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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2006 > October > 29
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Richt’s right: He’s done a poor job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You can’t expect to beat any team better than Mississippi State when you turn the ball over five times, much less a good team. And, like I said yesterday, poor officiating aside, we certainly helped the Gators out with those turnovers and our awful offensive showing in the first half.
If you want to take a moral victory out of Saturday’s results in Jacksonville — and for a proud program there’s certainly not much satisfaction in that — it’s that we were still in the game as the fourth quarter wound down, Florida’s offense only managed two scores (and only one on a sustained drive), and, minus the defensive touchdown given to them by Kregg Lumpkin’s third-quarter fumble, the game might well have had to go into overtime.
But at the same time, both of Georgia’s scores resulted from Gator turnovers. On our own, we generated … nothing.
Nine games in, the fact remains that every single aspect of Georgia’s game has been in need of improvement for most of the season, but aside from the defense finally mixing up its schemes a bit against Florida, little to no progress has been seen. In fact, in most areas we’ve gotten worse.
Our offensive line play has been lousy, with seniors Daniel Inman and Michael Turner deserving dishonorable mention for some of their lame attempts at “blocking” Saturday.
Tackling was still extremely poor and we got no sacks.
The Dawgs still seem incapable of covering a kick properly. At times it looked as if we’d held a competition to find the slowest, worst tacklers we could assemble and then put them on the coverage team. In general, special teams play has been awful.
Our running game was pretty anemic, due to both poor blocking and lack of concentration by the tailbacks.
We’re still killing drives by dropping passes that hit receivers in the hands.
Our third-quarter meltdown continued — Dawgs, whatever they’re passing around in the locker room at halftime, don’t drink it!
And in our ninth game, Matthew Stafford had progressed only about what you’d expect in the third or fourth game for a freshman, so he was still making bad choices between flashes of brilliance.
Richt said after the game that “it starts with me. I did a poor job,” and I’m more than inclined to agree that he and his staff have done a pretty lousy job this season. Yeah, the players haven’t executed, but they haven’t gotten any better and their fundamentals (tackling, catching) are extremely poor. True, some players aren’t as good as perhaps they were expected to be, and our recruiting on the line and in the secondary has been unproductive, but we’ve got plenty of talent in other areas that isn’t being developed and in fact seems to be regressing (especially the receivers). For that, you have to blame Richt and his coaches.
MORE GOOD AND MOSTLY BAD: Brannan Southerland showed great hands and made some tough runs. He’s easily the standout player so far this season. … Martrez Milner already has earned his degree (for which he should be congratulated), but he obviously can’t catch. So why were we still throwing to him on a drive where he’d already dropped his second pass of the day? Why was he even in the game still? … Our woes at linebacker are well-documented, but a bright spot continues to be the play of Tony Taylor. … When Tim Tebow ripped off that long run on his first play, it looked like the Dawgs were going to join all the other SEC teams that have acted like they didn’t know what was coming when he enters the game. But from that point on our defense contained Tebow better than any other Gators opponent has done. … Georgia again botched a screen pass. … If Kregg Lumpkin’s blocking in pass protection is bad, Danny Ware’s isn’t much better. … Richt is still too quick to abandon the running game. He just doesn’t get it. … Richt and Bobo really need to work on getting it drilled into Stafford’s head that he can’t hold on to the ball as long as he’s been doing, and that if nobody’s open, he needs to throw it away. At the same time, why does Richt keep calling those slow-to-develop plays when he knows how bad our offensive line is? … What did Daniel Inman think he’d done to earn the right to mockingly do the Gator chomp after the Dawgs’ first score?
