richt, but he handled the situation with Greene and Shockley as well as a coach possibly could.
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Wednesday morning quarterbacking here…..IT DIDN’T
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