Spring practice brought few answers for Bulldogs

Athens — Spring practice is over. The season opener is fewer than 150 days away. And there’s no shortage of questions for Georgia’s football team to sort out in the meantime:

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Caleb King entered the spring as the top tailback. He will enter the summer co-No. 1 at the position.

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Bob Andres/bandres@ajc.com

Aside from A.J. Green (8), Georgia has uncertainties at wideout.

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1. Who’ll run the ball?

Spring practice revealed no front-runner for Knowshon Moreno’s old job. “It’s wide open,” coach Mark Richt said after Saturday’s G-Day game.

Caleb King, the pre-spring favorite, and Carlton Thomas, the spring revelation, will enter the summer co-No. 1 at the position, with Richard Samuel expected back from wrist surgery to challenge them.

Richt said it might take all of preseason camp, or even several games into the season, to “define” the position.

2. Who, other than A.J. Green, will catch the ball?

Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said the Bulldogs need six receivers they can count on. They’ll be scrambling this summer to find them.

They feel great about Green and good about Michael Moore. Beyond that, they hope summer will bring a healthier Tony Wilson, a more consistent Tavarres King, a breakthrough from Israel Troupe and two ready-to-play incoming freshmen (Marlon Brown and Rantavious Wooten).

G-Day showed that the receiving corps is very much a work in progress.

3. Will the defensive ends be healthy and productive?

The lack of pass rush from the ends was a big problem last season, and spring practice offered no salve.

Like last summer and fall, injuries continued to wreak havoc with the position. Three players remain out with injuries suffered last year, and two others went down this spring. But all are expected back by the start of summer practice.

“We’re going to have to wait until everybody gets back to see a huge difference” in the position’s productivity, said Justin Houston, one of two scholarship D-ends who made it through the spring healthy.

4. Who’ll kick off?

It might seem like minutiae, but it’s an important enough question to Georgia coaches that they recently spent another scholarship on a possible solution.

After Blair Walsh struggled on the distance and direction of his kickoffs last season, often resulting in opponents starting drives with favorable field position, Georgia signed strong-legged California junior-college kicker Brandon Bogotay, who will arrive this summer to compete with Walsh.

If kickoffs improve to the point that opponents often start drives on the 20-yard line or thereabouts, “we’ll automatically be better than last year on defense,” Richt said.

5. Will distractions be avoided?

From Jan. 1, 2008 until the start of summer practice, eight Georgia players were arrested, tarnishing the team’s reputation, distracting from the business at hand and exposing an undisciplined streak that also showed up on the field last fall.

There have been no arrests this year and, according to Richt, no academic problems. He believes that reflects a renewed emphasis on “old-school” discipline by coaches and players alike.

“Am I going to sit here and say these guys are never going to make a mistake again?” Richt said. “That’s just very unrealistic, but I think at least we’ve had a good start [this year] and I think, as a whole, these guys want to do right.”

Starting quarterback Joe Cox said the players have talked a lot about the importance of the next few months in shaping the 2009 team, on and off the field.