Assuming Keith Marshall commits to Georgia tomorrow, he’ll be on campus in January and on the field practicing this spring. At that point, what are the questions going to be from the beat writers? It won’t be “How did Isaiah look on the first day of spring ball today?”, rather, it’ll be “How did Keith Marshall look? Was he making people miss? Did he eat his eggs scrambled or over-medium?”. In my opinion, there’s no quicker way to get the attention of a prima donna running back (which our boy Zay may or may not be) than by having the spotlight turned off of him and to the next five star runningback less than a year after he stepped foot on campus.

To me (and I was talking to a co-worker about this earlier), this is the biggest travesty of losing the redshirt year. There are guys who can come in and are ready to contribute on day one. From a talent perspective, Isaiah Crowell was one of those guys (and honestly, our depth didn’t do us any favors if he weren’t). From a maturity perspective, though, the redshirt year can still be huge, and that’s why it’s a shame that it’s going to be a de facto thing of the past very soon. We’ve gotten a little spoiled by the recent success of our five star athletes as true freshmen, but we need to remember that for every Matthew Stafford, Malcolm Mitchell, A.J. Green, and Aaron Murray who didn’t need the redshirt, there are plenty of players who did, be that from a physical or mental perspective. Do you think Michael Bennett would’ve been as successful as he was this year without a redshirt year? How about Marlon Brown…it’d be nice to have his true freshman year of two catches for fifteen yards back, wouldn’t it? Football is a tough game on the body and the mind, and they both need to be right to ensure success…Crowell is halfway there, but he has some work to do on the mental maturity standpoint.