ATHENS – In pretty much every team sport, it is important to be strong up the middle. In baseball, it’s catcher, pitcher, shortstop, center field. In soccer, it’s keeper, midfielder, forward.
During its run to 36 wins over the past three seasons, Georgia football has been strong up the middle.
Think about it: Nick Chubb, Jake Fromm, Roquan Smith, Dominick Sanders. The last two seasons, it’s been D’Andre Swift, Fromm, Monty Rice and J.R. Reed.
The Bulldogs appear to be set in that regard again this season – with one notable exception. As of this writing, nobody knows for sure who will start at quarterback. And whoever does is going to be new – and unproven -- to the team.
The assignment today is to give you three players who are key to Georgia’s success in 2020. We find them – you guessed it – up the middle.
Safety Richard LeCounte
There is a reason Kirby Smart has been hounding LeCounte since he showed up at UGA from Liberty County in 2017. Smart knows how special LeCounte can be as a defensive back.
LeCounte was a 5-star prospect when he signed with Georgia. But his high school prowess largely was based on ball skills. Employed as a receiver, running back, occasional quarterback, kick returner and, yes, defensive back, the basic strategy was to put LeCounte in the middle of the field and let him go make plays. And he did, all the time.
But when he got to Georgia, LeCounte was unrefined as a defensive back. Smart prefers refined DBs – as in very refined.
Well, LeCounte is finely refined now. Forgoing the chance to join several classmates who bolted to the NFL as juniors, LeCounte decided to come back and for another year of refinement. It’s a good thing for the Bulldogs as he takes over the role of masterfully handled by J.R. Reed the previous three seasons. That is as free safety and quarterback of Georgia’s secondary.
Those ball skills are back on display with the Bulldogs as LeCounte led the Bulldogs in interceptions (3), fumble recoveries (3) and forced fumbles (2). Now he wants to take his game to another level when it comes to leadership and strategy. And, yes, he still plans to make some plays.
“Richard plays with instincts,” defensive coordinator Dan Lanning said. “What he has learned over the years is to play with those same instincts within the framework of our defense and our system. All players need to be coached, but a lot of Richard’s production comes from those instincts. He’s done a good job of honing that in to fit the system where he’s able to make plays.”
Credit: UGA Sports
Credit: UGA Sports
Running back Zamir White
With first-year coordinator Todd Monken and his newfangled spread offense in town, much of the focus outside the Butts-Mehre complex is on Georgia’s passing attack and finding a way to enflame it with “explosivity.” The Bulldogs obviously are still working on the quarterback side of that equation, but they actually feel pretty good about their playmakers out wide, which include George Pickens, Demetris Robertson, Kearis Jackson, Matt Landers and Jermaine Burton, among others.
But lost in the discussion about Monken’s spread is that the running game remains a cornerstone principle of his offense. He defines an explosive play an explosive play as any run of 12 or more yards and any pass of 16 or more yards. Even when he was calling plays for Oklahoma State’s “Air Raid” offense in 2011, running back Joseph Randle gained 1,216 yards rushing and scored 26 touchdowns.
Zamir White knows this and is excited about. He has cheerfully accepted the baton as the next in a long line of great backs suiting up for “RBU.”
“I’ve got to carry on that tradition of Todd (Gurley) and Sony (Michel) and Chubb and Swift and those guys. I’ve got to be the next one up to keep that going. I’ve just got to keep on working hard and follow my teammates and make sure the next ones up are ready, too.”
White appears ready. Rated the No. 1 running back in the nation when he left Laurinburg, N.C., he finally is 100 percent healthy after overcoming ACL injuries to both his knees. White showed glimpses last season when he came on in the second half of the season and finished with 408 yards and three touchdowns on 78 carries (5.2 ypc). Meanwhile, he and backfield mate James Cook have created the most buzz in Georgia’s preseason camp with many “explosives.”
Quarterback TBD
Smart hasn’t announced a starting quarterback for Georgia’s opener at Arkansas on Saturday, and he probably won’t. Even when Jake Fromm was the undisputed starter for the past two seasons, Smart never made any such declarations. More likely, we’ll know who the Bulldogs' starter is this season when he trots onto the field at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
At this point, it seems clear it will be either redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis or sophomore transfer JT Daniels. It’s very likely we’ll see them both.
After graduate transfer Jamie Newman abruptly opted out three weeks ago, the odds seemed to favor Daniels. He showed up at UGA this summer after starting 11 games as a freshman for USC in 2018 and the opener in 2019. A knee injury in the second quarter of that first game abruptly ended his season. Technically, Daniels had not been cleared for contact as of Monday. A second procedure at the turn of the new year puts him at nine months removed from surgery. But Daniels has continued to work with the No. 1 offense at full speed, and Smart said he expects Daniels to be cleared soon, likely before Saturday’s kickoff.
Pending that rather significant development, Daniels enters the season with a hefty total of 742 career snaps. That’s a good bit more than Mathis, whose total stands at zero.
But Mathis is one of the better comeback stories in all of college football this year. The 6-foot-6, 210-pound Detroit native is only 16 months removed from emergency brain surgery to remove a cyst. After a battery of tests and internal images, Mathis was cleared to play ball over the summer. All he has done since is consistently make the most plays of any of the four scholarship quarterbacks in Georgia’s preseason camp.
The good news is Georgia also has junior Stetson Bennett and freshman Carson Beck to turn to. Smart is confident he can win with any of them.
“We’ve got to go with what we got, and we’re excited about what we’ve got,” he said. “… Whoever it is will not be a guy that played in a lot of football games at an SEC level. So we’ve got to manage that, and we’ve got to play to our strengths. That’s what I’m excited to see.”
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