This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > September > 04
Thursday, September 4, 2008
These Bulldogs are built to last
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A month from now, this early angst will be gone and forgotten. Come October, Georgia fans won’t care that Georgia Southern scored 21 points and won’t consider Trinton Sturdivant and Jeff Owens irreplaceable. By then, they’ll know - we’ll all know - that these Bulldogs are built to last.
This is the most talented team Mark Richt has had, and it’s also the deepest. As Tony Taylor, the former Bulldog who missed the 2004 season after getting hurt on G-Day, said last month: “If you go over there now, you see something totally different. They’ve got athletes all across the board.”
Injuries happen. That’s why there are 85 scholarships, and the way these 85 have been allotted is the reason this team is even stouter than Richt’s breakthrough bunch of 2002. By now, he and his staff have grown accustomed to stacking gifted recruiting classes end to end. As good as Owens is, is he appreciably better than Kade Weston and Corvey Irvin?
As for Sturdivant: There might not be another left tackle as good on this roster, but at least he was lost in August. Stacy Searels has ample time to scheme around Sturdivant’s absence, and Searels is good at what he does.
With the exception of Matthew Stafford, there’s no indispensable Bulldog. (Not even Geno Atkins. Not even Dannell Ellerbe. Not even Knowshon Moreno.) That’s the way the big-time programs operate: They have players, and they also have options. If Georgia fails, it won’t be because of two early injuries.
Georgia won’t fail anytime soon. It will be 5-0 come the Oct. 5 bye, 5-0 and ranked no worse than No. 2 in the land. (And if the Bulldogs are still No. 2, there’ll be a growing gap between them and the No. 3 team.) They’ll win at South Carolina and Arizona State and they’ll beat Alabama in Athens simply because they’re better than all of the above.
By then, those 21 Georgia Southern points will be revealed for what they were: A late-game aberration. Georgia led 38-0 before it relaxed, and why wouldn’t it? There’s no call for embarrassing an outmanned in-state opponent whose program was founded by one of the most revered figures in Bulldog annals. (And whose current coach is a famously good guy.)
Georgia Southern got 21 points when it didn’t matter. Against these Bulldogs, South Carolina and Arizona State might not get 21 between them. There’s one more tune-up to go, and then Georgia will get really interested. And then the march to Miami will really and truly begin.
Permalink | Comments (158) | Post your comment | Categories: UGA/SEC
