Your 3.3.21 Playpen

A reader came up with a topic suggestion good enough I wish I’d have thought of it first (thanks, Donald!):

Who here has personally met a former UGA coach or player randomly in public, and how did that interaction go?

Have at it in the comments.  This should be interesting.

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Your Daily Gator is projecting. Again.

I believe this dude may be asking the right question about the wrong coach.

It’s nice that he cares, in a sort of late ’90s, Georgia-ish “what’s Spurrier gonna do, now that Jim Donnan is the best coach in the SEC East?” sort of way.

JT’s mechanics

I’m certainly no mechanics guru, but looking at this highlight tape from JT Daniels’ high school days, he sure seems to be throwing differently from the pocket than what we saw last season.  Take a look:

For the most part, that awkward hop he was putting into a lot of his deep throws in 2020 only seems to appear there when he’s throwing on the run.  Also, there are few examples of him underthrowing his receivers.

Has he picked up bad habits in the interim?  Is it just a case of not being able to fully trust his knee yet?  Both, maybe?  Or, am I reading too much into this?  What say y’all?

Kirby Smart’s yoots

I haven’t checked his math, but this is a pretty astounding statement he made yesterday.

… We had a team run and I asked everyone to stand up who had not been through a spring practice at Georgia and I’m going to venture to say it was 65-70 percent of the team that stood up. That’s a scary thing. It just shows you the youth you have, the lack of practices and experiences your team has. Sixteen midyears, a lot of new walk-ons, nobody that was here last year for the first year had gone through that. So when you look at all of those things it kind of combines and you say, ‘Wow, we have a really young group from that perspective”.

No shit, Sherlock.  The good news is, assuming a normal spring is in store, there’s nowhere to go but up from there.

With friends-of-the-court like these…

I don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head over this.

A “friend-of-the-court” brief filed last month in a potentially landmark U.S. Supreme Court case on NCAA amateurism purported to show that at least some former athletes, including those who participated in the so-called revenue sports, don’t want intercollegiate athletics to open the door to schools paying players.

The amici curiae brief in NCAA v. Alston, for which SCOTUS will hear oral arguments on March 31, has 18 former college athletes expressing support for the stance of college sports’ governing body. The association has appealed a lower federal court ruling that says the NCAA violates antitrust laws with some of its caps on athletic scholarships.

In making their case, the pro-NCAA filing states that the athletes’ interest “lies in ensuring the proper adherence to the revered tradition of amateurism and the continued availability of intercollegiate athletics.”

But in recent interviews, several of the brief’s signatories, including its most high-profile name—two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up and retired NFL running back Darren McFadden—suggested they weren’t actually clear with which side they were on, at least when it comes to amateurism, or had joined in the effort for largely peripheral reasons.

Yeah, I’d say this qualifies as not being clear.

In a telephone conversation last week, McFadden indicated that he was largely unaware of what the grant-in-aid litigation was about and gave indications that his intuitions were more in line with the plaintiffs.

“Once you are an adult, you want to make sure you can take care of your family…. You don’t really get that opportunity to help your family out [while in college],” McFadden said, later adding that he supported college athletes getting an additional stipend to their scholarship. When asked about what personal experiences had informed his perspective on the subject of college athlete compensation, McFadden spoke about being an SEC football star who was unable to afford paying a $50 parking ticket.

In a separate interview, Walter Bond, a former basketball star at Minnesota who played four seasons in the NBA, said that despite being part of the amici curiae, he believed college athletes were, in fact, employees of the universities they played for—a nonstarter for any legal defense of amateurism. “I think I must have misunderstood,” Bond later said about the case, acknowledging that it was possible he didn’t actually agree with the NCAA’s position.

Oops.

Then, there’s also the “just doing a buddy a solid” angle.

Meanwhile, another former college basketball player who signed the brief, Tre’ Kelley, suggested he had primarily joined the amici curiae because of his connections to Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, the firm that filed the brief.

“I am actually doing a favor for a good buddy of mine who works for the firm,” Kelley told Sportico. After initially agreeing to speak for this story, Kelley politely declined to answer other questions, saying that he had been contacted by Orrick an hour before a scheduled interview and advised to not talk about the case with the press.

In a statement, Will Stute, one of the Orrick lawyers who authored the brief, said it “fully and accurately reflects their support of the NCAA’s position on the issues before the Supreme Court. It is false and misleading to suggest otherwise.”

Heavens to Betsy, we can’t have that!

I’d say the NCAA ought to be ashamed of itself, but that particular horse escaped from the barn a long time ago.

Transformers

So — a question for y’all.  While I don’t disagree with Chip Towers’ take here…

OUTLOOK: In Daniels’ four games under center last season, the Bulldogs saw scoring increase by 8.3 points per games, with improvements in total yards (plus-103.2 ypg) and passing yards (plus-101.5 ypg). More impressive was his explosive pass-play numbers. If calculated as completions of more than 20 yards, Daniels had 22 in four games, compared with the other quarterbacks’ 15 in six contests. … But overlooked during that run is the level of competition Georgia was facing. With the exception of the 9-1 Cincinnati Bearcats, who the Bulldogs narrowly bested in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl (24-21), none of the other opponents logged a winning record in 2020. We didn’t get to see Daniels against Alabama, Auburn or Florida. It’s safe to say that the Clemson defense Daniels will face in the 2021 season opener will be the best he has faced at Georgia, and possibly since being in college. … That’s what makes this spring especially important for Daniels. It represents 15 of what will be a total of about 40 11-on-11 practice opportunities between now and that trip to Charlotte on Sept. 4 to play Clemson. Mechanics, timing with receivers and mastery of Monken’s offense all must be sharpened in that span…

… I am curious about the language in his header (or, more likely, his editor’s header), which is “Will Georgia offense be transformed under QB JT Daniels?”

Is transformation what we’re really looking for in 2021, or is it simply a case of refining what we saw from Georgia’s offense under Daniels’ four starts?  Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics, but at this point, to me at least, Monken’s already reinvented the wheel, so to speak.  I just need to see what Towers mentions in his last sentence come to fruition this offseason.  What about you?

TFW the narrative shoe is on the other foot

It’s been tiring hearing the various preseason takes, right or wrong, on Georgia from the pundit class over the past few years.  But, if Matt Hayes is about to start a trend with this, I could get used to it.

Welcome to the most important offseason in the most important year for Florida coach Dan Mullen.

Despite 29 wins in 3 seasons and turning the fortunes of a stale program, Mullen could easily be staring at a win or walk season.

This is what happens when you embarrass your employer on multiple levels on and off the field, and the only thing that saves you is the capital built from winning. The one thing that changes all that: losing.

Hence, the critical offseason at Florida, where the Gators must, in no uncertain order:

— Find a new quarterback to replace record-breaking Heisman Trophy finalist Kyle Trask.

— Retool a receiving corps that loses 3 players who will be selected in the first two days of the NFL Draft (including 2 in the first round).

— Rebuild a defense (scheme, alignment or play calling; or all three) that has too many playmakers to be one of the worst statistical units in all of college football.

— Finally figure out an offensive line that has been the greatest weakness in Mullen’s 3 seasons, and pave the way to run the ball more than 50% of the time in 2021.

Most important, Mullen must regain the trust of the administration at Florida, which is still upset over Mullen knowingly committing an NCAA violation that gave the program its first probation in three decades, and his postgame behavior in three separate instances – all reckless in their own way.

But understand this: Mullen isn’t thrilled that his contract has been allowed to reach three years remaining without being restructured. That has been friction on his end for months now.

And more than anything, Mullen isn’t going to change who he is.

Gee, Matt, that’s what we’re counting on.  But I digress.

If this kind of chatter keeps up, Dan’s gonna be a real treat to hear from at SEC Media Days.  How’s he gonna deal with being picked at steadily over the preseason?  My guess is somewhere between Jim McElwain’s faux death threats and not well.  And you know what?  I’m pretty sure I can live with that.

Bullet dodged?

According to Dennis Dodd, Todd Monken was considered heavily by UCF before it went with Gus Malzahn.

If that’s the case, I suppose we owe Gus a small debt of gratitude for Georgia avoiding another choppy offseason.

Letting the position coaches out, part two

Matt Luke also was given the opportunity to meet the press yesterday.  About the offensive line’s prospects, it sounds like there will be plenty of mixing and matching in the near to intermediate future, but it sounds like that will flow around three building blocks.

One takeaway from Luke’s presentation on Tuesday was that Jamaree Salyer, Justin Shaffer and Warren Ericson figure to be in the mix.

“Guys like Jamaree [Salyer] coming back, and [Justin] Shaffer and Warren Ericson, they have been doing a great job of leading,” Luke said during the Zoom session, asked about the timeline for determining a starting lineup.

“I think, with guys that have some experience, it does give you a little bit of flexibility.”

… That’s where it gets back to Shaffer, Salyer and Ericson.

“I think, anytime you have some flexibility with guys like Jamaree [Salyer] that can play multiple spots, and [Justin] Shaffer and Warren [Ericson] that can play multiple spots, it gives you some flexibility,” Luke said.

Notice that two starters from the bowl game aren’t mentioned there, the two tackles.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re out of consideration to maintain their places, but it does sound like they’ll have to fight to keep them.

Letting the position coaches out, part one

I don’t know if you noticed, but Kirby took the unusual step yesterday of letting three of his assistants have some time speaking with the media.  Dell McGee took the occasion to drop one helluva comparison, when he spoke about Zeus and Cook not leaving Georgia early for the NFL draft.

DELL MCGEE: It is similar to when Sony and Nick Chubb came back. I think James and Zamir wanted to do more.

— DawgPost (@Dawg_Post) March 2, 2021

Quite the bomb there.  Let’s see if it has the same effect as it did back in 2017.