Don’t forget Tennessee Tech!

But in truth, for all the “soul-crushing malaise” of the three losses, last year could have been a lot worse; we were 3-1 in close games. Think of how you’d feel if we’d gone 6-6 and crawled into the Music City Bowl. And even that level of disaster would not have compared to what happened in Auburn and Knoxville last year.

I continue to think we’ll be pretty good this year—maybe very good if Cox works out, a RB emerges, and a pass-rush returns. The talent advantage over several of our “improved” opponents should be large enough to produce wins. But the real point of my post is that there won’t be much margin for error in a lot of games this year. Given the Dawgs’ mysterious pattern of suddenly forgetting how to play football for a quarter or two over the last three years, that’s worrisome.

1) We really don’t need Cox to work, we just need Cox or Logan Gray (who for all intents and purposes is a Junior (R.Soph)) to work out. The experienced QB depth is a luxury we didn’t have the last time there was a major transition at QB (Stafford’s freshman year).

2) The play last year of Caleb King and Richard Samuel last year showed me that the running game is gonna be fine; They both had a very solid yard per rush average (Samuel 5.0 ypr and King 4.5 ypr) in limited duty; Were their times they stuggled last year? Absolutely! However they also had to work with one of the poorest performing OLs in the country last year due to all of the injuries and position changes. Imagine what they’ll do with a fully healthy and very deep OL to open holes for them this year. And that’s not even to mention the buzz Carlton Thomas created in the spring or the enrollment of record setting RB Washon Ealey in July.

3) There’s just as much proof that Arkansas, Auburn, and Tennessee will be worse this year than they were last year. In other word’s there’s absolutely none, save for speculation. With that said, I think we all will agree that the dawgs were hurt last year by injury. UT has had 15 kids quit the team this year. I don’t even know how many player’’s will be out for them due to injuries etc.; however, attriction dang sure doesn’t improve your team. Moreover, both Kiffin and Chizik have to prove that they can out coach Mark Richt. Neither’s resume as a HC gives much reason to think they can.

4) As far as Okie State goes its easy to focus on their offensive. Don’t forget about their D; Okie State’s D performed about as bad last year as our beloved Dawg’s D. However, unlike Okie State last year’s performance by our D was also unusual for CMR’s Ds. Much of it he attributed to his decision to go away from live tackling drills. When he went back to it in Bowl Prep, we shut down the Big Ten’s best offense. Moreover, given that our O only scored 24 points in that game, I’d say its safe to say that the D won that game for us. Given that we’ll be healthy to start summer camp there’s no reason to think our D won’t be ready for Okie State.

5) Having a week off b4 the Gator’s can only help our chances in that game;

6) Anyone who saw Paul Johnson’s decision to go for it on 4 and long inside his own 20 yard line when his team was down 14 to nothing to LSU could possibly mistake him for a great coach. I mean think about it, when would CMR, UM or Saban ever have make such a stupid freakin call? They wouldn’t, and that’s what separates the greats from the not so greats. Moreover, anyone who watched the Tech game in Sanford knows that UGA wasn’t exactly fooled by Paul Johnson’s play calling,. We had the right defensive calls, our guys were there they were just out of practice. Tech caught us when we were sick with the injury bug. No reason to think things won’t be back to business as usual this year.

7) We have this guy Reshad Jones maning middle field for us. And if you don’t think the kid can play than perhaps you should check out the highlight reel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kP5nmyNSgk

Reshad Jones sucks.

He was second team ALL SEC, lead the team in INTS, fumble recoveries,and was second in tackles.