- Jun 10, 2014
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Well I guess the carriage turned back into a pumpkin, eh? We've all been talking all year about how our depth wasn't that great, especially in the secondary, and it finally reared its ugly head yesterday. Looks like the rumors of Stewart being suspended were true, and then throw in Henderson's injury, and we were Old Mother Hubbard in the defensive backfield the whole game. I'm honestly shocked at how long it took UGA to realize it, I figured they were just going to keep trying to run the ball into a wall until they lost the game, but alas. Anyway, onto the specifics.
I'm sure a lot of people are angry with Franks this morning, and he did plenty to earn that anger. Overthrowing that flea flicker on the first play was just a sign of things to come. But as I always do, I want to tell people to pump the brakes a little bit. We've known all along that Franks is a streaky player, and l firmly believe that missing that first pass messed with his head the rest of the game. We only completed a small handful of downfield passes after that, including his best throw of the game by FAR, the TD to Swain. People are going to be mad at him for fumbling on the 1 yard line, but direct some of that towards Mullen for putting him in a situation where ball security is paramount. Franks doesn't have the greatest ball security while running, so he shoudn't be plowing into the line coming off our own goal line. Either way, I still have confidence that he can shake that performance off and come back strong against Missouri next week, a team with a slightly less talented defense than UGA.
Emory Jones' appearance was obviously a surprise. He looked good running the ball, but hesitated a little too long on that one option he fumbled. Credit the defender for making a hell of a play, but if Jones gets that pitch off a split second sooner, Scarlett is running free. I did like Mullen throwing that wrinkle in during the off week, and it shows he's willing to utilize a kid's four games as much as he can before shutting him down for a redshirt. The deep ball Jones threw was a great toss considering it looked like he threw it off his back foot, so he clearly has an arm. We'll see if Mullen starts using him as a Tebow type, where he can run some RPO's and get the defense guessing a little bit before he burns them deep.
Defensively, that was as bad as we've looked all year, even worse than the Kentucky game. Other than holding strong inside the 5 on the first drive and the drive after the fumble, they just couldn't come up with any big plays. No big sacks, no turnovers, no 3rd down stops when we needed it. And as I alluded to in the first paragraph, it's just the culmination of years of bad recruiting in the secondary that caught up to us. I hope like hell that Stewart's suspension was only the one game and that whatever is ailing Henderson isn't serious enough to keep him out next week, because we'll need them both for Missouri. On the bright side, from where I was sitting, it seemed like Reese and Joseph both played great games and had UGA's RB's bottled up for the majority of the game. I never thought if we contained their run game that Fromm could beat us, but I also didn't think we'd have our 2nd and 3rd string guys out there the whole game, either.
At the end of the day, it just came down to we were playing a team with a lot more talent than we had, and we didn't play anywhere near clean enough to win a game like that. Winning a game with a -3 turnover ratio is hard enough, but when it's against a team that was a c*nt hair away from the national championship last year, it's almost impossible. I hate losing to Georgia almost more than anything, but we showed we belong on the big stage. We're not at the top yet, and it still might take some time, but this team is resilient, they're hungry, and they don't quit. After the last nine years, that's about as much as you can ask for. We're playing with house money this year, so it's not going to be pretty all the time, but it hasn't fallen apart yet.
Mullen's biggest test now is holding this thing together. Too many times in the last 9 seasons, we've seen the team completely collapse down the stretch in November. In '10, we got housed at home by SC in a game that could have clinched the East, then got murdered by FSU. In '11, we lost to SC and FSU again. In '12, we needed a blocked punt miracle TD to beat LA-Lafayette and sleptwalked through lackluster wins over Mizzou and Jacksonville St. before showing up to pound FSU. In '13, we went 0-fer including Georgia Southern. In '14, we choked away the SC and FSU games. In '15, we needed our cokehead kicker to bail us out against Vandy, needed OT against FAU, and got curbstomped against FSU. In '16, we got killed by Arkansas and FSU (although we had the big road win at LSU). Last year, our only win was against the rebooted UAB program.
Someone should just put together a lowlight reel of all those losses and show it to the team some time this week. That cannot happen again. I truly think a lot of our issues in November have been a lack of conditioning. This is the month where we'll find out if this whole Savage program has paid dividends or not. This is the month where we'll find out if the players have truly and completely bought into Mullen's "relentless effort" mantra. Because it's easy to play hard and show relentless effort early in the season when all your goals are still within sight, and when you haven't played 2/3 of your games. They're going to be tired, beat up, and sore from here on out. The best teams fight through that and finish strong. The worst teams wither and limp into the offseason. And all of that starts at the top. So this is it. If Mullen wants to close with a strong recruiting class, these next four games are going to be the key. Recruiting kids coming off a 10-2 year is a hell of a lot easier than recruiting them coming off a 8-4 year when you went 2-3 down the stretch.
Tough loss last night, but all is not lost. I believe in Dan Mullen, and I believe in our Gators.
I'm sure a lot of people are angry with Franks this morning, and he did plenty to earn that anger. Overthrowing that flea flicker on the first play was just a sign of things to come. But as I always do, I want to tell people to pump the brakes a little bit. We've known all along that Franks is a streaky player, and l firmly believe that missing that first pass messed with his head the rest of the game. We only completed a small handful of downfield passes after that, including his best throw of the game by FAR, the TD to Swain. People are going to be mad at him for fumbling on the 1 yard line, but direct some of that towards Mullen for putting him in a situation where ball security is paramount. Franks doesn't have the greatest ball security while running, so he shoudn't be plowing into the line coming off our own goal line. Either way, I still have confidence that he can shake that performance off and come back strong against Missouri next week, a team with a slightly less talented defense than UGA.
Emory Jones' appearance was obviously a surprise. He looked good running the ball, but hesitated a little too long on that one option he fumbled. Credit the defender for making a hell of a play, but if Jones gets that pitch off a split second sooner, Scarlett is running free. I did like Mullen throwing that wrinkle in during the off week, and it shows he's willing to utilize a kid's four games as much as he can before shutting him down for a redshirt. The deep ball Jones threw was a great toss considering it looked like he threw it off his back foot, so he clearly has an arm. We'll see if Mullen starts using him as a Tebow type, where he can run some RPO's and get the defense guessing a little bit before he burns them deep.
Defensively, that was as bad as we've looked all year, even worse than the Kentucky game. Other than holding strong inside the 5 on the first drive and the drive after the fumble, they just couldn't come up with any big plays. No big sacks, no turnovers, no 3rd down stops when we needed it. And as I alluded to in the first paragraph, it's just the culmination of years of bad recruiting in the secondary that caught up to us. I hope like hell that Stewart's suspension was only the one game and that whatever is ailing Henderson isn't serious enough to keep him out next week, because we'll need them both for Missouri. On the bright side, from where I was sitting, it seemed like Reese and Joseph both played great games and had UGA's RB's bottled up for the majority of the game. I never thought if we contained their run game that Fromm could beat us, but I also didn't think we'd have our 2nd and 3rd string guys out there the whole game, either.
At the end of the day, it just came down to we were playing a team with a lot more talent than we had, and we didn't play anywhere near clean enough to win a game like that. Winning a game with a -3 turnover ratio is hard enough, but when it's against a team that was a c*nt hair away from the national championship last year, it's almost impossible. I hate losing to Georgia almost more than anything, but we showed we belong on the big stage. We're not at the top yet, and it still might take some time, but this team is resilient, they're hungry, and they don't quit. After the last nine years, that's about as much as you can ask for. We're playing with house money this year, so it's not going to be pretty all the time, but it hasn't fallen apart yet.
Mullen's biggest test now is holding this thing together. Too many times in the last 9 seasons, we've seen the team completely collapse down the stretch in November. In '10, we got housed at home by SC in a game that could have clinched the East, then got murdered by FSU. In '11, we lost to SC and FSU again. In '12, we needed a blocked punt miracle TD to beat LA-Lafayette and sleptwalked through lackluster wins over Mizzou and Jacksonville St. before showing up to pound FSU. In '13, we went 0-fer including Georgia Southern. In '14, we choked away the SC and FSU games. In '15, we needed our cokehead kicker to bail us out against Vandy, needed OT against FAU, and got curbstomped against FSU. In '16, we got killed by Arkansas and FSU (although we had the big road win at LSU). Last year, our only win was against the rebooted UAB program.
Someone should just put together a lowlight reel of all those losses and show it to the team some time this week. That cannot happen again. I truly think a lot of our issues in November have been a lack of conditioning. This is the month where we'll find out if this whole Savage program has paid dividends or not. This is the month where we'll find out if the players have truly and completely bought into Mullen's "relentless effort" mantra. Because it's easy to play hard and show relentless effort early in the season when all your goals are still within sight, and when you haven't played 2/3 of your games. They're going to be tired, beat up, and sore from here on out. The best teams fight through that and finish strong. The worst teams wither and limp into the offseason. And all of that starts at the top. So this is it. If Mullen wants to close with a strong recruiting class, these next four games are going to be the key. Recruiting kids coming off a 10-2 year is a hell of a lot easier than recruiting them coming off a 8-4 year when you went 2-3 down the stretch.
Tough loss last night, but all is not lost. I believe in Dan Mullen, and I believe in our Gators.
