Next man up?

Seth Emerson ($$) explores the question of whether Andrew Paul’s unfortunate ACL injury will have any affect on Todd Monken’s playcalling this season.

Andrew Paul was not going to be one of Georgia’s top three tailbacks to start the season, but he had a chance to be the fourth, and at a minimum, he was one of five scholarship tailbacks on Georgia’s roster. Now that he will miss the season with an ACL injury, sustained in Saturday’s second scrimmage, Georgia only has four on scholarship at a position that’s already a constant injury risk.

Meanwhile, how many tight ends does Georgia have? Oh, that’s right: Six, three of them potential game-changers, and that may be underplaying it. That’s a group that’s elite and deep.

The wide receivers, meanwhile, may not be elite, but with AD Mitchell, Dominick Blaylock and others, they can be pretty good too, and even after Arian Smith’s ankle injury, there are nine others on scholarship.

As they say, you do the math: Four tailbacks, six tight ends, nine receivers.

So, yeah, maybe, math may be involved.  But, as he goes on to note, this is still Kirby Smart’s team, which means Georgia is still wedded to running the ball.  (Not to mention Monken said something similar at his last presser.)  Also, as Seth points out, Georgia’s passing game is built on play action, which means you’ve got to establish the threat of the run in order to sell play action effectively.

There are trends with Monken’s passing game that were established last season and I would expect that whatever evolution we see in that regard in ’22 will be more about Monken continuing to develop his overall options — tight ends, anyone? — than about a particular injury.