Georgia Bulldogs v. Alabama Crimson Tide Game Day Open Comment Thread

because you are a fan of the game. It’s in your DNA. Because you’ll be sitting on the couch on Saturday after trying NOT to watch football and you’ll be wondering, “Hmmm…I wonder what top 10 team is going down right about now….” or you’re in Best Buys with 15 Hi-Def TV’s in the background tuned to ESPN…or because, like me, by Wednesday you’ll begin to feel the optimism and possibilities of a great season creep back into your consciousness.

And you are right about the Willie, Tripp and future of our team rhetoric that has probably already begun. Piss Poor game? A loss always is. Bottom line: We are damn young up front and played a team that was damned big and damned experienced. We’ll learn from this and be better for it.

But it sure is good to have a buy week coming up….

But I have to take issue with that analysis. Maybe I’m playing Pollyanna here, but I’m not ready to throw anyone under the bus or throw the season away just yet. If the game had ended at 31-0 then I’d call it a “piss poor game.” But it didn’t.

Alabama played an amazing first half of football. I was just as excited about the blackout as anyone else, but I was wondering, with Coach Richt’s press conference jabs, whether we getting a little too overconfident. We obviously overestimated the ability of the blackout to pump up our players and totally underestimated its ability to do likewise for Bama. It was probably too much too early. I don’t know if we can attribute that to coaching or to lack of leadership among the players.

No, intangibles can’t totally account for a 31 point deficit at the end of the first half. Penalties obviously played a part in putting us down so deep; but unloading on our players and coaches now seems a bit unfair considering they’ve been a problem all season and it would have been the most supreme kind of arrogance to believe that the kind of penalty issues we’ve been having this season would make no difference against a team like Bama.

Some of those penalties were pass interference — at least one on Bama’s first scoring drive and I think at least one more afterward. But at least the first one would have given up a touchdown anyway, so I don’t think we should really complain. Our secondary — scratch that, our entire defense on passing downs — defintely needs to improve. That much is clear. What I don’t know if it was a matter of execution or of gameplanning; need to check the 2nd half pass def stats for that.

We gave them the opportunity to completely turn this “blackout” table on us and they did so. I honestly think that if we had no GameDay and no blackout this could have been a much different 1st half.

The first half: all Bama, 31-0. The second half: all Georgia, 30-10. The first half was perfect, the second half was amazing. That — the margin between perfect and amazing — is the real margin in this game. If we had flown in the entire Missouri team, fresh and ready to go, and dumped them in Sanford at halftime, down 31-0, they don’t make this game the game our guys made it.

Last year we walked into Neyland Stadium expecting to win big, and ended up 28-0 at halftime. We lost that game. We also went on to win our next seven en route to 11-2, a Sugar Bowl win and a #2 national ranking.

This this team is superior to that one in every measurable category save maybe kicker. No, we don’t have an invincible Evil Richt this year, but knew we wouldn’t be unbeatable forever and it’s probably better to find out sooner rather than later. At this point in the season, I see no reason whatsoever to be anything less than optimistic.

Again, maybe I’m playing Pollyanna. But I think that with Florida’s loss today, it’s clear that the East title is still very much in reach. I think we’ll see this Alabama team again this season. In the Georgia Dome. With a BCSNCG berth on the line. And Bama can red us out, white us out, clone Mount Cody and put him at every tackle spot, put Joe Namath under center and Shaun Alexander in the backfield… they can resurrect Bear Bryant and have him stalking the sidelines and we’ll still give them the hardest fought game they will ever play.

It’s not over. Believe.

GO DAWGS!!!

But, as we all know, there’s always a few….

Anyway, I am among the countless Bama fans who fall into the impressed category. The second half showed your character as a team but two things went against you. 1. too big of a hole, and 2. when we wanted to turn it back on, we did. But that didn’t stop the scrapping, scraping, hitting and hustling. Good luck. Roll Tide.

I have a large amount of respect for Georgia’s football team and their fans; it’s sad that some people feel the need to make unwarranted comments like the above.

Best of luck to you, love to see everyone back at the Georgiadome in a few months.

has a great deal of respect for those kids in Athens. Tremendous. And, I think he respects Richt’s staff and their success. Do I labor under any delusion that he likes Richt personally? Not one iota, and I think that the sentiment is mutual. Barring MR going somewhere else, this is going to be a brutal (good sense) cross-divisional rivalry for a while. Good luck Dawgs