Shot.
Chaser.
https://twitter.com/LonnPhillips/status/1608196456565067776
“Isn’t risking anything”? Does that mean he’s going to pick which 2023 games he’ll play in, too?
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UPDATE:
Does anyone in Baton Rouge have the first clue what’s going on with this?
Filed under SEC Football
And if you think that went unnoticed, guess again.
THE MODERATOR: Stetson, do you see any advantages that they have?
STETSON BENNETT: That Ohio State has? Yeah, certainly. Yeah. I don’t really want to get into the particulars right now, but obviously they were undefeated until the last game of the season. It’s hard to do that. And we were, too, last year until we lost to Alabama, and then we ended up winning it all. So we certainly are not taking Ohio State lightly. Like they said, they’ve got advantages all over the board. So we’re going to have to go play football. [Emphasis added.]
Thanks, Jack. That bulletin board needed some new material.
Filed under Big Ten Football, Georgia Football
This is both hilarious and insightful.
Q. Stetson, what has Todd Monken meant to you personally and how has he helped develop you and support you?
STETSON BENNETT: You know, a ton. I feel like before he got here, I didn’t really understand football. It’s weird, even in 2020, didn’t really know what was going on. You know, I guess I knew what play was called. Other than that, you know, I mean, I don’t really know how to describe it. But it’s just the countless meetings. Maybe I’m a slow learner, but finally it did start clicking whenever he would tell me the same thing for the 20th time and look at me like I was, you know, like why do you not do what I just tell you to do? I’m your coach. And so just repetitive, just doing that. I think honestly, the most important thing that he’s done is just stay consistent, you know. Be there, because we do have a lot of knuckleheads who need time and reps and all that stuff to learn. So sometimes he’s not very patient, but he’s very consistent, and we hear the same thing every single day. And eventually you’re going to start doing things right if you hear that every day.
Evidently, Todd Monken does tolerate fools well. Of course, that starts by letting them know they’re being foolish.
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UPDATE:
https://twitter.com/jontweetssports/status/1608159053963984896
I’m not sure how many coaches would be that forthright about their decision making.
Filed under Georgia Football
Thought this was an interesting observation to make three days before the game.
I like Stetson when he’s in calm, cool and collected mode.
Filed under Georgia Football
You may have heard that the Georgia defense gave up over 500 yards of passing offense in the SECCG. How concerned should we be about that, given that the Dawgs are about to face a considerably more effective passing attack in Ohio State?
Honestly, I’m not quite sure. But I have my suspicions.
On the one hand, things didn’t really go south for the Dawgs’ pass defense until the second half when the game was out of hand. (Remember, Jalen Carter didn’t see the field for most of the second half of the SECCG.) And one reason the game got out of hand in the first place was because the defense clamped down in the second quarter as Georgia marched out to a 35-10 lead. Beyond that, and maybe more relevant, is the fact that this same defense handled the best passing offense they’d seen until this week quite handily in the Tennessee game.
That being said,
I have to think there are things for a competent coaching staff with a talented quarterback and wide receivers to glean and apply, given the better part of a month to prepare. Then again, that cuts both ways.
The last sample size is something the defense has had a chance to marinate with in what will be four weeks between games. In the 50-30 rout of LSU in the SEC championship games, the Tigers put up 502 passing yards, second most ever against Georgia.
The focus has been on technique and fundamentals, safety Chris Smith said.
“We know we had a bad day that game,” inside linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson said. “That was an embarrassment for us. We just went back to work.”
Smith said the defense knows “we can perform better, and that’s what we want to do for this game on Saturday.
… Schumann called the last half of football “really disappointing” when LSU backup quarterback Garrett Nussmeier threw touchdown passes of 33 and 34 yards and completed another pass for 59 yards.
“There’s never a singular issue, right?” he said. “You try to address things where they showed up in their own silos, right?”
He said that includes defensive calls made, scheme adjustments, technique and fundamentals and a mental lapses.
I still think it all comes back to Smart’s number one goal on defense, shutting down the opponent’s running game to make them one-dimensional on offense. After all, despite LSU’s success throwing the ball, don’t forget the Tigers only rushed for 47 yards and lost the game by twenty points. That wasn’t a coincidence.
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but this “us against the world” shtick Ohio State is trying out smacks a little bit of being fake juice.
“I do feel like people are counting us out, but that’s fine,” Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud said during a news conference on Tuesday. “We’ve been counted out plenty of times … This isn’t nothing new. I definitely think this is the path that God wanted us on and I’m just rocking with that. If that means we’re the underdog, I’m cool with it.”
…
“I always thought it was ‘Ohio Against the World,’ even before this game,” Buckeyes receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. said. “I’m glad we can play them in Atlanta, in kind of their home arena. Kind of always like being the villain and underdog going into the game, so it’s exciting to be able to do that.”
C’mon, guys. Who are we kidding here? OSU isn’t some schlub outfit lucky to be in Atlanta. The Buckeyes are third in 247Sports’ Talent Composite, right behind Georgia. (For some perspective, Michigan is 13th and TCU is 32nd.) If people are taking the Buckeyes lightly, it’s because they showed their ass taking Michigan a little lightly in their last game, not because they have a history of being counted out. Besides that, if the Buckeyes think the woe is us approach is going to fire them up, well, it didn’t work so well the last time they came in as an underdog this late in the season.
The No. 1 Bulldogs opened as 6 ½-point favorites, according to Caesars Sportsbook, and the line hasn’t budged. It’s the first time No. 4 Ohio State has been an underdog since a 52-24 loss to Alabama in the CFP National Championship after the 2020 season. The Buckeyes were 9 ½-point underdogs in that game but then were favored in each of their 25 contests since.
Filed under Big Ten Football, Blowing Smoke
As of Dec. 27, 22 players from Florida’s 2022 scholarship roster have entered the NCAA transfer portal while six more have declared their intention to turn pro despite possessing remaining collegiate eligibility. The Gators also lost four seniors who ran through their college clock and dismissed a player after his early-December arrest.
Of the 56 scholarship student-athletes who saw the field in some capacity in at least eight games in 2022, only 34 remain on the roster.
And while the list can still grow, the Gators’ losses include its starting quarterback, two of its top four receivers, four of five starting offensive linemen, four of their top-five tacklers, five of seven players who recorded an interception in 2022, and the team’s leader in quarterback hits.
… In what felt like an instant, the Gators’ roster shrunk by roughly 40 percent and lost some of its key contributors — some of whom, such as offensive linemen Ethan White and Michael Tarquin, were never expected to leave, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
While Florida’s incoming class is talented, it only numbers 20, and how many of those can be real SEC contributors in 2023? Add in two transfers and it looks like there’s a lot of ground yet to be made up. Or, to put it another way…
As things stand, the gap between what Florida is capable of being and what it currently appears to be is quite wide.
Instead of calling them the Gators, maybe we should call Florida the Gappers.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
Even by college football standards, this is a pretty rapid rise.
Late last month, Kalen DeBoer and the Washington administration extended offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. After signing a 2-year deal at $1 million per year upon joining his boss from Fresno State ahead of this season, Grubb signed a 3-year extension that would’ve paid him a school-record $1.45 million in 2023, rising by $120,000 per year to $1.67 million in ’25.
Turns out, Grubb has broken his own record without even coaching a game.
According to multiple reports on Tuesday, Washington has bumped Grubb’s contract a second time since the Huskies’ last game. The deal will still run through 2025, but now pay him a flat $2 million per year.
I tell you what — this NIL shit has gotten out of control.
Filed under It's Just Bidness
… that Corch thinks Ohio State has Georgia right where they want ’em.
Add in the sting of the Michigan game, and the Buckeyes might be the last team Georgia wants to play.
“For a month, they’re going to hear they’re not good enough,” Urban Meyer told me by phone. “That’s powerful.”
I called up the former Ohio State coach, because no one thrived more in this exact situation.
Before Meyer came to Columbus in 2012, Ohio State was 11-15 as an underdog over its past 12 seasons. In his seven years, the Buckeyes were ‘dogs seven times: against Michigan State and Wisconsin in 2012; Michigan State, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Oregon in 2014; and Michigan in 2018. They won every time.
And that’s not counting his motivational masterwork, when his 2006 Florida team stunned the top-rated Buckeyes in the national title game.
“The media and everybody said it should have been an Ohio State rematch against the Wolverines,” recalled Meyer, a psychology major at the University of Cincinnati. “We even made up news articles. Everywhere the players went up until a few days before the game, that’s all they read, that they didn’t belong and they weren’t good enough.
“It depends on the team. You don’t want the team to start believing they’re not good enough. But I could tell at Florida it was working. At practice, I would sting the players a little bit and see how they’d respond, and boy did they. We went wild on that [underdog] stuff, because our team was really working hard to prove to everybody that we belonged.
“And I imagine it’s going to be the same thing here with [Ohio State]. … To me, there’s no greater motivator than using the disrespect card. Certain teams I had, you hit that button right, that team works like they’ve never worked before. I loved that, we embraced that, and I think this is a great place to be for Ohio State. I still think the two most talented teams in the country are going to play here.”
Cool, man. Now do 2021 Jacksonville.
Dawgs by fiddy.
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