Despite winning the SEC, beating Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl and competing in the College Football Playoff National Championship game, Alabama coach Nick Saban looked back on last season Wednesday and called it “kind of a rebuilding year.”
Tell that to Metchie and Williams, boss.
Get The Picture 
I don’t always agree with Brandon Adams, but he hit the nail on the head with yesterday’s podcast. For all of the winning, Bammers engage in excuse-making loser talk anytime they happen to come out on the losing end. Since the night of the national championship game, Little Nicky has been the worst.
Nick, getting your star QB caught on camera talking trash on the sideline late in the SECCG came back to bite you. I have to imagine that was the fuel that brought this team together just as Gus’s outburst after the Auburn game in 2017.
LikeLiked by 7 people
I missed this. Have a link?
LikeLike
DawgNation Daily podcast – he talked about it at the end in his SEC segment. It’s normally the fuel of my morning walk with my dogs.
LikeLike
Linkage (although I get mine off Apple):
https://www.dawgnation.com/programs/dawgnation-daily-podcast/georgia-football-podcast-uga-08032022/NDRGI72ZGFDOFB5SIF22PFP5KU/
LikeLike
All those trophies and so insecure
LikeLiked by 12 people
It’s the only thing the state has. When the run ends (and it will), the Iron Bowl will be back to the southern version of two mules fighting over a turnip with 90,000 idiots in the stands.
LikeLiked by 12 people
Nice Grizzard reference.
👍🏼
LikeLiked by 8 people
EE my father would use that saying back in the day when referencing a bad baseball or football game…classic!
LikeLike
90,000 idiots means they are still having idiot sex and multiplying faster than any legal idiot control law will allow…
LikeLike
May it be the first of many rebuilding years for the Gumps. Kirby’s put together a pretty good demolition crew in Athens.
LikeLiked by 8 people
As long as it’s a rebuild, I think instead of another Bama team a community center should be built on the site, specializing in literacy, personal hygiene, and mental health, all of which would be new to the area. But even a Walmart would be an improvement.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Mutley, at least they do, like GT, teach ’em to use toilet paper instead of the traditional corncob.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Poor Auburn, though. No use for their toilet paper lately.
LikeLike
Post of the day! ^
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nick is losing control…if he can’t be first in something he goes off the rails, just ask Dumbo in College Station…Saban is starting to crack under the pressure and his ego is way too fragile to allow much more cracking…he’ll leave coaching if he has a couple more “rebuilding years”
LikeLiked by 5 people
Saban is an asshole no matter what ‘do he’s rockn.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I agree- I’ve always thought he’ll go two years sooner than anyone expected, rather than later, and before the first whispers. He’s more Spurrier than Bowden. And though he’s built it to last, he’ll ultimately be harder to replace than either.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If Georgia plays Bama straight up in the second game, the score is 41-12 (assuming we hit the PAT after the scoop and score, and again after we don’t go for two). Having just rewatched some highlights, the big upset win was Georgia over the Birmingrefs. The Rammer Jammer Kids turned a fumble into an incomplete pass, for Bama (surprise!), and then an incomplete pass into a fumble, for Bama (surprise!). So the real final score was Georgia 33, Refs 12, Bama 12.
A pretty standard night’s work for the Iron City boys.
But I think when the refs score for Bama like that they should let them kick the extra points, so the refs and Bama don’t have to go to overtime while Georgia is celebrating.
Also, if Bama loses any key players like Mookie and Wilson, they should get to put in an extra ref.
LikeLiked by 9 people
Muttley, that’s funny because it’s true.
Then why ain’t I laughing?
#bamaprivilege
LikeLiked by 4 people
My response below was to Muttley
LikeLiked by 1 person
At a minimum, the Davis play should have been intentional grounding because if the arm was moving forward, it was to drive the ball into the ground as he was going down. The Bennett call was going to stand on replay regardless of how it was called. I really want to know how the sideline official could make the call that the ball was recovered and controlled in bounds.
For me, the 1st one is the one that was true #BamaPrivilege at work.
LikeLiked by 5 people
That play with the fumble is exactly why the college game needs to change the 1 foot in bounds to the NFL rule of both feet being in bounds.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If a QB can fling a ball ten yards and it’s a fumble because the ball came out, then every forward pass is an aerial fumble…because the ball came out. To me it’s physics: the ball travels ten yards in the direction the arm moved, it was thrown. What generated its flight if not Bennett’s arm?
Granted, the other fumble traveled forward, but I’d have to look at how far before it struck the turf. This might sound silly, but I’m a former long-time character animator, heavily trained at the best studios in what we called action analysis. We spent hours studying tape slowed to show what was generating action, and to my eyes a thrown ball- even a badly flung one and a spilled ball follow very different arcs. Again, I need a better re-look at the earlier play. (You’re right about grounding, of course, which also should have been called on Bennett).
But what it comes down to is: the big plays are reviewed and interpreted- for Alabama.
LikeLiked by 3 people
No doubt that’s why #BamaPrivilegeIsReal&It’sSpectacular
My daughter is getting her MFA at UGA in dramatic media (starting her thesis this semester). It would be great to connect her with someone with experience in the business.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d be happy to touch base, but I’m an irrelevant old dinosaur from the long gone pencil and paper days. Fittingly, the last characters I animated were the Flintstones, for a commercial spot.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The ball can be loose and then pushed forward by your fingers/hand.
The question is: when he started his forward passing motion did he have control of the ball?
Looks to me like the ball had come loose as he was cocking it to throw and just before his hand moved forward. So fumble.
Its subtle but if you look at the position of the ball in his hand when he is bringing it back, he’s losing it and then he pushes it with his hand.
I say this knowing that it happened directly in front of me and I have no actual memory of it. I’m quite sure I had some sort of anger induced stroke…
Its what turned him around so maybe they did us a favor? If we punt, who knows how the rest plays out? The fumble set something off in the kid.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Now wait a minute, guys…just remind me, please, who won that game???????????????????????
LikeLiked by 3 people
If they get Mookie and Wilson, I still get to bitch about the final margin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can they do that if they think its a fumble live? That was the call on the field.
Isn’t there something that says that they can’t call penalties based on replay evidence? I mean if Davis had grabbed his face mask and he did fumble, its still a td for us right?
LikeLike
Didn’t they make this call in the Auburn game on the Tigers’ first possession? I haven’t gone back to look at it, but it was a similar deal with Bo Nix. I thought they called a fumble when Travon Walker was tackling Nix, but they overturned it and called it IG. I may be wrong about all of that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I also feel like I’ve seen this happen but can’t cite it. It’s an excellent question. If so it’s not quite reviewing a foul, but it’s close. (Of course, targeting is a reviewed foul).
LikeLike
No on on the officiating team remembered their high school physics on that 4th quarter play. The ball moved forward from the point Bennett last held it. Anyone getting a passing grade in high school physics knows that in order for the ball to move in a direction there had to be a force applied to the ball in that direction. The analysis should have been, what force caused the ball to head downfield? The most obvious possibility was that Bennett’s arm was moving forward when hit, which would have made it an incomplete pass. The officials should have then asked each other, what other force could have caused the ball to move downfield? The only other force on that play could have been a force in that direction on the ball applied by the defender.
I watched the replay for that very thing. I did not see any contact with the ball applying a force towards the Alabama goal other than Bennett’s arm and hand.
Bennett’s arm moving forward is the only explanation that satisfies the laws of physics. The officials twisted themselves in knots to avoid applying the rules of physics to the call.
LikeLiked by 3 people
With all of that (that I agree with), the whole thing wouldn’t have mattered if a player had to have both feet in bounds on the recovery.
I hate the one foot rule. It causes more replays than pretty much any other ruling in the sport. Force players to have both feet in bounds with possession of the ball for it to count.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe you’re right. Unfortunately they take a commercial break so its not clear what exactly it was called at the time. Did the refs think IG but let it play out just in case it was a fumble? Just isn’t clear from the broadcast.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The referee throws the bean bag as opposed to the flag. The ball is bouncing harmlessly out of bounds when the Bama guy nonchalantly catches it. He doesn’t look down to make sure his foot is in.
LikeLike
I was referring to the Auburn game last year.
LikeLike
Sorry, I misunderstood. I couldn’t find the full Auburn game on YouTube.
LikeLike
Should be ^^^
LikeLike
Responding to both you and Derek on this point: I believe that in baseball, a pitcher’s release point is actually above his head, so the throw is really a throw the moment the arm moves forward. It need to leave the hand in a different direction to indicate a fumble, or else- to the point here- you’re arguing that gravity or a secondary source e (hit) generated the arc. z
We’re getting into Zapruder film territory.
But this is why I wanted a much better look at the earlier fumble.
LikeLike
Does not the rule say that “the arm” (NOT the hand) has to be moving forward? If you’re losing your grip on the ball, of course the hand is going to follow the moving ball in an attempt to regain control.
I don’t think either fumble (Young’s or Bennett’s) was and incomplete pass. they were both fumbles. Neither arm is moving. :”Hand Moving Forward” is bullshit and was a misrepresentation of the rule by the birmingrefs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From my view in those two “incomplete pass & fumnle calls”…..in the simplest terms, we got fucked.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m going to be absolutely honest here.
I just watched both plays.
I think the refs got it right.
But here’s the rub….If the roles were reversed on both plays, so would have the outcomes. In other words, Young’s incomplete pass would have stood as a fumble had he been Bennett…and Bennett’s fumble would have been ruled a forward pass had he been Young.
We know Bama gets the benefit on almost every call.
The refs are the problem. We expect them to cheat for Bama because that’s what they do…and everyone knows it…even the gumpers..but they won’t admit it. Had the Bama favoritism not been so blatant in the past, this whole thing would have been much less of a “thing”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t whine like they do.
LikeLike
It’s not whining to call out organized crime.
LikeLiked by 1 person
But I also don’t mean to hijack this comments section on a dead and irrelevant horse. Just saw the two clips again and was making an acid joke about the endless disgrace that is SEC officiating.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Y’all are forgetting that it wasn’t SEC officials in the natty in either January 2018 or 2022. It was Big 10+4 in Atlanta and ACC in Indy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
You are correct there, my extreme bad. They still sucked by proxy.
LikeLike
I generally agree with not whining. But valid complaints, especially of such obvious corruption, need to be addressed. It’s gotten way out hand and lost any subtlety.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Let’s not forget the off sides call in the 2018 Natty reversing Dawgs blocked punt!! That is the Gold standard to which all “Birmingrefs” aspire!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Flags in the SEC should be called “yellow hammers”.
LikeLiked by 10 people
Post of the day! I would even say post of the month!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Gonna tuck that one away for later
LikeLiked by 2 people
No that’s funny 😂😂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, we’re the type that’s built to last:
LikeLiked by 4 people
I really think so.
We’ve all heard that Saban created such an infrastructure at LSU that Miles struggled to mess it up. That program is forever different because of his five or so years there, and Alabama will probably benefit for many years after he’s gone. I can live with that.
I’ve never forgotten Holtz’ scathing comment on the way out the door at SC that “it’s impossible to overestimate the power of a hundred years of losing culture”. Culture is powerful, and although Georgia was very far from a losing culture, the infamous “Georgia Way” became problematic. Dooley built something very solid, in time it needed an update. Richt repeated that pattern. Both of them elevated Georgia football and handed off the baton.
But Smart seems to have wrought something far beyond the four or five classes that are in school at any one point. I think he’s upped the culture for a generation and may be building a Death Star (with apologies to North Ave. for the metaphor). Tennessee and Auburn, especially, need to be very, very worried.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I look at CKS as merging Dooley’s approach of playing a tough, disciplined brand of football with Saban’s recruiting.
Dooley’s teams always had a chance against anyone because of that. Even when we lost the other team knew they’d been in a fight. But he never recruited all that well. I don’t think Dooley has one NFL Hall of Famer. Compare Bear…. 7? 8? More? Its a lot.
Anyway that’s what I see. CKS bridging back to what the program was about culturally when I was a kid, with much better talent. Pretty good combo.
And at the risk of the coming shit storm: if he ever gets the qb position going like the other teams that have been winning natties have, watch out.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dooley brought that sort of “Marine” mentality and a work ethic, and his teams were smart and played with character. They hung around and then stunned you- like Texas in the Cotton Bowl, so many others. Played beyond their gifts. Richt was detail, reps, character, leadership. Smart seems like he’s building a juggernaut that wins months or years before kickoff. His opponents criticize his ‘game day’ skills because they seem to feel like creating that big a mismatch is cheating.
That NFL HOF bit is stunning. I went to Wikipedia to double-check Jake Scott and the front page lists recent deaths: Lars Tate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My favorite example is at Auburn in 1986. Between the hoses.
Starting QB is at grandma’s funeral. I would argue we didn’t have a kid that would have started for Dye.
We win 20-16 (as I recall). And we celebrated. And they hated that. And fuck ‘em.
Cocktail Party in 1985 is another.
We weren’t always good or consistent, but we could get after that ass. You wouldn’t last long being soft around Vince. I think I recall after 1977 didn’t go well, that he told the team to be ready for Spring practice because “there will be blood.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
I still have my soggy program and ticket from ’86. Man, what a night! Had a hot date on the Plains, too. And the AJC headline after the ’85 CP is an all-time favorite: “DOGS BAG THE BIG ONE”. For Texas it was “DOGS HOOK ‘EM”. I didn’t think Georgia football could ever be that much fun again until Richt got here: “SLICK CALL ROCKS VOLS”…Chill bumps forever.
LikeLiked by 3 people
6 days!!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Considering the kind of talent he acquired, has anyone in SEC history done less with more than Pat Dye?
LikeLike
Goff and Donnan would give him a run.
LikeLike
Donnan, yes. I don’t think Goff ever got enough talent on the lines of scrimmage, especially defensively, to say he underachieved much.
LikeLike
Donnan was undone by those bad defenses even though there were all those great players. Watch the 2000 Kentucky game and look at all the future pros we had on defense and Lorenzan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Goff actually recruited DL well, but something happened to almost everyone of them. It was like a plague and on one position group over and over and over.
LikeLike
I have to give Goff something of a pass in that regard. He was so hamstrung by the recruiting rules he was put under it was damn near impossible for him to recruit the top defensive talent he needed. Goff had pretty well no depth at all on either side of the ball because of admission restrictions. An injury to a starter was devastating.
Donnan and Richt both had horrid defenses for the most part and both had pretty good talent. I can’t help but wonder if the fact both played qb and were offensive minded guys made them sort of overlook the defense?
LikeLiked by 1 person
As smooth and genteel as Dooley’s public persona was, he was a foul mouthed tyrant at practice. His practices were long and brutal. Players used to love when time switched back to standard from daylight savings time because that meant practice was an hour shorter since it got dark. an hour earlier Other teams may have had more talent and may have had better play calling but none of them were going be tougher than Dooley’s teams. Dooley’s teams won quite a few games in the fourth quarter simply because they played hard for the full 60 minutes. A friend summed up Georgia football perfectly years ago when he said “Georgia is the made for tv football program. No one is ever going to turn off a game early.”.
’86 Auburn and ’85 Florida were perfect examples of how Dooley could pull off the big upset to keep the fans happy. Florida in ’85 and Auburn in ’86 were the only ranked teams we beat for those two years. The win over Texas in the Cotton Bowl was a classic Dooley win. Hang around for 50+ minutes with the defense keeping things close and then find a way to score late to win.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Historically, Georgia has been a good but not great football program. Butts was a 6-4 type coach on average, he had 5 really good seasons but mostly had “winning” seasons and not a whole lot more. The game was so different and the expectations of the fans so different in those days its hard to compare to today.
Dooley is probably the most overrated Georgia football coach of all time. Dooley did what he needed to do to keep his job and keep the fans generally happy. He usually won the games he was supposed to win, threw in an upset win every few years and beat tech. If you take out the Herschel years, Dooley was a 7-3 coach. That is good, especially for the time, but not really great. His bowl record was less impressive. He was 8-10-2 in bowl games WITH Herschel, 7-8-2 without. I think the bowl record speaks more for his coaching ability than his regular season record since he was usually facing a fairly evenly matched opponent in a bowl game. Take away Herschel and I think Dooley is viewed like Donnan with a better record against tech. Again, good but not great.
Goff was handed a steaming pile of crap and actually did better than he should have considering all the restrictions put on him after the Jan Kemp debacle. Dooley made sure the next coach would not be better than he was and throwing Goff to the wolves like Georgia did made sure Dooley didn’t have to worry about that happening. Goff managed to average 6.5 wins a year and went 2-2 in bowl games.
Donnan is the coach that really sort of moved Georgia up as a program in the modern era. He took Goff’s team, stepped up recruiting and moved the offense away from the three yards and a cloud of dust it had been forever. He averaged 8 wins a season and went 4-0 in bowls. Donnan had the great misfortune of being the coach at Georgia while BM was still hamstringing the football program with silly admission and eligibility rules that no other team had. He was also the coach at the same time Florida, Tennessee and Auburn were strong. Losing three in a row to tech sealed Donnan’s fate.
Richt took the program up another step but Georgia still wasn’t a top tier program year in and year out. Recruiting became much better and Georgia was generally in the SEC championship picture most seasons. Richt averaged 9.7 wins a season and had a 9-5 bowl record. Richt was something of a Dooley +1 type coach. He generally won the games he was supposed to win, threw in an upset win every now and then and beat tech. He also turned around the Auburn series, which was huge. Florida still had his number and as time went on Georgia began getting blown out by teams with equal talent. More than any coach since Dooley left, Richt elevated the expectations of the fan base at Georgia.
Georgia is fortunate in that, outside of Johnny Griffith who was a terrible mistake, the program has always won more than it lost and has had some really good seasons. Outside of the fan base, I don’t think anyone ever really viewed Georgia as an “elite” program before Kirby arrived. Butts laid a pretty strong foundation, Dooley built a big time college football program on that foundation and Richt set the expectation bar high enough that BM hired a coach like Kirby to replace Richt. Even the less successful coaches like Goff and Donnan were not disasters that left the program in such a hole that it couldn’t be brought back to respectability quickly. Kirby has fundamentally changed the football program.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I disagree about Dooley’s bowl record, which I think indicates the opposite: he often took his teams above their talent level. Pittsburgh ’76 (’77) was not an equal match. Nebraska in 1969 was definitely not equal. He arguably denied Texas a NC. Bowden had better athletes when Dooley tied him in ’84. And yeah, there were some bad circumstances that led to disasters like Arkansas ’69 (’68) and one of his worst losses, Miami of Ohio (though that was a briefly respectable program).
The key to the era for UGA was that Dooley transitioned Georgia from all-white Jim Crow teams, and southern football changed forever as a result.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dooley was not an integration pioneer. Kentucky had the first black football player in 1969. Georgia integrated in 1971 with 5 black players. Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama and Vandy integrated before Georgia. I think Dooley was like Bryant on integration. He knew he was going to integrate but he also knew he wasn’t going to be the first one to do it.
Don’t forget Arkansas ’76, Stanford ’78 and Arizona ’85 in the hall of shame games.
LikeLike
I definitely did not claim that Dooley was an “integration pioneer” (??!!). What I suggested was that he coached in a very different era for Southern sports.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Butts can’t be understood by averages. He was an excellent offensive mind who started bringing in out of state talent, built something around major talent, got interrupted by the war, and then fell victim to severe financial problems and mismanagement in the athletic department. The fifties were beyond his control: we were signing players and then cancelling their scholarships. The team was whored out for countless unreturned road games and only played (I think) two in Sanford in 1957. But in the end it was his own character problems that got him.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That is why I said the thing about the game being so different then. Butts was a good coach, all the Southern schools suffered from financial problems back then. The South was not a wealthy place. Butts did as well as anyone in the South for the most part back then. He was quite the visionary on offense and a real pioneer in the passing game. He loved bringing in players from Pennsylvania and Ohio where high school football was light years ahead of the game in the South.
Butts was good. My point was that as far as “culture”, Georgia during his tenure was, again, good but not great. I wasn’t criticizing him in any way. I think he did the best anyone could have done at Georgia at the time.
LikeLike
Wally Butts was an evil midget. A real monster, Cthulhu love him. Early 80’s one of Charles P. (Beefy) Eaves teammates was relating how fortunate I was to have him as mentor.He told me Beefy was laying on the field with a broke back and Butts ground his shoe in Beefy’s face for missing the tackle.
What a fuckn asshole.
LikeLike
Most college coaches were back then. I know a man who played for Bear Bryant at Bama and for Lombardi in Green Bay. He said Bryant would tell you to do something and if you didn’t he would make sure you never played football again. Lombardi would tell you to do something and he would explain why it would make you a better football player. My friend said he would have given his life for Lombardi but wouldn’t have pissed on Bryant if he was on fire.
My father played baseball at Georgia when Butts was the football coach. He said Butts was a sadistic tyrant. He tried to make practices as brutal as possible so the team would be “tough”. Butts had a great mind for offense but his personality was demented.
LikeLike
Where’s the Championship Coke bottle?
I’m outraged!
Triggered!
LikeLike
I can’t wait for the Bama v. Texas game. I think Bama will win probably comfortably but if Texas hits 3-4 big plays (30+) yards then 2022 will be a “rebuilding year” for Saban too.
The narrative seems to be that Bama will get back to being more like the old pre- Tua Bama with a more bruising and physical style. That the defense will show a lot of improvement in coverage and tackling and that it is fate that they play with a chip on their shoulder and that no one save maybe a similarly revamped Ohio State will be able to stay on the field with them.
It has been very easy to pencil Bama in for the last decade plus due to how they used to play but this is now the 5th or 6th season after they became an RPO team and eventually just playing to outscore everyone has a negative effect on the defense and I think offensive line.
Saban is likely saying this for recruiting purposes or it is a hint that his time there may be ending sooner rather than later and he wants even more to impart to his team that this is it.
Regardless of the reason he is really becoming overly emotional and quite a good quote for some reason.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How can it be a rebuilding year when your two best offensive weapons leave after the season and you have to bring in transfers from Georgia and Georgia TECH to serve as starters the next year? What exactly did you build?
LikeLiked by 5 people
Make that 3 best offensive weapons: Williams, Metchie and Robinson.
LikeLike
Such a graceful loser! Would Bear Bryant say some shit let like that?
LikeLiked by 1 person
So that’s his excuse for not developing any of those 5 star backups? Sounds like a coaching problem to me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For a place with “No Excuses” painted on the wall, they sure have a lot of excuses.
LikeLiked by 1 person