Some Fundamental Questions & THE Fundamental Question

We are licking our wounds, but there are fundamental questions that we have to address.  Unfortunately, there aren’t easy answers.

·       I have a lot of questions, but the simplest one is why on earth don’t we give Brice Ramsey a shot punting.  To date, he has punted the prettiest ball of the year in 1 attempt.  

·       I don’t know why we can’t cover the middle of the field, but I have my suspicions…and it includes 2 true freshmen and a true sophomore.

·       I cannot figure out why we keep throwing bombs on 3^rd and 5.

·       2^nd and 9…it’s the Georgia Way.

·       Blazevich is still on scholarship, right?

·       I’m very worried about our lack of a dynamic WR outside of Malcom, especially since he has 6-8 games left.

·       I’m more concerned about our lack of mental toughness when things don’t go right.  Florida, Tech, Bama and UT.  We have wilted at 1 or 2 scores.  

·       I’m concerned about Sony’s ball security, but he has a lot of Garrison Hearst and Knowshon in him.  He could be up for a special last half season if we’ll utilize him.

·       Keith Marshall, you’re up.  And don’t put that redshirt on just yet Tae Crowder.

In the end, the game came down to this:

·       If Lorenzo Carter tips 4^th and 7 up 24-3, the games over.  In fact, we might tack on another one before halftime because we were rolling.  We were getting to Dobbs, too.  Kudos to Butch for going for it.  He had to.  I reminded me of us in Columbia in 2012.  Down 21-0, we went for it inside the 5 and didn’t get it right before half.  Ballgame.  Had we scored, who knows what happens.

·       If Sony doesn’t fumble…probably ballgame.

·       If Reggie Davis catches the ball, we’ve got us an interesting last 3 minutes and we have all the momentum.

·       The bottom in is that defense flat out wilted playing 90 plays and the offense didn’t help with a boatload of 3 and outs.  It was a total team failure.

All is not lost:

·       As crazy as it ALL sounds, we’re still in really decent position to win the East, whatever that means.

·       Florida goes to Baton Rouge Saturday night.

·       UT goes to Tuscaloosa on Oct. 24.

·       It’s a very real possibility that we go to Jax with our destiny in our own hands.  For whatever reason, I’m still not that scared of Florida.  I’ve seen them play several games, and I’m just not impressed.  Defense is lights out but has vulnerabilities.  This is why it’s so important for CMR to rally the troops to laser focused.  Control what you can control (as in, beat Mizzou and get better).  If it happens it happens, but we are talented enough to beat every remaining team on our schedule and not many have the ability to exploit the middle of our secondary like we’ve seen.

I began a poor man’s list of potential coaching hires, seriously.  I began thinking about Tommy Bowdon and had we become like Clemson in the mid-2000s.  Dabo has energized that program (I actually think we could make a run at Dabo – he’s the coaching flavor of the week).  But let’s be honest.  Dabo got hired because he was cheap – that’s it.  Clemson got lucky.  And how lucky?  His first 7 years he’s got a winning percentage of 71.74%. Richt’s first 7 years were 79.12% and his total is 73.68%.  In the exact amount of time (mid-way through the 2008 season) that Dabo took over at Clemson, Richt has a 67.74% winning percentage.  Dabo did that in an ACC that won exactly 1 National Title.  Richt did that during the Tebow era at Florida, Saban taking the job at Bama, and a stretch where LSU was often the best or 2^nd best team in the nation.  Oh, and Auburn keeps buying titles.  The common opponents?  Spurrier, who had his way with Dabo more than Richt.  And Tech, who is lucky to ever beat Richt and gives Clemson fits usually.  My point is it’s not an easy answer.  What is sexy today isn’t always what is sexy over the long run.  There might be guys that we could hire that could do 2 things:  1- Inject energy and mental toughness into the program that’s missing and 2 – Hold Eason and the recruiting class together.  Narduzzi, Harsin (who’d probably be my pick), Swinney, Dantonio, Patterson, Whittingham, Fitzgerald, Brian Kelly (he makes $1.19 mil…don’t laugh).  I think we could make a run at those guys for $5 mil/year and they MIGHT do it.  But would we make a run at those guys?  And are we to the point where we HAVE to change because the FUTURE is so bleak?  And that leads me to the MOST fundamental question.

We need a program turn-around (and maybe it’s slowly happening, but whatever), but the mess at USC and Haden’s complete incompetence hiring Kiffin, then Sark, led me to this question:

>>>>>Do you trust Greg McGarity or Mark Richt more to turn our program around?  That’s the million dollar question.  Or do we trust the process we’re going through?  Every coach in his right mind believes Jeremy Pruitt knows what he’s doing.  Every SEC team would take Rocker.  Sale is recruiting lights out.  B-Mac and T Brown are young coaching stars.  Eckeler could get a job in about 24 hours.  I just did a little thinking, and this is what our 2017 depth chart could look like:

Offense

QB – Eason – So

RB – Chubb – Sr. (I don’t think he’s going anywhere now after the injury.  Could be a Robert Edward type deal of playing next year but not looking same till the next).

FB – Payne – Sr.

TE – Blaze – Sr.

WR – Godwin – Jr.

WR – Chigbu – Jr.

WR – McKenzie – Sr.

T – Ben Cleveland – So.

G – Wynn – Sr.

C – Kendall Baker - Jr

G – Galliard – Jr.

T – Bynum – Sr.

Defense

DE – Ledbetter – Jr.

DL – Thompson – Jr.

DL – Atkins – Sr.

OLB – Carter – Sr. & Walker – Jr.

LB – Patrick – Jr.

LB – Smith – Jr.

OLB – Bellamy – Sr

S – Abram – Jr.

S – Sanders – Sr.

C – Parrish – Sr.

C – McGraw – Jr.

Star/Nickel – Wilkerson – Sr & Roundtree – Jr

Guys, that’s what a National Championship team looks like, not starting freshmen and sophomores all over the place.  Remember the story of 1980.  We had all the pieces, but we just needed a tailback.  Woerner and Ross were senior captains.  Belue and Scott were proven juniors.  I think I wanna see Pruitt and Richt coach that team.  I hope we can get to winning this last half to make sure we can.  I really do.  When you step back, you see we’re on a right track. You see we recruited terrible for a few years and we’ve changed everything.  That’s why we’re playing these young cats on defense…they’re better!  I don’t think we can blow that up.  This isn’t a cupboard going bare like Mack Brown and Phil Fulmer were doing.  Dooley’s 15^th season was 1978.  He had won 3 SEC titles (one was a tie), and been to 2 Sugar Bowls and an Orange Bowl.  We were struggled to find a QB, and a freshman Belue came off the bench to beat Tech.  But he was building something.  

Go Dawgs and on to better days.