Monday, September 11, 2017

Wake Up the Echos!

We’re 2-0, and that’s no small accomplishment.  The further I get from the game, the more thankful I am to have just gotten out with a W.  That team has talent and has recruited well.  They went 4-8 last year, but looking at their schedule it’s hard to imagine them worse than 8-4, and 9-3 is likely and 10-2 very possible.  They don’t play Clemson or FSU or Louisville.  Two years ago, Clemson beat them 24-22 in Death Valley with DeShaun Watson on their team, and we didn’t think a thing about it.  Clemson held ND on a two-point play to tie it.  We’ve got to get over this idea that pretty wins matter.  For now, they just don’t.

For the better part of 10 years (outside ’11 and ’12) we have found every which way to lose a game like that.  We also just broke a streak. We had not beaten a non-conference road opponent besides Tech since ’08 Arizona St.  We’d lost to Oklahoma St, Colorado and Clemson.  Three in a row.  That win was big, and may we never take one of those trips again.  I’m for the Chick-fil-a and Belk kickoff classics.  Or schedule a home and home with Duke or Wake Forest.  But let’s don’t do that again outside the trip to UCLA already on the schedule.  That’s my opinion.  I’d much rather the SEC go to 9-games and be done with it.  I’d like to play LSU, Bama and Ole Miss more.  Not Ohio St. or Michigan.

If you’d have told me 2 weeks ago that Eason is out, we get 126 yards of penalties and two turnovers in South Bend, I’d have said, “Can I cancel those plane tickets?”  That’s the amazing thing.  I firmly believe that teams have to learn how to win and learn how to lose.  We’re learning how to win.  The Tech game clearly demonstrated we had not yet.  We may be getting there.

Not to go too far down the road, but there’s really no excuse for us to not be 7-0 heading the Jax.  The schedule gets interesting then. 

·       I heart Roquan Smith.  I loved watching Ogletree.  I love Roquan.  Gracious, he is ridiculously fast and just doesn’t miss tackles.
·       Every team has guys get open on them (watch a game by the professionals on a Sunday).  But, we don’t see trends in openness.  That is a huge improvement over what I’ve seen most of my life.  Credit to Pruitt, who started it, but the DB play is much, much better under Kirby.
·       Our secondary (and entire D) tackles so well.  Did I just say that sentence?
·       Andrew Thomas got beat a few times.  He’s still a freshman.  He’ll get better.
·       I feel like we’ve got to get Nauta more involved, and we need to get Ridley greased up a little more.  I think he may have been suspended the 1st quarter Saturday night.  He did not play until the first play of the 2nd quarter.
·       I hope it’s often, and I hope it’s in the big games when we need the big plays, but at some point #4 is going to get into the open field.  I fully expect a blazed trail.  He is a kind of fast I don’t know that I’ve ever seen in silver britches.  Maybe Hason Graham.
·       Fromm is a freshman.  He looked like it.  We looked constipated much of the game, and I just don’t know how much of that had to do with him.  I want to blame Chaney.  It’s hard to know what we’re working with.  These are two of the most talented QBs to come out of high school into UGA, but they're young.  I’d like to judge Chaney on a game or two with an experienced and talented QB.  We’ve got to get ours back.  In a way, it could go great.  There will be no coronation parade for Jake now, and the realization had to hit a lot of Dawg fans in light of the win.  My hope is that Jacob comes back with a vengeance for the next year and a half, gets picked #1 in the 2019 draft, and Jake Fromm has gained incredible experience to be our starter in 2019-2020 as a junior and senior.  In the meantime, Justin Fields will redshirt in 2018, back up the next two and start in ’21-’22.  See there, wasn’t that easy?
·       We need to get Fromm going this week, and getting Nick and Sony going would be nice.
·       I’m not worried about Nick and Sony.  I firmly believe we’ve got to establish a passing game to get rolling.  No one respects it, and no one has respected it for over 2 years. 

Hey, think about the 2019 ND game with Wimbush as a senior and Fromm as a junior.  Mecole as a senior.  Zeus and Swift toting the rock.  That game won’t be 20-19.

Go Dawgs!
Beat Samford!

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