Hey, after walking out of Sanford Stadium on Sept. 10, you were begging to be 5-2 heading into the off week. If I'd have told you that I'd give you 5-2, with South Carolina toting a loss into the stretch of UT, Arky, and Florida and Garcia and Lattimore are gone for the year and Florida has 3 losses…you'd have taken it quicker than you can say "James Fraklin's a punk." So, take it. Don't whine about how ugly it was or the teams we've played. So what? The thing I think about this team is that we're going to get a lot better each week and as the season continues to progress. If we do, we'll get our shot against one of those monsters from the West and we'll see how we measure up. All we can do is play who's in front of us, and Lord knows we've had enough trouble with those guys since Lil Bit has been alive.
Having said that, if we can get our act together down there and play like we should, beat those lizards into submission, we'd be 3-5 over the last 8 years. Now, that's not great, but it's a heckuva lot better than we've fared recently. If we do that, I will no longer accept any arguments about our 20 year history with them. I will simply refer to those years as "The Dark Ages of Goff and Donnan". We'd be 4-18 over the last 22 years, but Richt would have 3 of those wins, so we'd be talking apples and oranges.
On Oct. 29, after we secure a victory, the Vols and Cocks come on at 7:15 that night. I don't know where my crew is watching that game, but we're watching it somewhere. No driving back this year!!!!! Hopefully Dooley can pull one out for the old Classic City home team. It really does all set up perfectly for us…it's scary. Off week (rest players), play guts out and beat Florida, Patsy game (i.e. rest injured players), play guts out and beat Auburn at home, Worst SEC team in ages [UK] (i.e. rest injured players and thank God it's not in Lexington), play guts out and beat Tech. Get ready to shock the world in the Dome.
Upon further review of the game, Aaron's late INT was bad and he missed a few guys, but when you look at the stats, it's hard to say he played bad. I wonder if we've become too much of perfectionist from that position and I wonder if our memories of Greene, Shock and Matthew are better than reality. The truth is, All-SEC QB is a 2-man race between Tyler Wilson and Aaron Murray. If we win the East, it's almost a lock it's Murray. You wouldn't trade a single QB in the league for him. Thinking nationally, what QBs are better? Luck, Moore, Landry Jones, Weeden from Okie St…who else? And those guys simply don't play against the kind of defenses we play against in the SEC week in, week out. We wouldn't take Darron Thomas over Aaron. No one in the ACC is on his radar. Is the kid form Clemson playing good? Sure. Is he better than Aaron…probably not. He's gotta clean it up a little bit, but 1 1/2 into his sophomore season, he is already ranked 4th in career TD passes for a UGA QB behind some guys named Greene, Zeier, and Stafford. He'll shatter Greene's TD record probably by the end of next year.
The most fascinating play of the game to me, looking back, was the blocked punt. Richt no doubt made the right call. Butler is a 5th year senior, and All-American, the son of a guy that understands situational special teams better than probably anyone in the history of the sport, and I can't ever remember him getting a punt blocked. What if there were only 5 seconds, what would you do? Basically saying, we could run around for 5 seconds. What do you do with 15 seconds. Assuming we get a touchback, they've got the ball with 6-7 seconds on their own 20 w/ no timeouts -- game over. However, the block is the risk. Holy smokes, I have no idea how Drew tackled that guy. In the future, I wonder if you think about putting Boykin or Smith in shotgun or maybe even in punt formation to get a deeper snap and having them run straight for the endzone, maybe even run around for as long as you can. You might burn out the whole 15 seconds. It would take at least 5-6 seconds just to get to the endzone in pads and with the snap. Then, you just run around till they get close and you step out of the back or side of the endzone. So, you end up getting the free kick off the safety up 33-30 with no more than probably 5-6 seconds left and they have no timeouts. You squib it and the games probably over right there. You have to cover the kick, obviously, but is covering the kick a riskier play than getting the scoop and score off the blocked punt? It would certainly be worth a thought the next time around. That's a play you've got to practice over and over to see how much time you can actually run off from different places on the field.
On a side note, on the last week of the regular season, 2 undefeateds OU and OSU will be squaring off, and we could be playing an undefeated West team. Boise could be sitting at #4 in the BCS rankings that day. They'll certainly be cheering for their week 1 opponent then.
Dang. . you think like me. I thought I was the only openly Dawgs optimist still alive! (But I still have the Larry Munson soundtrack running in my head all game long that forces me to think we are gonna lose every game while playing it!). Thanks for the post.
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