Is it "we should never lose to Mississippi State and Ole Miss" OR is it "the wins are only Ole Miss and Mississippi State"?
Say what you will (and you are), but while you are busy finding reasons to not be happy, we know our defense is substantially better than the last few seasons. Hey, hate Richt/Bobo/McGarity/Grantham/JT3/Kasay all you want. Be honest about the place we are in. Not recognizing the improvement is being as intellectually dishonest as the inveterate homers that want Richt regardless of 13-0 or 0-12.
At the same point last year, we had lost to Colorado (who only had beaten two meh teams). We had lost to Arkansas (who had only beaten FCS and Sunbelt teams, as well as a pedestrian, to that point, A&M and lost to Alabama). We had lost to South Carolina (who had wins over Furman, Southern Miss, Alabama and a loss to Auburn). The difference was we weren't competent doing anything other than punting and kicking field goals.
I'll grant we have much more to go before we'll come close to calling this thing turned around. Three years of mediocre and worse isn't solved in four games. I recognize we are trending in the right direction and with the defense we have, that will likely continue.
TD
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15 comments:
Considering this is the first time we have had a winning record since beating ULaLa last year, I'll take it!
Last year we beat the following teams by the following scores:
Louisiana Lafayette, 55-7
Tennessee, 41-14
Vanderbilt, 43-0
Kentucky, 44-31
Idaho State, 55-7
Georgia Tech, 42-34
So why exactly is it a big deal that we beat Coastal Carolina, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State this year by scores of 59-0, 27-13, and 24-10, respectively? I fail to see your logic.
Absolutely true. However, we still have yet to win a truly big game since 2007. We gave away South Carolina, which was one of our two biggest of the year. If this trend continues, the real test will be if we beat Florida this year. Do that, and then we truly turned a corner. Don't, and if you are intellectually honest, you have to ask yourself when will we win a big game again. Good post.
Come on...three mediocre seasons?
10-3 with a final ranking of #10 in coaches and #13 in the AP isn't mediocre.
Now, having said that, 2009 was decidedly mediocre and 2010 was just bad.
I fully recognize improvement. The defense is darn good. I also said last year UGA could improve but not still be on par with the competition.
The problem is Bobo is still falling flat for atleast a quarter at a time. What did the UGA offense do in the 2nd half of these past 2 games? Turnovers are still a problem. Special teams is beginning to be a concern again.
The question is still on CMR, will he do what is needed in all areas of the game?
My concern is UGA this year turning into UT '07, they backdoor into a SECCG with a team that is good in some areas but far from great, thus extending the slide to mediocrity.
So 10-4, with a loss to National Champion Alabama or LSU in the SECG and an CapOne Bowl win over Nebraska would be mediocre?
"We should never lose to Mississippi State and Ole Miss" and "the wins are only Ole Miss and Mississippi State" are exactly the same thing. How do you not see that? We should never lose to them and beating them is good, but not fantastic. It is to be expected. I am very glad we won, but I am not ecstatic.
Now, onto your bigger point, I see improvement on defense for sure. It's obvious. Offensively, I don't think there has been much improvement at all over last year, save Crowell (who, so far, has been awesome except for checking out of the game every two minutes). But the offense scored a bunch of points last year so major improvement was not necessarily needed by the offense.
I get what you're saying, but it's just put up or shut up time for Richt. So far, the last three games, we have won. We'll see what happens the rest of the season.
GO DAWGS!
By your own definition (see "three years of mediocrity")...it would be, right?
Anyway, I always like looking at the Sagarin rankings (and other computer/stat based models) rather than the AP and Coaches poll for some interesting nuggets.
Here's what I found for today's topic: admittedly it is a small sample size, but the Sagarin Predictor ranking has us at #15..that's a positive development versus last year at the same time. There are reasons to be optimistic and positive. But at the same time, this is a team that has proven over the past two seasons that they can find a way to lose games that statistically they should win. This weekend's game is a very big measuring stick.
BTW- All this talk about being in the 'drivers seat' in the East is bull crap. In order to win the East, you have to go at least 4-1 against the other 5 teams. No team in the history of the SECCG has ever come out of the East with a record of anything less than 4-1. USCar is 2-0, Florida is 2-0, UT is 0-1, UGA is 0-1, Vandy is 0-1, and UK is 0-1. We can effectively eliminate UT this weekend. Eliminating a team from contention is a good first step towards getting to the game.
"So 10-4, with a loss to National Champion Alabama or LSU in the SECG and an CapOne Bowl win over Nebraska would be mediocre?"
Who are responding to?
Tyler,
I think you are right on with your comments. Obviously this week is a big test and anyone who thinks Tennessee will play like a rollover is thinking we are a bigger dawg than we are. I am tired of all the Bobo crap for right now. Perhaps he(Or Richt) recognized that Murray was having a very bad day and really did not want to put the game at risk when we all knew that MSU was not going to score on our "D". Let's take wins as they are, wins against SEC competition. Nonetheless the jury is still out on where we go after this season.
Aladawg
We are improved; however, we have yet to beat a "ranked" team.
When you award 8 walk-on scholarships as Richt did this year, we can not compete with Alabama, LSU, or ranked teams.
Wait, who hates Kasay?!
So that assumption of 10-4 means a loss, in addition to the SECCG, to whom exactly?
For us to get there, it couldn't be against an SEC foe, so it's one of the OOC games? You think we're running the SEC slate from here on out?
I want to open a casino just to take your money.
If we go 6-2 in the conference, we'll play in Atlanta.
Only if that loss is to Auburn. We can't lose another SEC East game and expect to be in Atlanta. No one...ever...ever ever ever...has lost more than one SEC East game and gone to Atlanta.
The only team that has gone worse than 4-1 in the SEC East OR West and made it to the championship game is the 93 Bammers and the only reason they went is because Auburn (who was undefeated at 1st in the SECW) was ineligible.
Conventional wisdom says to look at the overall SEC record first and then figure out the tiebreakers second. I'm here to tell you conventional wisdom sucks. We shouldn't be thinking about Atlanta until we win a game in the SEC East.
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