UGA penalties focus of Dogs' practices

Today: Too many penalties.

ATHENS — When a Georgia football player commits a penalty in practice these days, he is subject to being pulled aside and punished with a series of dreaded up-down drills. When practice is over, coach Mark Richt studies a report charting the day’s infractions.

Suffice to say, all of those flags last season got the Bulldogs’ attention.

Georgia was the most penalized team in the SEC and among the five most penalized in the nation. Some of the penalties were so egregious, so costly and ultimately so embarrassing that the team — players and coaches alike — still recoils at the recollection.

“Can’t happen again,” linebacker Rennie Curran said.

And it won’t, he vowed.

“With the kind of discipline Coach Richt has been implementing in practice — you know, the up-downs — and with the way the coaches are holding us accountable and the way we’re holding each other accountable, I feel you’ll see a big difference,” Curran said. “We get on each other a lot more when a guy gets off-sides or anything like that, because we know how damaging penalties were to us last year.

“I have no doubt our penalty rate will go down dramatically. We will be nowhere near where we were last year as far as penalty rate.”

Last year, Georgia was assessed 938 yards in penalties — more than nine football fields worth of infractions. The Bulldogs’ 72.2 penalty yards per game on average were 12.3 more than any other SEC team and almost twice as many as, say, Alabama. Georgia penalties created a whopping 35 opponent first downs — 14 more than any other SEC team allowed via penalty and as many as any team in the nation allowed.

As bad as the numbers were in the aggregate, some of the specifics were even worse.

Take, for example, the Sept. 27 game against Alabama in Athens, a season-defining showdown of two unbeaten top-10 teams.

A roughing-the-passer penalty against Georgia negated an Alabama turnover on the Crimson Tide’s first possession, keeping alive a touchdown drive. Then, two more Georgia penalties — defensive holding and, again, roughing the passer — helped Alabama to a field goal on its second possession. Clearly, the penalties fueled the Crimson Tide’s first-half blowout of the Bulldogs.

By the end of the night, Georgia had 10 penalties for 81 yards, compared to Alabama’s two for nine yards.

That became one of five games with 10 or more penalties for Georgia. The team had fewer than seven infractions only twice (five versus Vanderbilt and Kentucky). In its three losses, Georgia had a combined 25 penalties for 194 yards.

Enough about last year.

What about now?

Richt says there has been only one practice this month — out of 19 — in which the Bulldogs looked undisciplined regarding penalties. Because he wanted no mixed messages about the issue, before camp began Richt ordered his assistant coaches not to complain about any flag thrown by the officials working practices.

“It’s, ‘Yes sir, thank you for the help,’ and then go discipline your player,” Richt said. “Teach him and coach him.”

Players say the crackdown was needed and is working.

“Knowing you’re going to do 10 up-downs kind of changes things,” defensive end Rod Battle said. “Everybody is being held accountable and being called out in front of the team if you do something wrong.”

The most effective penalty deterrent, though, might be the experience of last year.

“We saw what penalties and lack of discipline did to us,” Curran said, “even with as many talented guys as we had.”

The Penalty Problem

Where Georgia ranked among the 12 SEC teams and the 119 NCAA Division I-A teams in penalty categories last year:

Penalties per game: 8.62, 12th, 116th

Penalty yards per game: 2.2, 12th, 115th

Opponent first downs by penalty: 35, 12th, T-117th