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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2007 > November > 04
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Not great, but good enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, it’s a given. Georgia has trouble defending spread offenses. Unless it’s a one-trick-pony spread offense dominated by a guy named Tebow.
Unfortunately, on Saturday Troy’s spread looked more like the passing equivalent of West Virginia against us than it did Florida, racking up the most offensive yards (488) against Georgia since that Sugar Bowl meeting with the Mountaineers.
But while the Bulldogs certainly didn’t have an easy time against the Trojans, the game wasn’t one that left fans fretting like some of our earlier shaky wins. It was a mixed bag of positives and negatives:
Georgia, for a change, didn’t come out flat for one of these games. The Dawgs started the game enthusiastic. They just weren’t focused, resulting in two early fumbles that dissipated some of that energy and meant the defense was on the field a lot of time early on and got a little tired of defending all those dink-and-dunk screen passes Troy was throwing.
On the positive side, the two fumbles resulted in only three points and Georgia had three sacks and two interceptions. On the negative side, the Bulldogs gave up several first down conversions in third-and-long situations and a couple of long touchdown passes.
On the positive side, Georgia moved the ball pretty well most of the time, Knowshon Moreno was terrific (if you’ve got to have your first fumble of the season, the way to make up for it is to come back with your team’s longest TD run in 10 years) and Matthew Stafford completed some sharp downfield passes. On the negative side, Stafford threw an interception in the end zone that wasted a Georgia drive, the Dawgs had a poor day converting on third down and they had to settle for too many field goals, especially considering defense isn’t Troy’s forte.
On the positive side, Troy return specialist and future NFL-er Leodis McKelvin didn’t play that big a part in the game. On the negative side, he didn’t need to. Georgia’s directional (aka shank) punts to avoid him and likewise our mixture of angled and pooch kickoffs resulted in Troy getting great field position even without him having long returns. On kickoffs, why we refuse to go for the end zone continues to baffle. As Kevin Butler put it after the game, if you’re scared of a long return, why not make them return it 105 yards?
Overall, as Coach Mark Richt said, the Dawgs played good enough to win. Which in a game like this is never a lock. The most positive aspect of the game for Georgia fans continued to be the play of Knowshon Moreno. Not only does he give Georgia a superb offensive weapon and an on-the-field spark plug, he’s a pure pleasure to watch.
OTHER THOUGHTS ON THE GAME: After his TD reception, Sean Bailey picked up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for tossing the ball to a Troy player instead of an official. The Dawgs just need to come to the realization that after the end-zone celebration in Jacksonville, they’re marked men and anything short of Boy Scout behavior is going to draw a flag the rest of this season. … Wasn’t it just a year ago that some grandstand observers of the Dawgs were opining that the toss-sweep was an archaic play that had no place in today’s football? It looked Saturday like the toss-sweep to Moreno was Georgia’s most effective running play. … Missed tackles continued to plague the Dawg defense Saturday. … Georgia’s offensive line, which didn’t get any flags against Florida, drew some costly penalties against Troy. Hope they got it out of their system. … The Dawgs’ greatest success defensively came when they pressured the quarterback. Unfortunately, too much of the time he wasn’t pressured at all and some of our linebackers stood around waiting to see what he was going to do instead of attacking. … Stafford generally had good protection all day. In fact, sometimes it was too good, exacerbating his tendency to hold on to the ball too long before passing, forcing receivers to have to wait for the ball.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, PART 1: The Trojans deserve credit for continuing to play hard in the fourth quarter, but their coaching staff looked really bush-league calling three time-outs in the last 30-odd seconds in order to score a meaningless touchdown against our scrubs. I liked what one fan yelled: “What, have you got money on it?” It also wasn’t cool that on the obvious last play of the game, when Stafford was taking a knee, Troy felt it necessary to knock him to the ground. You got the feeling this game meant more to them than they admitted beforehand when they maintained they were more concerned with winning the Sun Belt title.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, PART 2: When Stafford, who earlier had ceded the QB spot to Joe Cox, trotted on the field with 5 seconds left in the game, a lot of fans wondered if Richt was P.O’d at the Troy tactics and was going to have Stafford launch one toward the end zone. Nope, he just took a knee. So what the heck was he doing out there, risking possible (if improbable) injury?
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