The hangover

“Going into the game did I want to only play the starters a half? No, absolutely not. I mean, we need conditioning. The only thing we need is to play. I mean, I would love to play 15 minutes. I’m respecting my opponent and his wishes also, but we need to play football. Now, granted, you know, we’ve got some guys who have played a lot of football, and I didn’t go into the game thinking they’d play a half. I mean, I didn’t know how long they’d have to play. They’re going to play until we were comfortable in a lead to put the other guys in. We have a set of players that play regardless of the score, and then we talk about with headphones who plays as we score, as we build a lead. I just was disappointed altogether with, you know, execution would probably be the right word on offense. It just wasn’t crisp as it should be.” — Kirby Smart

Is it just me, or do you think deep down in places he doesn’t talk about at parties, Kirby Smart loves wins like yesterday’s?  You know, solid wins — and a shutout always qualifies as solid, no matter the opposition — marred somewhat by not so solid play.  It gives him something useful to motivate his team with, without the downside of a loss.

And really, I’m just talking about the offense here.  But it looked pretty obvious from where I was sitting that Georgia’s offensive players took Samford too lightly.  Understandable after their play in the opener, but disappointing nevertheless.  Run blocking was inconsistent, the downfield blocking wasn’t nearly as good as it was against Oregon, Stetson had some issues with mechanics that were causing his longer passes to sail and also made his first truly bad decision of the season on the sack he took.

Give credit where credit is due here, too.  If you want to say that Samford’s back seven was better in pass coverage than the Ducks were, you’ll get no argument from me.  It was clear Georgia’s players weren’t prepared for that possibility.

None of that is end of the world stuff.  As Smart also said after the game, “… it’s something you’ve got to be working on. And I’ll guarantee you it’s easily fixable, but a lot of it comes down to execution.”  I have the feeling there’s gonna be a lot of executing in Georgia’s practices this week, that’s for sure.