Expect Mark Richt to Let the 'Dawgs Out in 2009
by T Kyle King on Aug 20, 2009 7:20 AM EDT
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PrintLast night, secure in the knowledge that my memory is not what it once was, I jotted down a few notes in preparation for appearing on John Frary’s radio show. As I ran down David Hale’s rundown of recent happenings on the practice field in the Classic City, I started to see a pattern emerge.
Last year, defensive penalties (and personal fouls in particular) were a continual source of problems, so the Bulldogs have made the elimination of flags a major area of concentration. Last year, kickoffs were a persistent weak point, so Mark Richt is shaking up the special teams. Coach Richt has hinted that some underclassmen may be atop the depth chart at tight end and Logan Gray may play the D.J. Shockley to Joe Cox’s David Greene, as well.
Maybe those are just routine efforts to right the ship in areas of concern. Maybe those are indications that Coach Richt, after redshirting Knowshon Moreno, has seen the wisdom of Urban Meyer’s statement that, in Gainesville, there is no longer any such thing as a redshirt year.
Maybe, though, there is something more going on here.
There are a myriad of reasons why last year’s preseason No. 1 ranking did not hold up, but one of the problems was that everyone associated with the program got a bit uptight over all the hype. Last year’s collapse in Jacksonville was emblematic of this; down 14-3 at the half with an Eastern Division championship on the line---exactly the situation in which the ‘Dawgs found themselves at Auburn in 2002---the Red and Black failed not only to finish the drill, but even to show up in the final 30 minutes.
I remain as fearful as ever about the 2009 season, but I see in our head coach indications of innovation, of a willingness to shake up the program after three straight seasons marred by lengthy stretches of complacency, and of a renewed vigor for the challenges facing Georgia.
With no expectations and plenty of job security, Coach Richt enters 2009 able to relax . . . or, at least, not be weighed down with the burden of national championship chatter. Over the course of the last twelve months, we have forgotten---I have forgotten---that this is supposed to be a sport of exhilarating joy, not miserable drudgery.
Aside from a few statistical bright spots that serve only to mock the hard fact of unrealized potential, last season stunk from stem to stern, and, to be blunt, Mark Richt did the worst coaching job of his otherwise stellar career.
What Hip Richt appears to remember today is what we would do well to recall ourselves. This Mark Richt is the same guy who called P-44-Haynes. He’s the same guy who called 70-X-Takeoff. He’s the same guy who called for an onside kick against Virginia Tech while knowing full well that engaging in a special teams duel with Frank Beamer is like doing the Ali shuffle in the ring with Muhammad Ali. This is the same Mark Richt who ordered the end zone dance in Jacksonville and blacked out Auburn.
I don’t know how many games the Georgia Bulldogs will win in 2009. It likely will be the case that they will fail as often as they succeed in big games . . . but, if they fail, they will fail while daring greatly.
We may or may not like the won-lost record this season produces, but we will look back on Mark Richt and his ninth Red and Black squad with an admiration for their boldness. There most likely will be more losses than we are prepared at present to accept, but there will be no timidity and no quit in this team.
In the end, heart only goes so far as a substitute for talent, but I get the sense that Mark Richt is in the mood to let ‘er rip. Without regard to whether we like the results, we ought to love the attitude, and it certainly should be fun to watch.
Can we please please please play some dadgum football already?
Go ‘Dawgs!
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Relax - Enjoy the anticipation..........
Kyle since your musings help me endure the almost unbearable time slot from the last tackle to the first kickoff I feel I owe you something so without much fanfare I offer this:
UGA will be vastly improved. I know we lost 2 talented players on offense but we have many waiting in the wings. I criticized Bobo last year for his play calling but upon review I see the error of my ways. If you look back at his career several things jump out. He was a very efficient QB with minimal skills (not that he was a slouch). He didn’t have the big gun of a Stafford and consequently didn’t do a very good job coaching the big gun. Now we have Cox – the epitome of an efficient college QB. Bobo is back on the ground and will game plan around what he has – no more dependency on that infuriating long incompletion.
Looking a bit deeper I see improvement across the board.
The DL can hardly be worse. With the return of Owens we are in great shape. DE will be productive because the DT’s will be unstoppable and we will see athletic guys playing DE.
LB’s – name a school with better 2 deep players.
DB – again we have athletes and speed combined with a much improved DL I see great things.
OL – what can be said? It was adequate last year only because we have the best OL coach in the country. Give him the studs and it should be lights out. This will offset the loss of Moreno as we have several RB’s that can play.
WR – who has better talent?
TE – this will likely be an area of improvement we haven’t seen in years.
ST – you addressed this nonperforming group and we have no where to go but up.
Bottom line – you can sleep well knowing we will be a very different team.
Mark Bradley has us picked to go 8-4
Which I have no issue with. I just don’t approve of the teams he picked to beat us: OSU, LSU, Florida and Georgia Tech. Those picks are a safe, b boring, and c totally inconsistent with the history of Richt-coached teams. As much as it pains me to say it, I’m 87% sure that we will lose four games, but I’m 96% sure that we will lose to only three of Bradley’s teams. Yes, we will drop one to SC, Ark, ASU, or UKiff, but we will beat at least one of the above listed teams, and not as the team favored.
. . . Though I have a sick feeling it will be an again-overrated LSU squad. Oh well. Maybe we’ll have two surprise wins and two surprise losses, a la 2006 . . . losing at Arkansas and Tennessee wouldn’t be too bad if we came home with scalps from Jax and Atlanta. Orson Charles and Marlon Brown didn’t come to Georgia to play in no Chick-fil-A Bowl, but they’ll definitely make one worth watching.
Leaving insightful football commentary and analysis to other people since 2006.
its just too easy to pick a loss against LSU and UF
UGA is very likely to win one of them. And I think OSU is very winnable, this is supreme CMR area of expertise (on the road, underdog, national tv). I expect, like most years, someone, if not everyone, is likley to both win and lose in an upset.
The End Zone Boogie and The Revenge Of The Old Zebra
With respect to The End Zone Boogie, I would posit that Coach Mark Richt envisioned a lesser celebration as he has clearly maintained since the incident that Urban Meyer deemed was a “bad deal” to Urban Meyer. I believe the fallout from that singular incident from the media, the jort-wearers themselves and ultimately (and most significantly, I’m afraid) the officiating crews around the country caused Coach Richt to pull back everything he had been doing throughout the remainder of the 2007 and 2008 seasons; whether consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant. I believe that officials all over the country took this as a personal affront, and decided that UGA’s actions on that glorious and fateful day were employed deliberately to show them up, and that thenceforth they punished UGA, by calling every possible infraction against UGA while letting others slide with respect to the opponents of UGA, through (hopefully) the end of last season. It is my contention that this intangible element played a significant role in last year’s debacle, and hopefully the men in stripes got it out of their systems. I am not whining here as I believe that the calls were mostly correct, just lopsided.
Your thoughts, Brother King?
by Comin' Down The Track on Aug 20, 2009 4:32 PM EDT reply actions
i remember the penalities well, but
you got to remember that with the bad calls, came repeated correct calls, especially in the PF area. I was at least as sick of bad sportsmanship as I was at bad calls. Were the refs overly sensitive? yes. Were they led down that path? yes. There is a fine line as we have often discussed here between being agressive and being stupid, but discretion is the better part of valor, and I would like to see that inacted once again. UGA needs to act like we have been there and deserve to be there, quiet confidence, rather than any flaunting or black jerseys or dancing. We had some fun with it, but there is also a lack of wins against UF, a lack of SEC championships we had a sure shot at, and a few embarassing bowls to go along with it. Disciplined, physical, dominating performances are what i want.
I think you're both right
The judgment calls all went against us, but we set ourselves up for it by putting them in a position to make judgment calls.
What we need to remember is that there is a time and a place for everything, and modifiers exist for a reason. By forbidding unreasonable searches and seizures, the Constitution presupposes that reasonable searches and seizures are acceptable; by outlawing excessive celebration, the college football rules implicitly acknowledge that reasonable celebrations are permissible.
Exuberance on the sidelines (as displayed by Georgia against Auburn in 2007 or by Florida against Georgia in 2008) is in bounds; stomping on logos at the 50 yard line is not. I don’t want “discipline” to mean rigidity that takes all the fun out of football; I want it to mean having the maturity to celebrate at the appropriate place and time. Let’s see some whooping it up on the sideline in the closing minutes of a stirring victory after maintaining composure on the field.
Go 'Dawgs!
concur with the last line - exactly
Discipline can have many aspects. I never mean it to mean “unfun”. It doesn’t mean lack of energy or emotion. It means control of yourself and your actions within a given system of rules.
I would like to reiterate...
… that I felt that the calls were almost always correct. They were, alas, made every single time for every possible nitpicky infraction, but not so for our opponents. I would also add that I think that this chain of events cost us, at least, one game if not more because of the effect on the collective psyche of the team (I know it blew my mind, and I’m forty. I’m a man) when this effort on the part of the officials became patently obvious.
And yes, I do believe that this was a conscious directive on the part of all of the officiating crews.
by Comin' Down The Track on Aug 20, 2009 7:13 PM EDT up reply actions
As Sawyer from "Lost" would say...
…Hell, I’m an optimist. Of the four games everyone believes we stand a good chance of losing (OSU, LSU, UF, GT), I think we win at least two. I honestly don’t see any way on Earth that we fall to the NATS two years in a row, and I feel like we should beat either OSU or LSU if not both. We’re going to lose to Florida, everybody just needs to accept that, and both Carolina and Arkansas are scary for various reasons, but on paper we [i]should[/i] beat them. To me, this team feels like it has the potential to be this year’s version of Alabama, a veteran offensive line with decent, but not outstanding skill players along with a nasty defense. I’m feeling 11-1 at the absolute best and 9-3 at the worst.
Sic 'em Dawgs
by ClassicCityDawg on Aug 20, 2009 5:58 PM EDT reply actions
I'm telling you . . .
. . . the Florida game is in the bag. The only way we don’t win in Jacksonville is if we go in undefeated and have the Gators’ undivided attention. As long as they don’t need to beat us—-and, if we have a couple of losses at that point, they won’t—-we’ll win.
Open date. 19-year cycles. Defending national champions. This is science, man!
Go 'Dawgs!
I'm only 21...
So, I’ve only lived through one complete cycle. I’ll believe the momentum of the series has changed when we win in consecutive years. Until then, I’m always going to assume we lose to the hated Gators.
Sic 'em Dawgs
by ClassicCityDawg on Aug 20, 2009 8:52 PM EDT up reply actions
Fair enough
Just understand that, when Florida fans who are now my age were your age, they always assumed they would lose to the hated Bulldogs. Eventually, they were wrong.
Go 'Dawgs!
You've hit upon the crux of the argument.
The key is that we go into the game overlooked and underrated, and that Florida come into the game overconfident and not needing to win to wrap up the SEC East.
If we enter the game at a paltry 4-3 (as I believe we will be), there will be no question that we will meet that criteria going in. All we have to do is cross our fingers and hope the Gators come in at 7-0 and #1 in the country. (Not that I’m rooting for the Gators, mind you. I hate Florida.) Then, we’ll have them right where we want them.
Of course, even if both teams are 7-0, we’ll still win. Just like Kyle said, it’s science. (I hate Florida.)
by vineyarddawg on Aug 21, 2009 1:49 AM EDT up reply actions
Ummmm
Dude your absolutely retarded if you think that Florida is going to lose this year….I hate their ass’s more then anyone anywhere, but dude your going to see what could be one of the best teams to ever play the game this year. They will probably embarrasses us againnn and out recruit ussss againnnnn and there isnt much we can do about it. Ron Zook set them up and then they brought in Urban as the ringer and now they are a force that is unstoppable.
by BullDawgs or death! on Aug 22, 2009 11:46 AM EDT up reply actions
I have said repeatedly on here
and will continue to say…I don’t care if we lose 4 or 5 games as long as our team plays good, hard, smart, fundamental football for 60 minutes. If there are 4-5 teams that are more talented and beat us when we bring our “A” game then so be it. I just don’t want to see any more Godawful halves of football (a la Alabama, Florida, and Tech).
IF we do this then there isn’t a team on our schedule that we can’t beat, and the flip side is if we screw around and play sloppy then we could be 6-6 real fast.
that is the crux
of the dissatisfaction with last year. Not that we lost, but HOW we lost. So I agree, I will take a hard fought loss over rolling over and just playing dead. Or as the Good Senator has questioned, why do we just disappear for complete halves?
If we beat OSU – 10-2. If we lose 8-4. And I say either way, the Gators go down (only because the irony will be that we’ll be the one team to beat the national champs and it will essentially mean nothing).
GO DAWGS!
Yes, that is my son. Yes, that is a bottle of Crown.
Gezzz Man this is....
Crapppp….Im not sure what indications you are getting and where your getting them but listening or watching a Mark Richt Presser is like watching Ice melt…he is Drab has no Fire and trust me the penalties will continue and Just so we have the facts straight…he didn’t call for an inzone dance…he called for a celebration penalty from the guys on the field….The Team (as undisciplined as they were last year just said hell lets all run out there) almost embarrassed the university in a way that would never be forgotten, Knowshon Barely got in.
I wish he didnt have so much Job security because frankly this is as far as he is going to be able to take us…he cant keep talent from leaving early…he redshirted what could have been the Best running back to ever play college Football…Just mistake after mistake
Im the Biggest Bulldawg fan ever but dam we need someone else and I have no idea who….
by BullDawgs or death! on Aug 22, 2009 11:43 AM EDT reply actions
Let me guess...
… your (sic) skigator93’s little brother?
by vineyarddawg on Aug 22, 2009 1:55 PM EDT up reply actions
"We need someone else and I have no idea who"
Well, at least you’ve thought this plan through thoroughly.
In eight years as a college head coach (all in the SEC), Mark Richt has won 82 games.
In eight years as a college head coach (two in the MAC, two in the Mountain West, and four in the SEC), Urban Meyer has won 83 games.
However, Mark Richt makes “mistake after mistake,” while Urban Meyer (who has as many undefeated seasons against SEC competition as Mark Richt does: none) has created “a force that is unstoppable”?
Maybe it’s just me, but I think I’m going to stick with the most successful head coach we’ve ever had rather than advocate tossing him aside for “someone else and I have no idea who.”
Go 'Dawgs!
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