Terrence Edwards, preaching to the choir:
“James Cook, I think he’s going to finally have a breakout season,” Edwards said. “I think coach is going to find a way to get that explosive running back in space.”
Cook, Edwards indicated, has been underutilized in the offense.
“He needs at least 10 touches a game,” Edwards said. “In that return game, that screen game, handing it off to him. He has to touch the ball at least 10 times to use his God-given ability.”
‘Bout damned time. Do it, Monken.
Get The Picture 
Coley’s use of Cook last season was a fireable offense on its own, leaving aside all of the other offensive malpractice.
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It’s worth remembering that without some serious creativity, even Percy Harvin could’ve languished as a merely “pretty damn good” receiver or a “pretty damn good” running back at UF. Instead he was damn near unstoppable, and is now the measuring stick and hope for any hybrid RB/WR who has come along since.
Cook ain’t Harvin, but he certainly is a “hybrid” player who requires special attention and creativity from an OC to get the most out of him. His upside and the headache he can potentially become for defenses is worth the extra effort from Monken.
I’m not one to hang my hopes on “if’s” but imagine the offense IF Zeus is finally at 100%, IF Pickens has the year we expect, IF Newman is the real deal and adds the extra threat of a running QB, and IF on top of all that, we add the headache of speedster hybrid player in Cook who can take it to the house from anywhere on the field if he’s the one you don’t pay attention to while accounting for those other three.
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Percy Harvey had a really gusty set of performances against Georgia. Man, I hated that dude, but he was fun to watch whenever he wasn’t doing it to us.
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It sure sucked being a Georgia fan watching Florida revolutionize the game with some of the most amazing players of the last 25 years. I mean, give me a Tim Tebow clone who isn’t Tim Tebow and you’ve got my ideal QB. Him or Jared Lorenzen, who was way cooler. It still amazes me after seeing the success those two had that you don’t see more fullback/lineman-body having kids playing QB. It’s just so awesome to see that kind of physicality in a QB.
“Don’t hit the QB? How bout tell him not to hit me!”
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Corrine Brown says hello and go gayta!
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Oh, you went for a visit to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida? Were you there to see a specific inmate and bumped into her? Was Tim Tivo down there doing some preaching? 😂
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I thought Corinne was out and running for office again?
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A Covid release – like many other criminals.
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Chaney’s misuse or refusal to use Hardman and Cook and Coley misuse or refusal to use Cook in space goes down as the dumbest decisions any of our coordinators have ever made at any time.
Yes, more than directional kicks. Yes, more than not running Gurley at the goal line or not spiking the ball to give us two plays in 2012.
We had here two guys of supreme athleticism, guys we always wanted at Georgia, guys we always wondered why they went to FU and not us, guys like Percy Harvin, and instead of USING THEM IN SPACE, Chaney and Coley threw WR boundary screens to them five yards behind the line of scrimmage or used them in predictable jet sweeps and basically kept them in a phone booth offense.
It was insane. Look at how Andy Reid used Mecole to help the Chiefs win a Super Bowl last year. You telling me Chaney couldn’t have used him the same way and not just as a fly route runner in the National Title Game or next season’s SEC Title Game?
If Monken doesn’t find a way to do those things with Cook, I may have to “Occupy B-M.” I believe he will though, because FFS, how could he not?
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I agree on Coley 100%. On Chaney… kind of. I’d have liked to seen more use of those two by him, but at least he ran a competent offense.
Coley? Don’t tell me we’re thin at receiver and then NOT use Cook to fill that gap. He’s right there. Over there on the bench. But he does have one thing in common with the guys who are on the field; he’s not scoring points.
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Chaney is a “C” average OC. That’s fine if you’re Tennessee. With the talent Kirby assembled, we deserved better. Chaney is who he is. He rode Joe Tiller’s coattails; a man who was a true offensive genius. Coley is a “D” average OC. The one constant between them both was Kirby making the terrible decision to hire them both.
I had misgivings about the offense going back to his introductory press conference when he declared we would be a manball offense in a spread world. Now, I never wanted a Meyer or Rich Rod zone read spread option here or a Leach style Air Raid, but something like Clemson and Bama ran.
How Kirby could see Clemson kicking his defense’s ass twice, losing one and winning one, and then see his own mentor give up on manball and admit the team that uses space and never stops trying to score points on offense instead of playing not to lose is how to win National Titles, and not want that at Georgia… he set us back even though we got to and should’ve won the 2017 Natty,
It appears as if he’s learned his lesson. I hope to God he has. Time will tell.
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Given the type of offense Kirby wanted to run, I don’t think he couldn’t done much better than Chaney. Maybe we get the natty in 2017 with a different OC/offensive philosophy. Maybe we don’t even win the SEC. All I know is the statistics unequivocally confirm what my eyeballs saw: 2017 and 2018 were formidable offenses that put up a lot of yards and points, and kicked the crap out of a lot of people. We didn’t win it all, but we won the SEC, nearly won it all, and got ourselves back into annual contention and back to “household name” status, and I don’t know if the recruiting train is rolling on like it is now without that early success. Maybe we could’ve done better in 2017, but I can’t bring myself to complain too much about Chaney. I like where we’re at, and he was a huge part of getting us here.
Meanwhile, that kind of O ain’t going to do anything near what it did here with UT level talent, so he’s also helping a rival run itself even further into the dirt, so good on him.
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Thos sounds like me
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And not the same predictable plays from the previous 2 OCs
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I’m going to get flamed for this but how do we know James Cook is actually that dynamic in space? I hope he has a breakout year too but all I’ve seen that last two years is Keith Marshall 2.0 aka great straight line speed, decent shiftiness and I can count on one hand the number of tackles the guy’s broken in his entire career because he almost always goes down once the first defender makes contact.
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I kind of agree with this view. I’d like to see him succeed, but when he has had chances (admittedly, not many) he seems really indecisive. Coaches need to work with him, imo. I get the feeling that in HS he could just run away from people and he is still trying to do that, but at this level you need a little more technique than mere speed.
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And as soon as he gets hit, he’ll be out for the rest of the game.
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…and this is based upon?
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His history.
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The red flag for me with Cook was his absence in the passing game. All we heard all season was how shitty our receivers were. Was there no way to work Cook into that mix? Pass catching backs have been a cheat code in a lot of offenses recently.
Monken making hay with Cook (or not) is a pretty intriguing sidebar heading into the season.
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They were never a feature of the Chaney / Coley offense though. Much like the TEs. Y’all should stop throwing shade Cook’s way and go back and watch his film cut-ups. His misuse, and the misuse of Hardman, just like the lack of featuring of the TEs, is squarely on Chaney and Coley.
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Not sure what you mean by feature — because I don’t think either OC featured a passing attack. I will say for comparison that last year 23.5% of UGA completions went to RBs while at LSU 19% did. If the point is that schematically, Chaney/Coley did not design and executing pass plays that play to all our players strengths, then I agree.
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The latter. There’s a difference in having the back sneak out into the flat or run a boundary screen, and quite another to scheme them open in the middle of the defense with green grass in front of them.
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Upon review of prior Georgia offenses, the coaching staff sees opportunity for Cook in 3rd and long draw plays or short yardage in the Red Zone.
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You know, as great as Bobo could be he was maddening in some ways.
How long do you think it’ll be before the Chickens tire of 3rd and long draw plays?
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“I think coach is going to find a way to get that explosive running back in space.”
That is just silly. Every WR and RB on the roster would love to be “in space” when they get their hands on the ball. Cook needs to produce ‘yards after catch’ and ‘yards after contact’, and he hasn’t.
Call me when Cook has better hands than other RBs or WRs, runs better routes, can block or pick up blitzes, can get yards after contact, makes big plays on STs, etc. On a team of 5-star and high 4-star studs at skill positions, a player has to make the most of his chances. Ten touches a game would be foolish considering Cook’s contributions over 2 seasons.
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I would say that both C & cs offenses were unimaginative. Big C was able to game plan effectively and set up his superior players to defeat inferior opponents. His game plan in the title game I thought was a very good one, until we got too conservative (where the fault lies I am still uncertain). However, he didn’t need to come with terrifically designed schemes when he could just bludgeon defenses into submission.
Lil c found a way to make superior talent ineffective against inferior talent, and did so in a predictable and unimaginative way. Either way Cook has been left out and it seems to be a miss.
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For What it’s Worth:
At least fingers crossed that Cook perform on the field and show flashes of Corch’s Percys Harvins which although undisclosed when injured was in reality failing drug tests. He was flyin’ high when he wasn’t injured/drug induced along with the rest of the Gayturds surrounding cast of the cryin’ ( never losing again ) preacher and Hernandez clan that wuz bumping off the Jenkins crew. Talk about chemistry in a locker room. That team brought new meaning as they needed a group physiological interns and doctors just to get on the field. Due CKS and legislators now unless the Dawgs ( not a good look Bacarri ) are arrested on site. We simply have to wait on open records reports.
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