IveyLeaguer
Dahlonega, Georgia
- 1720 comments
- 1293 likes given
- 3054 likes received
Bio not provided
Another nice job, BRB. One thing I noticed was how our evaluation began going downhill the further I scrolled down the page. That indicates Grantham is a much better evaluator than Martinez (though we already knew that), but it also shows Bobo's improvement in that area.
No doubt Ball and Friend have had a very positive impact in that area since that's where a lot of the improvement is. And it didn't really come until Ball began coaching WR's and Friend arrived.
But there's also been a big improvement in RB's of late, which indicates to me that Bobo is learning and getting better. It was awful there for a while.
~~~
I'm hoping Ward wins the RT spot and Theus the LT. That'll put Gates in some kind of inside rotation, where he's best suited, IMO. I don't really like him outside. I guess I'm a little tired of playing Guards out at Tackle just because we don't have Tackles.
Obviously we need to bring in a few more true Tackles in these next several classes. Beard will also contribute, maybe at both. He's a nice guy to have. You look at it, and it's rather complicated having 8 guys who can play (I don't count Dantzler).
But it's a nice problem to have .. very nice. It's been a long time since we had 8.
~~~
["As we move into preseason mode, Florida and their fans are obsessed with their losing streak to UGA. Of course, that is understandable given their historical inability to beat the Dawgs. The recent (past 20 years) anomalous pattern has been broken. Florida is regressing toward the mean."]
ROTF. Good one.
["After losing their SECURITY BLANKET at Safety, Todd Grantham and Scott Lakatos had to weigh their options at the position for the first time in a long while. Bacarri Rambo and Shawn Williams started 80 percent of Georgia’s games (66 of a possible 82 starts) at the two safety positions since defensive coordinator Grantham and defensive backs coach Lakatos arrived on campus in 2010."]
Security blanket? GOOD GRIEF. Writers. Apparently this one has no more of a clue about the Safety position than the one currently writing for the Macon paper.
I've spent the last 7 years holding my breath anytime the score was remotely close, knowing we might, at any time, give up an easy score from a mental mistake or some faux pas at Free Safety. And Reshad Jones & his protege Bacarri Rambo all too often justified my fears.
We all expect a first year player to make a few of those mistakes. But these guys cut a new mold, doing it more often and even continuing into their upperclassmen years. For example, Rambo was still giving up eye-violation scores, which should be freshman mistakes, last year, his 4th on the field.
There's a reason Rambo fell to the 5th round, just like his predecessor Bonehead Jones before him. It was predictable, and was indeed predicted (very much against-the-grain) for both of them, right here. Not that it was a risky prediction. Quite the contrary. It was an easy prediction, for a simple reason .. the NFL doesn't miss that kind of stuff.
This kind of thinking, expressed in media, is a large part of the reason why reality is so against-the-grain these days, and why an obsessive/compulsive Safety like Rambo could actually be selected 1st-Team All America by a select group of writers.
Now, with the Martinez era of Safeties finally gone, we can all breathe some much-needed fresh air. And the air does indeed smell fresh and sweet.
~~~
Very nice job. NOW THAT'S the type of overview that is very useful to those of us who don't care to spend time evaluating ins and outs what's going on with recruits on an hourly or daily basis.
Thanks.
~~~
Yeah, you gotta have running backs, no question about that. And the lack of them goes to Bobo first, more than anybody else. As OC, it's a big part of his job to see that we not only HAVE RB's, but that we have the right kind .. right kind of back, and right kind of person.
Obviously, he had a bad string of years there, where he evaluated and offered the wrong backs, and didn't go after enough of the right ones.
Thankfully, that appears to be behind us now. But it was one of the issues of his early development, to be sure. And not just at RB, other positions too. There were any umber of players who didn't really fit what we were doing, and all of us could see it.
That area is as big as any, and at one time we had it going in the wrong direction on both sides of the ball. Grantham has fixed it on the defensive side (as it's just now coming around to his players).
And Bobo appears (with a lot of help from Friend and Ball) to have fixed it on the offensive side, though I still worry about a few of his signees.
Thanks for bringing that up. It's an important part of everything we've been talking about all year.
~~~
FWIW, I agree with Rx. Pollack is a DGD, and I don't know why we shouldn't be proud of him. He's one the top 5 players EVER to play at Georgia ... Trippi, Herschel, Pollack, Sinkwich .... just saying. He carries himself well, and I think he loves Georgia, but as Rx said, just goes too far sometimes in trying to show objectivity.
But he WAS right, almost all the time, especially last year about the defense, as we all now know. I would've said the same thing, and DID, right here on LHB. Pollack could've gotten his take right here the week before some of those games.
Fran doesn't get the same professional pass as Pollack, though I think we should forgive him for his outspokenness. He was saying what a whole lot of people, and I mean a lot of familiar names, inside the Georgia family were thinking.
And Fran also was right about some of the things he was saying. He just didn't realize how LATE he was in saying them. Some of the stuff he said about Bobo was right at the time, and even some of things he said about Richt.
My belief is some of Bobo's faux paus were as bad at the time as some of us pointed out, but never the same issues as the Dawgnation public thought. Like Richt said, some of Bobo's critics just had no clue what they were talking about (with the exception of some REALLY stupid calls, which anybody could see).
For example, Bobo's issues weren't really playcalling, they were primarily preparation issues, mental and otherwise, and game planning/scheme issues. I thought Bobo did a much better job of preparing his offense for games last year, and that is ON TOP of having a running game, for a change.
As we've said many times here over those tough years we had, I believe Bobo was simply was growing up as a coordinator during that time, and has finally, at long last, grown up. It took longer than any of us had imagined, I think, but Bobo's OJT is, hopefully, over now. I've been impressed with him lately, and see a definite change from say, 2 years ago.
But some of the stuff Fran said about Richt was clearly wrong. And that, IMHO, is because he missed the bigger picture, as to what was going on in Athens. For example, Richt's Christianity is NOT, and never has been, a problem or any kind, or reason we didn't succeed on the field. His faith has never been a causative element of any problem or issue that hurt the program. Nor is his demeanor an issue of any kind.
Those thing are, in fact, an asset.
The bigger picture that Fran missed was the one that was painted right here on LHB. Had he been able to see that, he wouldn't have made some of those remarks, and would have understood at the time he made them that Richt had already set the rebuilding process, with many of the required changes, in motion.
We watched him make those changes over a 2-year period, which was a little slower than some of us wanted, but I suspect there were good reasons Richt moved as slowly as he did.
Like we discussed then, putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again was a long process, and lastly there was nothing he could do but wait until some of the infected players phased out of the program. So now we've seen that happen, and we've gotten rid of Garner, who I believe was dragging us down, to boot.
So Richt has done what many thought was impossible, and now stands alone as the only coach of a major school in SEC history to have a successful program collapse into pieces during his watch, and then successfully rebuild it without getting fired.
I believe we can look forward to good things ahead.
So, as for Pollack, he's a DGD, let's give him a pass. As for Fran, let's just forgive him.
~~~
["The bottom 5 teams of the SEC had more players drafted in this year’s NFL Draft than the bottom 5 teams in the Big 12. Charlie Weis also recently weighed in and doubled down on the idea that “our crappy teams are better than your crappy teams.”
There are fewer signs that your conference is in shambles than arguing such a concept. Weis seemed to think that, because the top teams in the SEC beat the bottom teams more frequently than the top teams in the Big 12 beat the bottom teams in the Big 12, that is a sign that the Big 12 is better. No, the Big 12 bottom feeders are bad and the top teams aren't very good at beating these bottom feeders."]
Good stuff, SDS, regarding the anti-SEC rhetoric.
~~~
That's the problem, EC. It's like losing weight. Those last few pounds can be almost impossible to shed.
FWIW, I'm researching ways to either burn the affected fat or otherwise get the lipids to release the substance, since that's part of what I do everyday. They seem to have tried everything.
Maybe they'll listen to an alternative approach.
~~~
Thanks. Yeah, I feel decent anyway, in terms that they're trying to avoid letting them become complacent. I can feel a difference. Just hope what they're doing is effective, because it hasn't been effective enough in the past.
But it's complicated, as you know, and a big part of it has been personnel, not just coaching, leadership, etc.. I just think we needed to tighten up the ship all the way around, as we've discussed all year, and hope that's happened. Don't have any reason to believe it hasn't.
This, of course, is something you have to do every year if you want to win something, regardless of how well you do. Saban has struggled with it the last 4 years, but been able to overcome it. Our tendency has been to get complacent easily, and we haven't even won anything. So, in my mind, we've still got a big hump to get over, in terms of the psychology, mentality, and preparedness aspect of it.
One thing we do know .. we get tested right out of the gate. We'll know quickly how effective our offseason has been, if we've overcome some things. Not necessarily by win or lose, but by the way we play these early games.
~~~
With the top SEC teams, it's about discipline. Playing smart, and avoiding the stupid penalty. And the ante goes up this year, with the new rules. Richt (and perhaps the same could be said for other teams) has always feared that too much emphasis on penalties will keep them from playing hard. And there's something to that.
But there's a balance, and Saban has achieved it. Most of Georgia's penalties over the last 7 years cannot be attributed to being overly aggressive on the field. They are mental mistakes .. false starts, hits out of bounds, unnecessary personal fouls, etc.. And that's where the discipline comes in. Take away the unnecessary penalties, the penalties you can avoid with mental discipline, and we're right up there with Alabama.
And I would be one to argue that it's worth it. It's worth paying the price off the field to be disciplined on it. It helps to win games, and can certainly avoid losing some games.
To be fair, it probably wasn't possible to achieve that before this year, with the players we've had, and the culture and mindset they brought to the table. But it's possible now, because the last of them are gone. And I hope Richt is willing to tighten things up, at least go for it. Beating yourself has been our trademark long enough. Even the Richt I years were affected by a lot of penalties. It didn't help us, and may have hurt us is some of the losses we had then.
We have a fresh start, or as much of one as Richt will ever get. I hope we take full advantage of it by raising the bar .. raising the standards and the expectation that goes with it. That would include our discipline on the playing field. I expect to improve on penalties just by having fresh personnel on defense. Why not shoot for the whole ball of wax while we're at it?
~~~
The NCAA has gone out of control under Mark Emmert. Instead of fixing their problems, he's made them worse. If the situation is not turned around, the NCAA could self-destruct.
~~~
Jon Cooper, SDS: ["... how can Georgia be the favorite with losing so many NFL defensive stars? Well, they didn’t exactly play like NFL studs in 2012. In fact, they weren’t even a top-five overall defense, nor were they ranked even a top-ten rushing defense in the SEC.
Egos, MISSED ASSIGNMENTS, and NFL dreams clouded the ‘12 Dawgs."]
Always good to see somebody, other than LHB, get it right. "Egos, missed assignments, and NFL dreams". That pretty well describes some of the symptoms of the malignancy that plagued the Dawgs for so many years.
Especially the missed assignments part. MA's are killers to any defense, especially our 34. Some of Alabama 2nd half stampede was due to MA's, not just getting beat.
As we've said already, it's nice to be healthy again.
~~~