TFW you’ve got this hot take you’ve just gotta share

Adam Rittenberg says Georgia’s a loser on the early exits to the NFL front.  That can’t be simply because of raw numbers, because there were plenty of other SEC teams that took similarly sized, or even larger, hits.  (Rittenberg does include TAMU and ‘Bama on his losers list, although Florida doesn’t appear.)

So, what’s the deal here?

Georgia: The Bulldogs had four offensive skill players declare as underclassmen, including their top three pass-catchers, wideouts Riley Ridley and Mecole Hardman and tight end Isaac Nauta. None is rated among Kiper’s top prospects at their respective positions. Would they have left if Georgia passed the ball more? We’ll never know. Quarterback Jake Fromm will have a largely new group of targets in 2019. Running back Elijah Holyfield’s departure made sense as D’Andre Swift remains in Athens and Zamir White returns from injury.  [Emphasis added.]

The Jadon Haselwood narrative has taken root, my friends.  That was quick.

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Good times in Gainesville

You may remember Saturday Down South for hosting this hilarious hot take about Georgia football last season.

Welp, the calendar page has turned to a new year and SDS has gone back to the well with a new school as the next challenge.

Maybe, just maybe, Florida’s “lost decade” is over.

If it isn’t, this is the greatest false alarm yet.

The past two weeks have been the best two weeks for Florida football this decade.

First, Florida clobbered Jim Harbaugh and Michigan in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, vanquishing all manner of 2010s demons in the process…

Later that week, rival Georgia lost the Sugar Bowl decisively to resurgent Texas, a sign Kirby Smart’s program might have been too impressed with themselves and what game they felt they should have been playing instead of interested in making a statement in the one they were playing.

The Bulldogs are the one program in the SEC East Mullen and Florida are definitively chasing, but that chase became a little easier over the last month of the season, at least from a momentum standpoint.

Georgia didn’t just lose the SEC Championship Game in heartbreaking fashion or stumble in the Sugar Bowl after claiming the Twitter trash talk national championship.

They lost a massive amount of production and potential production for 2019.

Justin Fields, the jewel of Kirby Smart’s best recruiting class to date, transferred to Ohio State. Days after the Sugar Bowl defeat, junior playmakers Riley Ridley and Mecole Hardmon declared for the NFL Draft. Tight end Isaac Nauta, who terrorized Florida, also declared, as did All-SEC running back Elijah Holyfield.

Then Tuesday night, in a shocking development, Georgia also lost its offensive coordinator, Jim Chaney, the quarterback-whisperer who so often seemed to have Todd Grantham’s number over the past two years, to SEC East rival Tennessee.

If you had “Chaney’s departure as the beginning of the end of Georgia’s run in the SEC East” in the office pool, go collect your winnings.  If you’re not too shocked, that is.

Look, I’m not mocking the idea that a resurgent Florida is a legitimate possibility.  Certainly if the Gators are back, they’re a credible threat — likely the most credible threat over the long haul — to any sort of dominant run by the Dawgs.  But the idea that a disappointing bowl loss, players leaving early for other opportunities (something the Gators aren’t immune to, by the way) and some coordinator turnover all add up to a return to the glory days in Gainesville does seem like something of a stretch, at least until Mullen shows he’s recruiting at the same level as Smart.

Hey, I’ll give the author some credit.  At least he didn’t resort to a cannon shot metaphor.

TFW imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

You can tell Mark Bradley wants so much to use Jim Chaney’s departure as a stepping off point for trolling Georgia fans about the potential dire straights where Kirby finds his program now.

The problem is, when you frame your piece “ooh, look out Georgia, you’re becoming just like Alabama”, you wind up trolling yourself.

Today, in excruciatingly dumb takes

What makes the observation “I stand by my opinion that Clemson and Alabama are the best teams in college football this season. But are they truly national champions?” even stupider than it reads is that its author believes playoff expansion is within the NCAA’s purview.

Although I give the Old Coach credit for having enough sense not to use his name.

Today, in excruciatingly hot takes

Shorter Michael Cunningham:  Nick Saban isn’t a great coach because he didn’t succeed in the NFL.

“At that moment, Tua Tagovailoa was Justin Fields.”

Shorter Mark Bradley:  Oh, what might have been, if only Jake Fromm had gotten hurt.

The only thing lacking from making that a quintessential Bradley piece is that he didn’t express any admiration for how Paul Johnson handled two quarterbacks.

Today, in you’ve got questions?

Do you think Alabama’s offensive line gets a special pass from SEC refs when it comes to holding?

Well, let’s go to the source.  No, not Steve Shaw.  Alabama.

Jonah Williams tends to stay away from social media, but Alabama’s star left tackle knows the kind of stuff that circulates online among opposing fans every time their favorite team gets beat by the Crimson Tide.

“People who don’t know O-line play love to watch it and take a freeze frame and say ‘they’re holding’ because they want excuses for why we beat them,” Williams said. “It always starts with attacks at play, attacks at players, then attacks at institutions, and people won’t just accept teams might be good at football.”

The phenomenon Williams is referencing exists largely on Twitter and popular message boards like the SEC Rant, where fans have done deep dives on statistics and compiled screenshots that supposedly provide proof of how Alabama’s misdeeds get systematically overlooked by SEC officials.

Fair or not, the notion that Alabama’s offensive line gets away with holding has become by far the biggest piece of folklore among SEC fans related to the Crimson Tide’s dominance under Nick Saban.

“Does anybody not get away with it?” Alabama offensive line coach Brent Key said with a slight laugh. “We watch a lot of tape and we see a lot of it. It happens.”

And they say hard hitting journalism is dead.