The more things change…

… well, you know.

Youngstown State coach & former Nebraska coach Bo Pelini has been offered LSU defensive coordinator position & is expected to accept it, sources told @Stadium

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) January 27, 2020

Blogger manna just keeps falling.

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In the end, money always talks.

As you know it does…

Georgia is considering jumping into alcohol sales for the general public in time for the 2020 football season.

Athletic director Greg McGarity expects the sale of beer and wine at athletic events to be a topic at Georgia’s spring athletic board meetings, scheduled for June 3-5.

“If we weren’t interested in perhaps moving forward, we wouldn’t even be going through this exercise,” McGarity said. “Things are trending that way. We certainly don’t want to be behind others but at the same time, we’ve heard of problems that our fans experienced in Nashville and Knoxville. What we don’t want to do is just jump in without a lot of thought and with a good plan that doesn’t affect our current concessions.”

The Georgia Way can be flexible when the reserve account wants it.  Although I do feel a little sorry for the Magill Society donors who shelled out an absurd amount of money for a lounge without a view… okay, not really.

There goes one pet theory.

Honestly, I thought Kirby Smart engineered Scott Fountain’s departure to Arkansas as a way to open up a spot on his staff to bring someone like Todd Monken on board without running off another offensive assistant.  Based on this, though, I have to admit that doesn’t make much sense.

Additionally, the Razorbacks contracted to pay buyouts for a couple of the assistant coaches.

Arkansas agreed to pay Kentucky an amount not to exceed $100,000 for LeBlanc, who will draw an annual salary of $450,000. The Razorbacks agreed to pay Georgia an amount not to exceed $32,5000 for special teams coach Scott Fountain, who also agreed to a $450,000 salary.

You don’t pay a buyout for a coach who’s already been fired.  So, Sam Pittman coaxed Fountain into jumping ship and joining him for a nice pay raise.  Unless you figure Kirby’s blown through three-dimensional chess mastery and is working on level four by somehow anticipating that Pittman wanted Fountain badly enough to cut Greg McGarity a check for the privilege…

About Auburn in Athens

I had to check the stats just to make sure I’m not crazy.  Georgia hasn’t lost at home to Auburn since 2005.  Since then, it’s compiled seven wins in a row (including a couple by some mediocre Richt teams and Smart’s worst team) by an average score of 33-11.

Am I missing something here?  Sure, Auburn’s a quality opponent and anything can happen, but that’s long way from wetting your pants over the thought of the Tigers coming to Athens.

Moar Monkening

Via UGASports’ Film Don’t Lie, I’ve got a couple of clips and commentary to share.

First, you may have seen this the other day, but there’s something about it that bears repeating.

Here’s what Dayne Young says about it:

Expect to see an active backfield pre-snap from the Bulldogs. Motion men can dictate the momentum defenders have when the ball is snapped. Here, the motioned receiver goes one way while a running back screen develops the other way. If Georgia’s offensive line plays a bit smaller and promotes agility, this kind of action is possible.  [Emphasis added.]

It’s a well designed play that gets the back in space, but it gets stuffed because the lineman isn’t quick enough to block the defender, who winds up getting a clean shot at the receiver to blow up the play.  Does Georgia have the offensive linemen to make that play go?

Brent Collins’ comment about the clip is a little surprising.

While we don’t have the data for the Oklahoma State or Southern Miss years on the amount of shift/motioning, Monken’s offenses in Tampa Bay used shifts or motion on 35 to 38 percent of plays, below the NFL average and nowhere near the 79 percent that topped the league with Kyle Shanahan’s Super Bowl-bound offense in San Francisco. In 2019, Georgia’s offense used a shift/motion component on 50.5 percent of its snaps.

Coley ran more motion last season than Monken did the last time he called plays?  Interesting.

And here’s the second clip and commentary:

Dayne: The most successful running plays under Monken’s offense are very decisive. The runner spends very little time maneuvering laterally. It’s all getting to the hole faster than it can be stuffed.

Brent: The essence and birth of the spread offense was actually designed (by Rich Rodriquez at Glenville State University, before he went to Tulane) to help the running game. At PFF, we have shown that field location (between the 20s) and number of defenders in the box predict rushing success more so than the ability of the running back. In 2019, Georgia was in the top half of the FBS (44th) in terms of number of rushing plays with at least eight defenders in the box.

Hell, I’m surprised that last stat he cites isn’t even higher.  But I digress.  The big deal here is that for Monken’s running philosophy to succeed, it’s going to take a lot of scheming to convince teams to defend Georgia’s offense in a very different manner than they’ve been accustomed to doing in the past couple of seasons.  Is Georgia really going to do something to scheme defenders out of the box?

Bill Connelly’s preliminary 2020 returning production figures

Georgia’s standing is neither as dire (offense) or as great (defense) as you might expect.  But Dragon*Con Nation will be excited.

At least until they remember that “returning” is a concept that cuts both ways.

Among the big boys, still no Georgia sighting.

Among SP+ top-40 teams only…

Top 5 ret prod: Okla St, USC, Ind, UNC, VT
Bottom 5: AFA, Bama, Utah, FAU, LSU

Top 5 Os: UNC, Okla St, App St, Ind, USC
Bottom 5 Os: LSU, Bama, AFA, Wash, Wazzu

Top 5 Ds: USC, VT, Okla St, Ind, Oregon
Bottom 5 Ds: Utah, Baylor, Bama, AFA, FAU

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) January 25, 2020

Bill did get asked why no Georgia on defense and here’s his response.

They're 19th. Not terrible.

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) January 25, 2020

He didn’t address a similar question about the offense, but if he had, I doubt “not terrible” would be his response.

I assume this will be fleshed out at some point.  It’ll be interesting to see the details.

SEC Football Schedule 2020

Good breakdown here from CFN’s Pete Fiutak.  If you want the tl;dr version, here ’tis:

Winner: Arkansas. It might not be a great team Sam Pittman is taking over, but there’s no complaining about the schedule. There’s no Florida or Georgia from the East, LSU and Alabama are both home games, and the team doesn’t leave the state for the whole month of October.

Loser: South Carolina. Didn’t the Gamecocks catch a bad break with last year’s schedule? Yup, and now try this – road games at Florida, LSU and Clemson, along with home games against Georgia and Texas A&M. If there’s a misfire at Kentucky early on, or against Tennessee, uh-oh.

Winner: Texas A&M. It’s all relative in the SEC West, but start with replacing Clemson with Colorado on the non-conference side. The Aggies go all of September without playing a team that went to a bowl game, and after going to Mississippi State – very winnable – they get a Fresno State team that didn’t go bowling.

They had to play Alabama and Auburn on the road, but they only leave Texas once between the start of the season and October 17th. Three of the last four games – including LSU – are at home.

Loser: Florida. The overall schedule is actually not that bad – there’s no Alabama or Auburn from the West – however, the Gators have their annual date against LSU right before leaving Gainesville for a big chunk of the season. After hosting the Tigers on October 10th, they’re not back at home for a game until November 14th.

If you’re wondering why a lot of pundits see TAMU as this year’s breakout team, look no farther than that schedule.

Putting the “play” into pay to play

I don’t think Rex Democrat Rep. Sandra Scott’s college athlete compensation bill has a shot in hell of passage (Schools won’t even get their collective shit together on NIL rights, but they’re gonna accept losing a third of their postseason revenues?  Yeah, right.), but there’s a part of it that makes me wonder if she’s been reading Get The Picture lately.

The language of the bill would appear to specifically exclude athletes who play college sports, but do not graduate from school. The release said “this legislation also seeks to promote higher graduation rates among student athletes.”

It also appears to limit payments specifically to athletes whose teams played in postseason tournaments, with the money available to them tied to how much revenue their teams brought in during those tournaments.

The language says the athlete would receive “his or her pro rata share of the deposit made for each intercollegiate postseason athletic contest for which such student athlete was in good standing and eligible to participate at the time of such intercollegiate postseason athletic contest.”

In other words, if you elect to take a powder and skip that meaningless bowl game to prepare for the NFL draft, you ain’t getting paid.  If this bill defied the odds and ever became a reality, I suspect bowl games would assume greater meaning once again, at least for some folks.

Crazy good

If you need a reminder of how stout Georgia’s defense ought to be this season, see if you can guess whom PFF ranks as the top returning defensive lineman in the SEC.

Musical palate cleanser, rain/reign edition

This one came up on the car radio this morning.  It’s the song I closed my college radio show with for two years.

One of the best album closers ever…