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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 > October > 09
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Georgia wary of Vols despite record
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Big Orange is no longer so big. Tennessee hasn’t won an SEC title since 1998, hasn’t finished in the Associated Press Top 10 since 2001 and hasn’t beaten Florida since 2004. The only thing the Volunteers remain adept at doing is messing up Georgia’s season.
Tennessee has won three of the past four meetings. Two of those losses — in 2004 and again last year — denied good Georgia teams a chance to play for the conference title. The 2006 game was a 51-33 thrashing that prompted the AJC headline — “Vols Put Dogs In Their Place” — that Gov. Sonny Perdue found odious; more tangibly, it touched off a four-losses-in-five-games reversal that remains the nadir of the Mark Richt era.
On Saturday the Vols will kick off against Georgia bearing a losing record for the first time since 1994, when they were 0-1. Naturally, that team beat the Bulldogs. Not since 2001 has Tennessee entered this game as the higher-ranked team, and lately it hasn’t mattered. Georgia was No. 3 when it lost to the Vols in 2004, No. 10 in 2006 and No. 12 last year.
This time Georgia is a chastened No. 10. The Vols didn’t receive even one vote in either major poll. But Richt, mindful of recent history, lauded Tennessee to the max in his media briefing Tuesday, saying the Vols could be 4-1 as opposed to 2-3 and praising them for their stout effort in a 13-9 victory over … er, Northern Illinois. (It didn’t hurt that Vince Dooley, the king of opponent-trumping-up, was seated in the audience.)
Of his team, Richt said: “We’ve got a wonderful opportunity to turn [this season] around. I see nothing out there that makes me think we won’t turn it around.”
There’s no reason Georgia shouldn’t beat Tennessee handily. (Oddsmakers have installed the Bulldogs as 12-point favorites.) The Vols lost to Florida by 24 points in Knoxville and managed 191 yards against Auburn. Then, having changed quarterbacks, Tennessee mustered 225 yards against … er, Northern Illinois.
Still, the tale of Georgia football in the 21st Century would be rather different if it hadn’t lost to lesser Tennessee teams. When the Bulldogs arrived in Knoxville last October, the belief was that Philip Fulmer had to win the game to save his seat. He won 35-14. (Speaking of job security, former coach Johnny Majors, whom Fulmer shouldered aside in 1992, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press last week: “Frankly, I think [defensive coordinator] John Chavis has saved [Fulmer’s] job for 10 years.”)
The Bulldogs claim not to care about such things. “People may say that [Tennessee spoiled seasons], but that was last year and two years ago,” Knowshon Moreno said. “We’ve got to keep moving forward. This is a new season.”
It was only after being thumped in Knoxville that the 2007 Bulldogs began to find themselves, so in some ways the memory of that loss has been reconfigured as a positive. Said Matthew Stafford, rejecting the point: “I don’t think anyone after that game was thinking, ‘This is going to be a turning point for us.’ “
A year later, an emphatic dismissal of Tennessee could help Georgia right itself after the egregious Alabama game. Said Richt: “This game is huge as to how our season is going to be remembered.”
It’s not that Tennessee is so good anymore. It’s just that it keeps getting in Georgia’s way. “Any loss messes up a season,” said fullback Brannan Southerland, and losing to these underwhelming Vols would derail what still could be a championship run.
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Georgia’s O-line is seldom O-utstanding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two things Mark Richt hasn’t yet done as Georgia’s coach: Play for the national championship (although he came close in 2002 and last season) and build a series of formidable offensive lines. Up front the Bulldogs always seem to be reaching and retooling, which is going to happen some years. But every year?
The best line Richt has had was in the aforementioned 2002, and those seniors were Jim Donnan’s recruits. Two linemen - Jon Stinchcomb and George Foster - were taken in the 2003 NFL draft. Only three Bulldog O-liners have gone in the five drafts since: Max Jean-Gilles in 2006, Ken Shackleford in 2007 and Chester Adams this year. For a program that recruits at such a consistently exalted level, that’s a failure.
Richt points out that, due to the coaching changeover and the resultant recruiting gap, the 2002 line departed without understudies at the ready. And many of the new guys - Jean-Gilles, Nick Jones and Daniel Inman - wound up manning the not-bad line that helped win the 2005 SEC title. But the 2006 line was comprised of upperclassmen and wasn’t very good, and last season the Bulldogs went with three freshmen.
Two of those - Clint Boling and Chris Davis - are starters still, and the other, left tackle Trinton Sturdivant, would have been but was lost to injury. Again Georgia is scrambling, moving guys hither and yon. Chris Davis, who was projected as the starting center, is back at guard. Kiante Tripp, listed as the No. 1 right tackle in preseason, is now a backup tight end.
Perhaps it’s unfair to criticize overmuch, what with Sturdivant’s absence, but a program this good at all other positions shouldn’t be underwhelming along the line of scrimmage year after year. But when last did we see a Georgia line block the way Alabama’s did two weeks ago? When last did the Bulldogs simply push a worthy opponent backward? (The 2007 Florida game might qualify, although Gator fans will insist their defense was too young to bear up.)
Both line coaches under Richt - first Neil Callaway, now Stacy Searels - are regarded highly in the fraternity, but it’s intriguing that Georgia’s O-line isn’t held to the demanding standards that seem to apply to Willie Martinez and his defense. There’s no reason the Bulldogs shouldn’t be able to find and develop offensive linemen the way they’ve found and developed quarterbacks and defensive tackles. No reason at all.
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