In defense of Brent Venables

Here’s something Smart said at yesterday’s presser:

On the performance of the offense… 
“Well, I think, you’ve got to be careful, because with the receptions, you’ve got to score touchdowns, and we didn’t.  So, we’re a very matter of fact judgement and it’s like ‘okay so we didn’t score but, why?  Why did we not?’  You go through the reasons why and you go through each play.  A lot of it was attention to detail, not converting on third down, missing a couple of explosives.  They played us very different than what you would normally say a Clemson team would play.  They prepared for speed breaks and shots and fast balls because that’s what they had given up.  They did a good job of defending that… [Emphasis added.]

I think a lot of us, after watching the way Clemson’s defense flamed out against Ohio State to the tune of 639 yards of offense, expected at least a certain degree of fireworks from JT Daniels.  That it never happened can be chalked up to some extent to the injuries to the receiving corps, but more so to the adjustments Venables made in his game plan.  What’s interesting to me about Smart’s quote is that Venables made those adjustments not because of what Georgia did well in its last four games of last season, but because of where his defense was vulnerable.

I saw comments leading up to the game that Venables is one of the best at shoring up deficiencies and I think Saturday night he showed that.  That being said, there’s only so much you can do schematically.  As Kirby went on to say, “Any time you can run the ball down someone’s throat in four minutes, it’s pretty obvious that they knew we had to run the ball there and we were still able to, so we did some really good things offensively.”  True dat.  There are few things in life more satisfying to a Georgia fan than watching an offense finish out on a game-ending drive that doesn’t even lead to a score.