UGA blog finds new home
Morning all. As I’ve said a couple of times this week, we’re converting this blog over to a WordPress platform and it will be a permanent move the first of next week.
Those of you who are regulars probably know that I’m not what you’d call techno-wizard when it comes to these things. But from what I understand the technology offered in this new format should make the blogging and commenting experience better for all. Of course, I’ll be learning as we go along, too. But I’m hoping to provide more pictures and video and things like that which should bring the blog more to life.
Of course, this blog is nothing without all you guys so I want to heartily invite (read: beg) you to come over to the new site by CLICKING HERE ON THE NEW ADDRESS and save it in your browsers. As of Monday, Feb. 23rd, this will be the permanent home of the UGA blog you so love or, in the case of some of you, love to loathe. If you’d prefer to copy and paste or just memorize, the new address is: http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/.
See at the new place!
AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2008 > September > 18
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Could Georgia do more with less?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By the time this is posted I’ll be on my way to Phoenix, Ariz. At some point when I get there I’ll be sure to visit and let you know what I’m seeing and hearing out West. In the meantime …
Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford completed passes to 10 different receivers in the win over South Carolina this past Saturday. One school of thought for such a stat is that it illustrates a mighty good job of ball distribution. Another is, perhaps the Bulldogs have too many different receivers going out for passes.
In three games, 14 different receivers have caught balls for the Bulldogs. Out of those nine are wideouts. Several more than that have gotten into games but haven’t caught a pass. And this is with senior starter Kenneth Harris sidelined the last two games with an injury. He’s back this week.
I bring this up because I’ve read some folks here and in other forums wondering if Georgia should streamline its receiving corps and run fewer wideouts in and out of the games. Wouldn’t six, or two at each position, be enough to get the job done?
Clearly Mohamed Massaquoi is Georgia’s best all-around receiver and we’ve all heard how CMR and Mike Bobo want to get the ball more to freshman flanker A.J. Green. Green, who was considered one of the top wide receivers in America coming out of Summerville (S.C.) High School, has caught just eight passes for 141 yards in Georgia’s first three games. For comparison’s sake, the Gamecocks’ Moe Brown had seven receptions for 130 yards in one game against Georgia.
I asked Richt about that this week and, in a nutshell, he said his philosophy is to play as many players as have proven they are capable of playing. Here was his extensive reply:
“The bottom line is if a guy’s ready to play, and is preforming well, then we’re gonna let him play,” Richt said. “Early in the season with these games being as hot as they’ve been, if you decide to run your top two receivers ragged, they wouldn’t make it. And that’s not an indictment on their conditioning. Would I say that I want to get A.J. more opportunities? Yeah. But you know what? Going into that game [against South Carolina] we had a young guy who was going to start for the first time in his home state. Sometimes guys struggle, but you could tell early on he wasn’t gonna struggle. He was ready to play. We did throw more balls at him. We just didn’t catch them. We didn’t protect well enough or we didn’t get it to him in a place where he could catch it.
“And like I’ve said too, there aren’t many pass plays where you can say throw it to that guy no matter what. If they line up in a double coverage, you can force it in there if you want. But even one of the deep balls that we threw later on, they had a free safety that was playing deep center and that guy from the snap started to run where A.J. was, even prior to Stafford looking that way. I think they had a little bit of a plan to make sure that cat didn’t beat them.”
So there it is directly from the Big Dog’s mouth. You like his philosophy or would you rather see the Bulldogs focus on throwing more balls to a smaller number of receivers?
Now, for some links …
Pac-10 takes a pounding
There will be more than a little conference pride on the line for Arizona State when it plays host to Georgia on Saturday. After the pounding the Pac-10 has taken from the Mountain West recently, the Sun Devils could earn some redemption for the league against the top-ranked team from the nation’s top conference… .
Georgia game ‘huge’ for ASU
East Valley (Phoenix) Tribune columnist Scott Bordow calls Georgia the “land of opportunity” as far as Arizona State and quarterback Rudy Carpenter earning some national street cred. According to him the Sun Devils have traditionally flopped in games like this… .
Numbers game at Bama
Proving once again that Alabama coach Nick Saban will do anything to sign a recruit, he has been limited in his player pool for special teams because so many are wearing duplicate jersey numbers. It seems he promised too many they could have the same number that somebody else had and any of those two players can’t play on the same special teams unit together. It’s complicated but the Tide is dealing with it… .
Auburn dean: No booing, please
That’s toward the home team, according to a letter he supposedly sent to students.
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