Mark Richt knows penalties a concern for Bulldogs

Athens — Georgia coach Mark Richt usually tries not to criticize officials. For one thing, it’s against Southeastern Conference rules. For another, it doesn’t do any good anyway.

But Richt had a hard time biting his lip after he was asked about the officiating in the Bulldogs’ 27-10 win at Arizona State on Saturday. The Pac-10 crew in that game flagged Georgia a season-high 12 times. One of the calls was for illegal field goal defense, which is a personal foul and a 15-yarder as it turns out.

The accumulation has left Richt fairly flabbergasted.

“All I can say is wow,” Richt said on a teleconference call Sunday night. “You guys can take that anyway you want.”

The veracity of those penalties aside, the 12 Georgia was flagged for Saturday night were added to the 31 fouls they had already been penalized for this season. So for those keeping count — and the NCAA is — that is 43 penalties for 357 yards this season, which ranks the Bulldogs last among 119 Division I schools.

“Yeah, we’ve had too many,” Richt, asked about it again on Tuesday, replied contritely.

The No. 3 Bulldogs enter a stretch this weekend in which they will play three top 10 teams in the next five games, starting with No. 8 Alabama in Athens on Saturday. These are the types of teams that feed on mistakes. Georgia is averaging an unsightly 10.8 penalties for 89 yards a game. It’s just a matter of time before one of those penalties impacts Georgia’s win-loss column.

“Sooner of later that’ll get us beat,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said.

It’s probably already has impacted national perception. Richt was asked Tuesday if he thought his was an undisciplined team.

“Well you can say that if you want,” he said, clearly not agreeing. “I think we’re playing real hard. If you jump offsides it’s because you’re anxious to get off on the snap. If you hit a quarterback later than you should, it’s probably because you’re at least running 100 miles an hour trying to harass the guy. Things like that are going on.”

But cutting down on penalties presents a coaching paradox. Coaches want their team to play loose, aggressive and worry-free. But they don’t want them to give the opponent a free pass down the football field. More importantly, they don’t want their players to hurt somebody hitting them after the whistle.

Of the 43 penalties Georgia has incurred, eight were personal fouls. That’s tied for the most in any category. Three of those were for roughing the passer.

Said Richt: “You don’t want to take away the aggressiveness of your team, but you’ve got to play within the rules. You have to be more disciplined. You have to not allow a penalty to continue a drive for them or stop a drive for you. So in that regard we haven’t done a very good job.”

Sophomore free safety Reshad Jones said sometimes it’s simply hard to stop.

“It’s very tough,” he said. “You get back there behind the line of scrimmage and you get close to the quarterback, you just want to let him feel it. You want to let him know that you’re there. Most times it’s hard to stop but in close ball games you’ve got to be smart. We can’t make those mistakes.”

Richt said he believes they over-disciplined the team during the 2006 season. They devised a plan to organize the sideline chaos. It required that the players stay seated in their respective position groupings on the bench.

“We decided we’re gonna have the best bench control in America,” Richt said. “We lost four out of five.”

Richt said then senior Joe Tereshinski finally came to him and pleaded for a change.

“He said, ‘Coach, there’s no excitement. The first thing we gotta do is get rid of that stupid rule about bench control,’” Richt recounted. “And he was right.”

That said, a middle ground must be achieved.

“[10.8] is way too many,” Richt said.