This week might prove to be the most culture changing week in Georgia football. The general consensus (even in my brain) is that we are THIS close. Perhaps we are. Perhaps we have been. But the lesson for me this week is that I made a promise to myself: 2016 forever changed me.
Since Ray Goff and the early ‘90s, we have signed fairly elite skill talent. Hastings was the #1 recruit in America and joined a class with Garrison. We signed Zeier a year later. But Zeier spent most of his career with a defense that couldn’t stop people. We had Terrell behind a line that couldn’t block. We couldn’t win the SEC with a team that had AJ, Knowshon and Stafford. Murray scored 30 over and over and couldn’t score enough most of his career. We just put Sony and Nick behind the worst OL I think I’ve ever seen us have. We have signed elite QB after elite QB, beginning with Eric Zeier. This is the GA way. The next skill player will save the day (because we saw it happen in 1980).
But the lessons from the ‘80s (and recent trends in Tuscaloosa) point to a different way. In ’80 we lost our starting center, but had enough depth the carry on. My daddy always talks of the ’83 season, full of seniors who had been recruited to join Herschel. Herschel was gone and we basically didn’t have a tailback, and went 10-1-1 and beat #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl – because we could flat out block.
Several things happened this week that are NOT the Georgia Way. We signed a stud JUCO LT. We had 4 stars forego the draft. We lost a stud QB recruit. We wait on an absolute beast OL commitment today.
We may or may not get Wilson today, but things are changing. I’m sold. It’s all about the defense and the offensive line. I love offensive skill players. That’s not where you win games. You need play makers. But, in 2012, in that dome, would you have traded Murray, Gurley, Marshall and our WR for McCarron, Lacy, Yeldon and their WR? No. Murray was better and Gurley was better, by a fair margin. They had Cooper, but we had a deeper WR corp. But their OL and Defense beat us into submission. Bama has gone to the playoff for 3 straight years with Blake Sims, Jake Coker and Jalen Hurts (who has been phenomenal, but isn’t in Eason’s stratosphere).
The formula is different, guys. The formula isn’t the formula that we have thought it was for 25 years. That’s a sea change. That formula is up front on O and on D. The formula is creating a team culture in which kids don’t want to leave early without reaching their fullest potential personally and team-wise.
BTW, the quarterback thing is kind of fascinating to me. Do you think there’s something about QBs that’s different from other positions that really feel a kind of pressure/fear to go to the in-state school and deliver? I do. Texas was 2 years removed from a natty when Stafford came to UGA. Murray was a perfect fit for Meyer and they were coming off a 2 natties out of the last 3 years, and he’d have been redshirted Tebow’s senior year. Eason surely saw the things Peterson was doing in Seattle behind the scenes. He went on a visit there. And we fumbled Deshaun, but I don’t know if it would have mattered. Maybe Lawrence reconsiders a year from now if Dabo is in Tuscaloosa, but it just seems that QBs kind of want to get out more than other positions. That kind of fascinates me about Fromm, because nationally it really breaks the mold.
Things are changing, guys. We’ve got to change, too. I get excited about skill player recruits, but we’ve seen what that gets us.
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