This isn’t about Todd Gurley, it’s about the team. Got that?
Never mind the 45-second hype video Georgia released this week that plays to the tune, “Coming Home.” Maybe it was meant simply as a commemoration of the Bulldogs’ first game in Sanford Stadium in 42 days, but the fact it’s generic until concluding with a dramatic, slow-motion shot of Gurley walking into the stadium to the lyrics, “I’m back where I belong. I never felt so strong. I’m feeling like there’s nothing I can’t try,” leaves a different impression.
But this isn’t about Gurley, it’s about everybody. OK?
Never mind that the best college football player in the country is returning this week. Never mind about the #GurleyFree hashtags saturating social-media sites. Never mind that Georgia coach Mark Richt was concerned enough about the media blitz this week that he canceled all usual player and assistant coach interviews, other than four hand-selected “mature” — his word — players whom he believed could best handle questions about Gurley. (Read: Players who would not deviate from the talking-points memo.)
Forget all of that. It’s not about Gurley.
OK.
It’s about Gurley.
“I just felt like probably the most asked question this week would be, ‘Well, what do you think about Todd being back?’” Richt said Tuesday when asked about keeping most of his players in a communications bubble this week. “I wanted to just get through this week.
“I didn’t want this to be about only Todd returning. And again — I’m happy about Todd returning. I’m happy. I’m smiling. But I didn’t want that to be the whole focus.”
Understandable. But this is like a circus barker telling the masses, “We know you’re here for King Kong. But we’re all one big show here, and look — we having dancing geese.”
Richt is well-practiced when it comes to dealing with distractions. Georgia has had teams with future NFL first-round draft picks. It has had weeks that followed big wins and even bigger losses when the program seemed in full meltdown. It has had arrests and suspensions, including the four-game swat given to wide receiver A.J. Green for actions similar to those that sent Gurley into NCAA timeout for a month.
But I’m not sure Richt ever has had to deal with a situation or a build-up like this week. That is why he’s going to such extremes to control the message.
Gurley, whose previous game came in the Bulldogs’ previous game in Sanford Stadium on Oct. 4 against Vanderbilt, returns Saturday when Georgia meets Auburn. He’s no longer a Heisman Trophy candidate. But he’ll still be the best player on the field.
The only way the build-up this week would have been greater would be if each team hadn’t blown games it was expected to win — Georgia to Florida and Auburn to Texas A&M. Those losses dropped both in the rankings and made playoff ramifications this week less certain.
Other story lines? Sure. Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall returns to Athens for the first time since being kicked out of the program. The last time these two met, Auburn won in illogical fashion — when Marshall completed a last-minute, desperation, fourth-and-18, 73-yard touchdown pass to Ricardo Louis that deflected off the hands of safety Josh Harvey-Clemons.
But Gurley is the centerpiece. He commanded the attention before the suspension, and he commands it even more now. Richt hates when this is brought up, but the concerns that the junior might just skip the rest of the season to save himself for the NFL were legitimate.
“There was (concern),” quarterback Hutson Mason said. “But I think it speaks highly for Todd’s character and what this season means and to keep fighting through that adversity.”
True. But Gurley also showed his flaws by hiding a lie for two years, knowing that selling autographs put his eligibility and his team in danger. It’s nothing NFL scouts care about — they actually prefer that Gurley will have less wear on body — but returning to Georgia certainly gives the Bulldogs a chance to win an SEC championship.
With losses to Florida and South Carolina on the resume, a College Football Playoff berth remains improbable. But Gurley gives Georgia a chance to win every game it plays the rest of the season.
Richt prefers that’s where the focus be. It wasn’t surprising he shielded Gurley from the media because he has a policy of not allowing players coming off suspensions to do interviews until after their first game (although that wasn’t the case with Green in 2010). But he has never gone to the extremes of canceling the usual Monday and Wednesday access and limiting Tuesday’s availability to so few.
(Note: When there are 20 reporters gathered around center David Andrews, something is off.)
“We don’t look at Todd as less of a person,” Mason said. “It’s hard for guys to be put in that situation and say no, especially for the environment that some of these guys come from. It doesn’t make it right or wrong — it’s just hard.”
Gurley never gave a formal stand-in-front-of-the-room apology to his teammates, Richt said, other than the statement he released through the school a few weeks ago. He said coaches and players have attempted to minimize the situation.
“We all make mistakes,” Richt said. “And nobody knows what it’s like to live in his shoes either. No one is throwing stones here.”
The subject was Gurley. Nobody seemed too interested in the punt team.
