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WATCH: 3 pressing questions for shaken Georgia football program
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Posts: 10,410 admin
WATCH: 3 pressing questions for shaken Georgia football program
Georgia football has to answer serious questions if it is to advance to the next level and beat Alabama in a rematch of the SEC Championship Game
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I feel like we've seen this movie before...is it Fromm or Fields? Well, Kirby picked the wrong horse that time...hopefully, he gets it right this go round...
Not Fromm-Fields. Fromm knew the offense and Justin was a true freshman still learning while Fromm was winning games and leading his team to the brink of another CFP (I still contend UGA deserved the spot in 2018). This is more about injury status and a guy being ready to compete, in my opinion.
So is Mike on JT Daniels's payroll? He is far from a slam dunk IMO. He threw a lot of picks against terrible Pac 12 defenses. Ask D-Rob the difference between playing in the SEC and the Pac 12. Mike knows he's great because of "30 minutes of scrimmage." Seriously. That is an actual sentence from a paid reporter. NFL teams are knocking down Mike's door because of his clear scouting acumen. Remember that Franks, Nix and Guarantano were all 5 stars, with NFL arms, and Bennett is a better college QB than all of them.
Zeus ran it just as well as the other guys, we just stopped running it, period. And funny how CBS knew that White was injured against UT but Mike seems clueless about that fact, though he supposedly covering the team every day.
Mike said Daniels has an "NFL arm and acumen" after 30 minutes of scrimmage. "Acumen" is a nebulous term (maybe he's referring to height and other things) but yes, most educated football observers can tell if a QB has an "NFL arm" in a 30-minute scrimmage.
Stetson has done some very good things. He's also drastically underthrown some wide-open receivers, including Burton on the 36-yard gain down the sideline that would have/should have been an easy touchdown if the pass hits him anywhere near in-stride.
Is all the love for JT Daniels from some UGA fans irrational? Perhaps. But it seems the angry defensiveness of Bennett is just as irrational.
I know many hundreds of Dawg fans have the same pressing question. The only thing that took us out of that game on Saturday was the abandonment of our successful run game, period. Why did the coaching staff abandon the run game? It put Stetson in a no win situation. Throw the ball 40 times? To beat Bama? Has ANYBODY ever done that?
Successful run game? If we don’t have an effective passing attack with legitimate deep threats, we won’t have success running against playoff caliber teams. They’ll load the box and dare us to throw, as they did in 2019 and 2018. Look at what happened when we played playoff teams in both those years. Our run game didn’t get us wins.
IMO - I don't think there is a quick or easy fix to this "typical" outcome that we have grown to expect. I am very confident in the programs ability to make changes, changes that lead to wins. I have seen it against Auburn, when we got whipped and then we return the favor and win the SEC. This has occurred every year under Coach Smart, lose one game and make the adjustments, get better, put the kids in a position to succeed. The one thing that worries me, the "Top 3" teams are "lights out" on offense...I don't want to admit it, but when we are not getting the ball to our player makers, we are just average. Is JT the answer? Is the play calling a handicap and are we good enough to compete with the "Top 3"? not sure, but we have 2 weeks to figure it out! Recover from a beat down that you should've won and get better every week. They have got some work to do!
From the videos I've watched of JT (2 years ago), he had a lot of very impressive things going for him. Sure, you never know as it's USC but the same could've been said for Newman who was lauded as one of the Heisman contenders early while playing okay for Wake Forest.
The difficult part, as fans, is that we have not enough information. We didn't even have a Spring Game to get some semblance of a reference point and no paid victories meant things were tough. Even Arkansas is a better team than expected.
My hope is that the practices change from what I assume are "easy situations" like making soft 5 yard passes to more difficult situations like being chased by a defender while making a 40 yard as well as instances to where defenders try to block your passes. In order to really evaluate them, the situations need to be presented in practice to where there were failures against Bama. Bennett should be given a chance, but he needs to be able to complete passes that put him at a disadvantage with his height since that was exploited.
If you aren't "simulating" against the Bama team and how they played, practice isn't going to help. You must adapt and be able to beat the "Big 3" in order to win. You need to act like we're playing Bama again in 2 weeks and come up with a new approach to compensate for failures.
No, no, no. You don't seem to understand nor remember. Alabama would've "loaded the box" should we tried to run too much. Just look at the Box Score from the National Championship game against Bama. We ran 45 times with 2 of the best RBs in the NFL (Chubb averages 5.2 yards per carry and Michel 4.2). You would think we would've crushed Bama, but we lost.
Why? Blame it on the o-line, etc, but we tried Chubb 18 times and he only got 25 yards TOTAL.
You MUST pass to be able to run. That's been our problem over the years. They stack the box and wait for the run up the middle and stop us.
Let's not take the circumstance at the beginning of the season and apply it to the end of the season and in certain aspects during the season. Smart chose Fromm, and did everything to protect Fromm from a QB controversy by limiting Fields reps, particularly as a passer. Fast forward to the Sugar Bowl with Fromm struggling mightily. The utter refusal to play Fields sealed our fate.
The goal is to win the CFP, not get their and lose, or get honorable mention as a team that deserved to be their. Winning teams have had dynamic QB play which Fromm was not capable of.
Did Smart set a bad precedent by benching Mathis, who he clearly thought was a better QB than Bennett, after a bad half and is going to ride with Bennett in spite of his bad half? I don't know about Daniels but Mathis won the job out of camp and shouldn't that afford him another opportunity. We needed a spark in the Arkansas game but who believes we would have lost to Auburn and Tennessee with Mathis as the QB? I don't.
Mike, I think you misunderstood me in regards to your response to my initial post below. Injury aside - My main point was that Kirby needs to decide on which horse we are going to ride - in general. That could be Beck, Daniels, Mathis, or Bennett. Daniels has experience and has seen plenty of practice and scrimmage time. All these guys other than Bennett are 4 or 5 star dudes.
In the Fromm-Fields decision you could have ridden Fields into potentially a better situation than with Fromm. Look at what Fields - with hardly any experience at Georgia and no game experience or familiarity with Ohio State's offense at all - and look what he has done from Day 1. You can't deny that Fields is an elite QB already. He is leading the Ohio State offense and making it look pretty easy in a brand new system that he had never seen before.
Fields was as green and unfamiliar with Ohio State's offense as any of these guys at UGA are currently. But somehow their staff was able to develop Fields and put him in a winning position immediately. Personally, as much as I like Kirby, I'm not convinced he knows how to see and develop true elite QB potential. We're going to probably lose 1 or 2 of these QBs by next year if we don't play them.
We are going to lose quarterbacks regardless. Only 1 can play at a time, none of them want to "share" the job (nor should they) and it's the college game today to move on if you can't get playing time, even if you don't really deserve playing time. Bennett will never leave UGA because he couldn't get a Division 1 scholarship ANYWHERE else. As for the Fromm-Fields debate, Kirby had no choice. Fromm did nothing to lose the job and the times that Fields played, he struggled. He might have improved, but if we had lost an SEC game or two as he grew into the job, the wolves would have been out. And Fromm would likely have transferred. But the kid had just taken the team to within a defensive breakdown of a NC, so why should he lose his job then? How was Kirby to know how things would unfold? And remember, UGA made it back to the SECCG last year. If we had won, we would have made the playoffs. Does anyone think Fields would have led us to victory over Joe Burrow and that LSU team? It's not likely. So what we lost is Fields for THIS YEAR. And two years ago, how would Kirby have known that Fromm would head to the NFL for his senior season and that out of five potential quarterbacks, the best one would be a former walkon who looks like he's still in junior high? Also, Fields could have always redshirted to put distance between him and Fromm, hung around and played. He made the right choice for himself, obviously, but we're saying all of this in hindsight. He could have gone to OSU and flopped.
@ DallasDawg...
There are always going to be 'what ifs' around who to play. Bottom line: We need much more than a 'game manager' QB to get us to the next level. Does Kirby realize that?
Fromm was the safe choice, but dual-threat 5 star recruit Fields was potentially Georgia's future. I would have gone with Fields. I don't tend to do the safe thing when you are trying to get a Natty. Ohio State developed Fields under a brand new coach, Ryan Day, on Day One.
It's not just OSU and Fields. Clemson and Bama seem to also be able to get someone with little if any game experience and develop them pretty darn quickly into becoming a stud starting QB within their offensive scheme. And I'm not just talking about the current QBs at either school. They do this year-after-year with 4 and 5-star recruits.
Coach Smart is on record stating Bennett has been making poor decisions the entire year, and he’s just been lucky. That makes me think they knew what Bennett had to offer before the season began and that they’d decided he’d be the starter awhile back. Anyone who thinks he did enough to earn the starter role until the Bama game must only look at the wins and losses. His lack of arm talent has eliminated the most talented of the receivers, deep explosive plays, and the team was getting by because of a dominant defense. It’s starting to feel like a system of favoritism is in play. The best chance of winning my ass, that’s some ole bull***t.
Ok.....🙄
My statement aged really well didn’t it?
It did?