TFW you’re trying to run a balanced offense

Todd Monken when asked if he's ever used four tight ends in one set:

“If you do it too often you get every wideout in the portal.”

— Seth Emerson (@SethWEmerson) August 11, 2022

He didn’t say he wouldn’t do it at all, amirite?

If only Metchie and Williams…

Bill Connelly ($$) makes what should be an obvious point of distinction between last season’s Alabama and Georgia teams:

It’s wild to step back and realize that Georgia won the national title with a former walk-on quarterback (Stetson Bennett) throwing primarily to a freshman tight end (Brock Bowers) and freshman slot receiver (Ladd McConkey). But who caught the 40-yard bomb to put the Dawgs ahead in the fourth quarter of the national title game? Mitchell, another freshman…

Georgia developed freshmen receivers.  Alabama developed excuses.

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Meanwhile, on the back end

Good look from Graham Coffey at what the coaching staff has to work with in the secondary, starting with the sure things…

We know two things for sure about Georgia’s secondary

1. Kelee Ringo will be UGA’s top Cornerback

2. Christopher Smith will return at Safety to anchor the back end of Georgia’s defense

… and ending with whoever winds up grabbing the starting spot opposite Ringo, where, as Graham puts it, “This is where things get really muddy for Georgia”.  The good news there is that Georgia is blessed with an abundance of talent to choose from; it’s just that there’s next to no experience to work with.

That being said, Smart hasn’t shied away before from starting a true freshman at corner.  I share Graham’s assessment that it’s likely they rotate players in the spot early in the season until somebody emerges.  Fortunately, it doesn’t look like the Dawgs will face many dynamic passing attacks over the season’s first half, so it’s a strategy they’ll likely survive.

Twilight time

Looking at Pete Thamel’s coaches’ hot seat list, I can’t help but wonder between Bryan Harsin (“Auburn is last in the SEC recruiting rankings for 2023, and Harsin’s departure after this season looms as an inevitability unless there’s some significant on-field magic in the wake of a 6-7 debut season.”) and Geoff Collins (“Collins has losses to The Citadel, Temple and Northern Illinois, which meant his buzzy marketing hasn’t translated to the field.”), who’s the more likely to be Kirb’d this season?

My money’s on Coach 404.  Georgia is Auburn’s first road game of the season, so Harsin is likely to roll (stagger?) into Athens sporting a winning record.  Meanwhile, Geoff stands a likely chance of coming to town looking for, what, his third win of the season?  The only things that stand in Kirby’s way are (1) the possibility that Tech’s season goes so far off the tracks before season’s end that Collins is canned mid-way or (2) the school decides to throw away another recruiting class by waiting until January to fire him, in order to save another $3 million on his buyout.

Your thoughts?

The market adjusts.

ROI, bitchez!

Some question the sustainability of boosters donating money to a collection for, in many cases, athletes who have never played a down of college football and can transfer freely.

“Do we want a new weight room or do we want to spend it on a 17-year old who may or may not pan out?” asks Greg McElroy, the former Alabama quarterback who is now an ESPN analyst.

Ruiz, the billionaire Miami booster, says he’s unsure if he’ll keep signing so many athletes to NIL deals, expecting such deals will lose their value after their inaugural year. “Next year, it becomes standard,” he says. “People pay less attention, so you get less return on your investment.”

“But,” you may say, “what about the Tennessees of the college football world that don’t worry about ROI so much?”  To which I can only ask in response, when’s the last time the Vols spent money on college football wisely?  Look how far that’s gotten them lately.

In the end, I just don’t see how the current spending spree is sustainable.

Your Daily Gator and the Cocktail Party

Go ahead and inject this directly into my veins.

Much of the rest of that message board thread is comedy gold, as well, especially the “We don’t have Steve Superior on the sidelines anymore” observation.  Enjoy!

“As an NFL prospect, he projects as a fine lawyer.”

Stetson Bennett is number nineteen on Matt Hinton’s list of college football’s top 25 quarterbacks.  That’s certainly a reasonable assessment.  On top of that, Matt’s take on Stetson is the fairest I’ve read to date.

But the focus on Bennett’s Rudy-esque backstory and stature tends to obscure the fact that, adjusted for volume, he was easily one of the most productive passers in the country. The numbers are legit: He ended the season ranked No. 4 nationally in pass efficiency, No. 3 in yards per attempt and No. 3 in Total QBR, behind only CJ Stroud and Bryce Young. His overall passer rating (176.7) set the UGA record. He threw for multiple touchdowns in 9 of his 11 starts, including all 3 games in the postseason. And while he had quite a few conservative outings that limited his attempts, he didn’t have anything approaching a truly bad one. His worst rating of the season per QBR came in a 56-7 romp over Charleston Southern. Against everyone else, he came in well above the Mendoza line, week-in, week-out, despite dealing with a depleted wide receiver rotation that remained in flux all year.

More importantly for Georgia’s championship-or-bust goals, he didn’t regress into a shell in the biggest games. On the contrary: Factoring in the competition and the stakes, Bennett’s 313-yard, 3-touchdown performance in the Bulldogs’ Orange Bowl Playoff semifinal win over Michigan was the best of his career — the first time he’d looked convincingly up to the task against a championship-caliber defense. And the go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter of the CFP Championship Game against Alabama was another answer to a longstanding question: What happens when the scoreboard forces Bennett to make plays with his arm and the defense knows it?

Questions asked, questions answered.  At least you would think so.

It might be an exaggeration to insist that you must have a first-round, Heisman-caliber quarterback to win it all in the spread-passing era. But you do still need a guy who can step up and hit the mark when the situation demands it. If nothing else, no one can ever argue that Bennett isn’t capable of being that guy again.

Oh, yes they can, Matt.

Opportunity is somewhere.

If you’ve been a backup at Georgia Tech, at least one thing’s for sure:  there’s plenty of room this season for advancement.

… With graduation and the transfer portal having cleared out most of the Yellow Jackets’ starting secondary, the path to the playing field has widened considerably.

“Absolutely,” said Brooks, who has been working at safety and nickel this preseason. “The opportunity is there. Focusing on getting better day by day and, come season time, whatever happens, happens.”

Brooks’ belief that his moment may be arriving is one that many of his Tech teammates are sharing about their own fates. Including the secondary, the Jackets’ roster is absent 16 players who started at least six games last season, along with multiple key reserves. That’s a lot of snaps to replace, particularly at running back, on the offensive and defensive lines and in the secondary.

They haven’t built a big enough transfer portal to cover that.

Georgia on his mind

Shot.

“The last thing I’m worried about right now is Dan Lanning,” Smart said at his first press conference of fall camp. “We’ve got a million battles to face before that, I’m not even thinking about Oregon. Our concern is our roster. How do we build depth? We’re not even thinking about that, we’re so far away from that right now. We’re focused on us, our team, our connection, and getting the right players in the right spots.

“If we do that, that’s going to control the outcome of the game more than what he knows about us and what I know about him.”

Chaser.

Oregon defensive end Bradyn Swinson was asked how much they have studied the Bulldogs, so far.

Since the day (Lanning) walked in, we’ve been watching Georgia,” said Swinson, a sophomore from Douglasville. “From the start, he’s been hammering us with information and showing us tape, his schemes and everything. That’s been amazing since he got in here. We’ve been watching UGA since Day 1.”

I guess you could say both coaches are focused on the Dawgs.  We’ll see soon enough which team benefits the most from that.