Hey folks - as a member of the DawgNation community, please remember to abide by simple rules of civil engagement with other members:
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Comments
Where was this talk last year when Beck was the quarterback. Not saying you .... but there was talk that Beck was the problem doesnt seem to be the problem now that he has made it to the third round. Like you said it has always been the play callers and as long as they are there it will always be the play callers.
Gunner is an enigma to me. THere are times when he turns lemons into lemonaide(no one open and he just runs it in for a TD) and you admire his toughness and then there are those times where you clearly see his limitations(too short to stand in the pocket and throw over the middle). Lacks the touch to feather it over the D-linemans heads. THere are the times when he checks down to the RB and there's a receiver running free and you're like "how could you not see him?"
What is perhaps unfair to Gunner is that he hasn't had but 1 wide receiver that can creat space and get open consistently in BRanch. We are limited as far as true playmakers, unlike Ole Miss, we have no true deep ball receivers who can get behind the secondary. And while Gunner can buy a little bit of time with his legs against the pass rush, he is susceptible to being sacked. He doesn't possess elite quicknes in a limited amount of space.
THe little kid for Ole Miss, made some human highlight plays at the QB position or else we win despite not playing our best and the coaches making blunders. He played out of his mind, but he also had the ability to do such. He led his Div 2 team to the NC last year and he comes to Ole Miss and he just may do the same for his 1st year team! To know his story is to know he is a special player. He replaced the QB I thought was a lock for the starting job who went up and down the field against us when Jackson Dart got hurt. That speaks volumes. Hats off to LK who recognized the kids talent and removed his starter going into the season. Hard to imagine CKS doing such a thing.
For me Gunner has to work within the system at UGA. He's a guy that will do what you instruct him to do. He is tenacious and disciplined. He's not going to throw the **** pass and hurt his team. He's also not a guy that you draw up a play for him, and ask him to stand in the pocket and go through all his reads.
Thank goodness we got BRanch out of the portal but McCray looks like he's running with lead cleates on and Mundozie looks like a bust too. Maybe Kirby has it( he seems to cover al his bases) but we need people that are dedicated to finding and securing TP talent. THe days of just recruiting way better than other teams and winning that way are fading fast.
So whats the answer? I don't know. I don't get paid to know. But those that do need to figure it out. It irks me to be honest that Lane Kiffin can go through the TP and bring in basically a whole new team(just 2 starters from the previous year) and whip us 2 of the last 3 games. THe one we manged to win we had to fight or way back in the 4th quarter. Lane will have more rescoures and a better talent pool at LSU.
THe new coach at FLa while at Tulane his defense gave up only 5 more points(averaged) in their 2 games against OLe MIss than we did, and no one could accuse Tulane of having a defensive roster the likes of ours. That's coaching!
Come on Kirby, Bobo, and Schu! Go DAWGS!
@SR_JR…valid points, and I do think Gunner missing open receivers, not giving the play time enough to evolve before bailing out, and just his instinct to run with the ball if he senses a threat, is definitely part of the problem. Maybe it is even most of the problem. He did connect a couple of times with Young against Ole Miss. Ultimately, if you look at the best teams they do have at least one or two elite receivers/playmakers at their disposal. We need that. Branch is as close to "elite" as we get with our group, and many times he's just thrown the ball on screens and short dunks. It's up to him to make additional yards after the catch. I know Kirby and Bobo realize that Gunner's abilities are limited. It's obvious. He's not Dante Moore, Fernando Mendoza, or one of the other elite QBs.
I think it's a combination of a different scheme, better playmakers, better OL, and honestly a better QB that will get us to a more effective, efficient, consistent, and explosive offense going forward.
Connor Riley's shot at Carson Beck is hilarious. Beck didn't regress in 2024. The players around him did. Beck went to Miami where he actually has a feature tailback, a #1 WR (which Zachariah Branch isn't and he certainly wasn't at USC) and OTs that don't give up catastrophic injuries when he is trying to throw downfield and guess what? The successful Beck is back again.
Unlike most people, I didn't see much alleged growth between the Stetson Bennett IV who got benched in 2020 and the SB IV who went to New York in 2022. Instead, I saw the players around him get a lot better. 3 future NFL starters at OT. 5 stars Darnell Washington and James Cook got healthy. Ladd McConkey came out of nowhere to become a future NFL Pro Bowler. And Kenny McIntosh sacrificed his feature back potential and draft status to become the ultimate gadget player to fit Bennett's skill set. (Yes, it would have been in McIntosh's personal interests to play in a pro style offense, rush for 1200-1300 yards and enter the NFL as a 2nd or 3rd round pick instead of a 7th round pick). And Brock Bowers was a generational player as a receiving TE.
Put SB IV on the teams that UGA fielded in 2024 and 2025 and he gets benched again. Put Gunner Stockton in an offense where he gets to throw to Bowers, Washington and McConkey - plus AD Mitchell and George Pickens when those guys were healthy - and hand off to Cook and McIntosh and he puts up even better numbers than SB IV did.
@dawgfromduluth "Freeling completely missed his block on the sack fumble"
If you are referring to the 4th and 2 from the 33 yard line, I don't think they were suppose to snap the ball. That's on Kirby entirely. Over 9 minutes to go, you either hard count to draw them off or take a timeout and punt the ball. Lots of mistakes in that game.
“We screwed that up a little bit,” Smart said in his postgame news conference. “We had a misfire. It was a changeup from a look we had done twice and we knew teams were going to sit back and not honor us because we had not snapped it on those plays in two different locations, two different times. And the ball was not supposed to be snapped in that situation. But that was on us as coaches, that was on me and our guys, it’s not on the players. And Gunner and those guys did a nice job executing it."
We failed to seize the opportunities when presented. Pick a scape goat if you will but please someone identify our shortcomings and actually do something to keep from repeating this over and over
@randomsportsfan "Put Gunner Stockton in an offense where he gets to throw to Bowers, Washington and McConkey - plus AD Mitchell and George Pickens when those guys were healthy - and hand off to Cook and McIntosh and he puts up even better numbers than SB IV did."
Yep, like Bennett said, "It's not the X's and O's, it's the Jimmy's and Joe's."
@MontanaDawg I disagree. Think about it. If every other team needs better players at WR and RB to win national titles, why doesn't UGA also? The answer: you do. UGA needs the same type of All-American (or at least all conference) and high NFL draft pick talent at those positions as everybody else does. Instead of admitting that, UGA fans go all in on defending how Kirby Smart chooses to build a team. When it doesn't work, UGA fans blame the QB and the OC even though UGA has had lots of QBs and OCs under Smart. Stockton is the second QB in a row that UGA fans blamed for failing to win big with Dillon Bell, London Humphries and Cash Jones playing big roles on offense. I don't know ... how about demanding that Smart get better WRs and RBs? Bobo? Same. He is Smart's 4th OC. Like the 5th would do better without elite WRs and RBs.
Exactly - who knows why he snapped it, maybe he heard someone on D’ clap and he decided to snap it, maybe someone moved and he snapped it to catch them in the neutral zone or beyond. Would have to go back and look to really know.
I get the idea to try it maybe twice with getting them offsides….but pretty sure all of it was too big of a risk to take and don’t agree - especially with a center that has only started a couple of games & the situation at hand.
I certainly wouldn’t have tried it.
With all of that said, Ole Miss deserved the win, they were the best team that night. Really think the 3 weeks or whatever the layoff was hurt this young team.
Wouldn’t want anyone else coaching my team other than Kirby - and I trust whatever changes he makes or doesn’t.
Who else has won more games as he has the last 5 years.
An abysmal 3rd quarter got us behind the 8 ball yet we responded in the 4th and IMO would have won if we had run the ball two or even 3 times on 2nd and goal from the two, the I formation has not been outlawed even though it's been widely discarded by college teams but is still alive and well in the NFL.
@Eastmandawg "Wouldn’t want anyone else coaching my team other than Kirby - and I trust whatever changes he makes or doesn’t."
Absolutely. Heck of a coach. He's made some really gutsy calls over the past couple of years in big games. Seems like 9 times out of 10 he pulls it off.
I admire Stockton’s moxy, but his ceiling is limited. The fact that the coaching staff feels he provides the team with the best chance of winning says a lot about recruiting and QB development. Let’s have a true competition among the QB’s on the roster and any that come in through the TP. Up till now, it feels like completion only exists for the other positions.
truth to what both of y’all said - there is also some truth to “the team goes nowhere without the OL”… it all starts there.
The OL was very young and certainly miss their QB of them all - Bobo. They all had a tough night. It’s tough to replace someone like Bobo and not skip a beat. Seems like they had injuries every week - but that all is part of it and no excuse.
Also think the NIL has changed CF.
Having a shopping list for those positions mentioned is great - but how do you appropriate it all (money). I mean it’s not limitless and I certainly don’t believe that you completely build a team through the portal is sustainable.
I guess all of it will prove out, but I like the way Kirby builds his team - HS first and then supplement thru the portal.
I believe that is the most sustainable. Pretty sure no one has adjusted to it all long term.
With half the team being freshman and sophomores …I think Kirby and staff did a heckuva job this year.
@randomsportsfan…I'm not sure what you disagree with in my posts. Hmmm ?
Yes, Gunner (or whomever is at QB) needs elite playmakers around him, just like Stetson did. We had those guys then. We really don't have those now. I'm saying we DO need those kind of players, but we also need Gunner to step up his game. If he can't make reads, bails on plays too early, misses open receivers, can't make the throws, then what good is it going to do if we just get better players? We've got arguably the best TE group in the country, but we rarely throw to those guys. Elias Williams is a monster - like Washington was - and an easy target. But we don't throw to him nor do we throw much to Delp or Luckie. Instead, they block so we can have a more effective run game. I'm not blaming our Rebels loss or the whole season results on Gunner, because he is just one cog in the wheel that can effect an offense's performance. But he simply has got to improve his game if he is going to start next season. That is undeniable.
We did a very good job improving our running game and stopping the run this season. There was noticeable improvement there from last season. I'm not as concerned about our RB room as the other parts of our offense. But, we do need guys like Frazier (who should be back next season) and Bowens to continue to grind and improve. Should we pickup another RB? That's up to Kirby.
Like I stated below, I think it's a combination of a different scheme, better playmakers, better OL, and honestly a better QB that will get us to a more effective, efficient, consistent, and explosive offense going forward.
Oh Boy !! It’s Convenience Time !! Let’s blame it All on Gunner !! Whoopie !! That’ll do the trick !! Let’s let a whole bunch of people off the hook !!
NO !! 34 points scored would be Plenty enough in the majority of opponents Dawgs face. Kirby’s Defense failed every bit as much if not More than the Offense !!
Now many are saying that Chambliss is Vastly superior to Gunner. But take away the Desperation Safety points and look how many points Chambliss and Ole Miss Really accounted for. Three more points. Some will say Oh but your forgetting the yardage. Yardage doesn’t mean much if you don’t Score. Go Back and look at some of the teams we played that racked up a bunch of yardage but Couldn’t Convert in the red zone. THEN go back and look at Gunner having Less yardage but DID convert ( Numerous times) in the red zone !! The biggest and loser Cop Out is to lay it all on the QB !!
Gunner didn’t throw any INTs and he didn’t have any fumbles. It’s Not his fault that the Dawgs Defense played React instead of Attack !! And it’s Not his fault that he Has to obey Bobo’s play calls.
In the season prior the Dawgs had to go to OT to beat both GT and TX late in the season. The only OT this season was very early against TN !!
This young man sacrificed his body to absolutely Brutal shots all season long !! It’s actually Incredible that his body isn’t critically injured !! But Some Dawgs fans quicker than a speedy RB want to lay the majority of the blame on Gunner !!
They say Oh we want an Elite QB like Raiola or Curtis !! You know the bright shiny five stars !! Yeah who want Tons of NIL $$ to come here !! AND might well buck at the very first sign of trouble via the TP for even More NIL $$ !! Then play against UGA !!
Here we have Gunner a guy that Loves being a Dawg and has Proved it time and again !! Yet Some fans want to show him the door for what they Think would be some Elite dude !! Dawgs have been snubbed Three times by the so called Elite !! Raiola, Manning, Curtis !! It’s yet to be seen with Curtis but I won’t be surprised if he’s a big fail at Vandy !!
The Dawgs are a TEAM !! And the Team failed, not Just Gunner.
Kirby did Not have the Dawgs properly prepared. Bobo’s play calling wasn’t working and he couldn’t adapt and change. The O Line didn’t do very well had some bad misses and failed to make holes at times for RBs. And the Defense played React instead of Attack football. Heck even Woodring missed an important FG !!
NO it wasn’t Gunner’s best game for sure. But with people Failing all around him Including the HC what did Yall expect him to do put on a Superman cape and pull it out for us ? Even if he had We See the Real appreciation from Some of you. If he Had pulled the game out and then we lost to Miami the Same people would be right here Eager to bash on him and whine about not having an “Elite” QB !!
So How Long do you think Mr. Elite is gonna allow a mediocre O Line let him get sacked and His body beat to H e l l before Mr. Elite hits the TP for More big NIL $$ ? Hmm ?
My comments here are Only for the ones that the shoe fits !! Even Kirby and the coaching staff !! Blaming Gunner for that Loss is a Cop Out Extraordinaire and down right shameful !! If you’re not in the bash Gunner group then my comments aren’t addressed to you.
P.S. I didn’t know we had so many Prophets and Crystal Ball owners among us !! Already predicting what a miserable year next year will be !! Maybe you need to move to Fl. or CA. they have more Fair Weather in those places !! Let the down votes roll I don’t give a flying c r a p. Least I know the true meaning of loyalty.