Munson opened tonite noting some fine teams got beat. Even USC and Wisconsin. Then there were a few others. UGA was not the only team that didn’t get untracked. How would you like the UK schedule the next couple of weeks –
LSU and
Florida. Anything can happen, such as the QB at Northwestern that threw for over 500 yards in their win over Mich. St.
Munson’s opening question for CMR was needing someone to pick up the flag. Richt agrees. This week, we’re gonna see some of that. Last week, they jumped on us and we couldn’t get anything going until the second half.
Even if Munson could convince Richt to make a sweep of the campus, there’s no way we could find a couple of linemen? Richt said he’s been cautious to say the OL was playing great, but he thinks they’re playing very good for being so young. Even though they’re gaining experience, they’re still freshmen bodies. That open date is coming up soon which will give everyone a breather.
Munson worries that Stafford will think he has to do everything. Richt agrees Stafford has to guard against that. A year ago, Richt thinks Stafford would have been likely to try, but now he’s grown.
Terry in Lincoln Co. – did CMR meet with the players today, do they have Saturday night out of their head, etc.? Normally, we have honor roll outside. Today they met inside and had a little heart to heart. They understand what it will take to get past Vandy. That’s the focus. Normally, the staff might be on the road recruiting on Friday but CMR cancelled that so everyone will be in house.
Jeremy in Sandy Springs (who CMR remembered from the Final Four) had two points: he liked last year better when we could kick off (and defer) winning the coin toss, and could a “fast break” help Stafford? At least three teams have run a variation of the no-huddle. We have been taking the ball but this game it didn’t help us. But we got a great punt from Mimbs. At Bama, we took the ball to start the game and set the tone by taking it and scoring.
CMR thinks Stafford has handled the one/two minute offense well. Definitely something to think about.
Sonny in Evans had two things that really bothered him Saturday – the constant playing of Rocky Top, and having to see the score over and over on TV Saturday night. He thinks the team seemed to play with a sense of complacency after two good wnis. Who gets reps running back kicks this week (Sonny recommends Mikey Henderson), and what is Marcus Washington’s status.
Richt – T. Brown being out changes lots of things, the kick return team, the punt team (he’s a gunner) and the kickoff team (he’s the safety). Asher Allen is the top candidate as kick returner. Mikey has a nagging hamstring thing. Nothing serious but we don’t want to overtax it. The kick return job is different from the punt return job. Moreno backs up AA.
Kathy in Winder didn’t think Southerland was in much early on, and was concerned our defense wasn’t jacked up for this game – unimaginable considering how
Tennessee put it on us last year. CMR thinks we got outcoached and outplayed. Part of the reason was they had the open date. They had time to rest, get stronger and set a good plan. Going up and down like we have is a sign of an immature football team. CMR talked to the team about that today. But it is a sign a team not as mature as you’d like and fatigued. What you need in a case like that is a spark. We didn’t do anything to do that.
CMR talked to Bobo about making sure we find ways to make sure Southerland gets more involved. One reason he was out early was he had a chin strap problem, which took a little while to fix.
Scott in Jefferson had a shout-out for Chris Davis (one of the young OL). He thinks our CB play has been average and wonders when he’ll hit the field. Getting outrun by an RB had more to do with taking a bad angle. When you get into short yardage, defenses are playing man so you can outnumber the offense for the run. When you get into man to man, a CB has to be careful not to play the run so fast we lose track of a receiver. Another example was their trick play.
Chris Davis – for a guy who’s never played OL until he got to college, is doing pretty good. He’s held up better than the true frosh because he redshirted and has learned to work.
Josh in Lincoln Co. asked about Ellerbe and Jarious Wynn. Richt said Ellerbe played very well and saved us several times. He also made several plays in coverage that forced their QB to go where he didn’t want with the ball. Wynn is beginning to make plays for us. We had a hard time trying to decide whether to play him inside or outside. We may need him at DE before its over. Part of the reason Jarious has looked good is we’ve kept him fresh.
Jason in NYC wonders if we should’ve spread it out on offense more? Also, will we be running tackling drills this week? We have been spreading it out but sometimes you make us vulnerable. And when you spread it out Southerland may not be in the game. People have caught on to our screens a little bit. When they see a guy flare to a side they bail out and chase the back.
Mike in Brunswick wondered why we were conservative when we got back to 28-7 and why our WRs can’t seem to get separation. CMR doesn’t think “conservative” is the road. You can still run your offense at that point. If you try to chunk it every time with the OL struggling…
We did try to go downfield to MoMass once but Stafford got busted in the mouth as he was throwing it. Early the game we tried two deep balls on the first drive.
Sometimes they were just in a cover 3 bail, where they show press but just bail out. Sometimes we did not get separation but sometimes we just couldn’t protect well enough.
(note - we did not have the ball down 28-7 since the vols answered our TD with one of their own)
Billy in Monroe hopes CMR not only talked to the players but called the coaches in and had a good talk with them. CMR said they had some good talks Sunday and Monday. When you turn on the film it made everyone a little sicker. We lost some of our fundamentals. We’re not jacking anyone up. We’re not making them think about bringing it through there again. We just have to tighten everything down. And we have to find ways offensively to move the football. Also, CMR doesn’t think he did a good enough job to get the team prepared. And when adversity struck, we didn’t do a good job trying to do something about it.
Ben in Cartersville wanted to focus on the defense. What is the difference between our defenses now and what he saw from Mickey Andrews at FSU. As for defensive scheme, CMR thinks Andrews is a great coordinator. One thing going on back then is we (then, FSU) matched up better against who they played. Now, most of our games are pretty tightly contested games. If you think you match up well, you feel more freedom doing certain things. The personnel across this league is more even.
Jackie in
Alabama thinks losses will happen, and says he appreciates Richt’s character shining through – even at a time like this. CMR shared a comment from Claude Felton – it is nice that we haven’t had to go through many of these kind of games. And we don’t want to have any more like this (SECCG vs. LSU was the last time we were really handled like this). We have to move forward and prepare to beat Vandy. Anything else is a waste of time. We don’t want to have a chain reaction like we did last year where one loss became two, and so on.
Summer in Athens asked about that song on the PA at the Ole Miss game .. and noted the momentum changed our way right after it. CMR said if he thought having a dance before the game would help, he’d do it. Sometimes you wonder what you could say before the sixth or seventh game. But if we had danced like that then gotten whipped, we’d never live it down. He does remember glancing at the scoreboard and seeing it and wondering if he needed to anything.
Bryan in Gainesville wonders if we’re a 3rd quarter team, and too much on our heels in the first half. How does a guy get that wide open when they ran that reverse pass? CMR thought we came out hot in the 3rd qtr. vs. OSU and Bama but didn’t come out hot this game. That reverse has been around for years and has always worked against man coverage.
(another ed. note – remember all those 3rd quarter implosions during the mid-season swoon last year?)
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