For the individuals who eat, drink and sleep offense at Georgia, it’s hard not to think about what might have been this season.
As it is, the Bulldogs are on track to set virtually every offensive record at the school. They arrived in Jacksonville, Fla., for Wednesday’s Gator Bowl with statistically the best offense the school has fielded. That they did so with eight of their top skill players missing more than 37 games combined makes that a jaw-dropping accomplishment.
Georgia (8-4) enters its bowl game averaging 38.2 points per game. The school record is 37.8 points, set last season. The Bulldogs also are outpacing the record for yards per game (489.93, ahead of 467.64 last season).
The Bulldogs set records for first downs passing (169, eclipsing the 163 in 2008) and first downs (302 in 12 games, ahead of the 297 in 14 games last season).
Georgia needs 227 yards against Nebraska to finish with the most passing yards in a season, which would represent more yards in 13 games than the current record of 3,991 in 14 games, set last season. Five pass completions against the Cornhuskers would set a single-season record (currently 272).
All that is well and good, but it’s hard not to imagine what those numbers might have looked like had tailback Todd Gurley not missed four games, had tailback Keith Marshall played more than five, had dynamic wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell played even one. Factoring in Mitchell’s average yards gained per game last season with Gurley’s and Marshall’s from this season, that’s 287 yards per game in missing output on offense.
“You can’t sit around and say why is this happening to us?” said Mike Bobo, who was named college football’s offensive coordinator of the year by 247Sports last week. “You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do this week. That’s what we did as a coaching staff. We tried to get the players to buy into what we were doing and keep playing hard for each other and they’ve done that this year for the most part.”
For every Justin Scott-Wesley and Michael Bennett who went down, the Bulldogs had a Rhett McGowan or Rantavious Wooten step up. And when both Gurley and Marshall were sidelined for Tennessee, freshman tailback J.J. Green came through with 129 yards to help score an overtime victory. Fellow freshman Brendan Douglas had some big moments as well.
There was one stretch where Georgia’s offensive machine sputtered, however, and that was at the height of the injury onslaught. The Bulldogs managed 454 yards against Missouri on Oct. 12, but committed four turnovers. A week later they managed only 221 yards while committing three more turnovers against Vanderbilt. They lost both games.
“When you’re going through it, you don’t really stop to think about that kind of stuff,” coach Mark Richt said. “But after the season I watched the TV copy of the Missouri game and I saw the graphic they put up. ‘Gurley out. Keith Marshall out. Bennett out. Justin Scott-Wesley out. Malcolm Mitchell out.’ And that was just offense. Those were just the headliners.”
Said Bobo: “There was definitely a lull there in the Missouri and Vanderbilt games. … There was an adjustment period there that we had to go through. The Missouri game we stayed aggressive, but turned the ball over some and had some timing issues. We tried to slow it down in the Vanderbilt game and just didn’t play well and had to go back to the drawing board. But the guys responded and came back and played well the rest of the year.”
Having a quarterback such as Aaron Murray certainly helped. The fifth-year senior put it in another gear after the Vanderbilt debacle and distributed the football masterfully. Georgia had a different leading receiver in seven games.
Then Murray went down with an ACL injury against Kentucky. But the Bulldogs were undeterred with Hutson Mason at the controls and finished with 1,097 yards and 100 points in their final two games.
“I think that’s a testament to what we run, our schemes and stuff,” junior receiver Chris Conley said. “We have a lot opportunities to be successful when we execute. The younger guys have learned, if you’re ready when it’s your time to step in, everybody can be like, ‘wow, I didn’t know he could do that.’”
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