January 3, 2006
Some thoughts
Photo: I don't remember anything this awesome happening. I think it's a fark from Georgiadogs.com.
Gag. I don't have the stomach for a full blown write up. I'm watching the Depends Bowl right now on ABC. I'll just say this:
The Good:
- The heart our guys showed to keep fighting.
- Shockley looked amazing.
- How about AJ Bryant's TD. The kid gets shoulder surgery in a few days, but he went up and snagged the first important TD of his career. Hopefully that will help his confidence for next season.
- The beer was cold at the Dome.
- Congrats to WVU fans. They have gone 100 years without being able to eat their cereal on plates because they had lost all of their bowls. That all changed on Monday.
The Bad and the Ugly:
1. Willie Martinez's game plan. WVU played with the following personnel group for much of the night: 5 OL, 1 QB and 2 RBs and 3 WR. For no logical reason whatsoever, we elected to cover the slot WR with Brandon Miller (SLB). That meant that we only had 4 DL and 2 LBs in the box for much of the night.
If they've got 8 guys involved in the running game (5 OL + 2 RBs + 1 QB) and you're trying to defend that with only 6 guys, you're dead. Why didn't we roll a safety down to cover the Slot WR and keep Miller in the box? The entire game plan was idiotic starting from that point. It wasn't like they were going to throw it much.
2. Tackling / Shedding Blockers. Our LB play has really regressed since last year. Janeck needs to find a way to coach these guys up b/c what we saw last night won't cut it. We haven't looked that bad at LB since Van Gorder's 2001 season if not the Ramsey year.
3. Substition Patterns: I don't get why we refuse to sub at LB or DB during games. We aren't afraid of trucking Marcus Howard, 215 lb DE, during important moments of the Auburn game. Yet, we refuse to bring in second teamers at LB or Safety in key moments. It's much harder to tackle when you are exhausted. Martinez must develop depth with next year's defense. As ScenicCity said on ThePorch today, we play 10 games in a row next season. If we don't develop more depth our goose is cooked.
4. I'm no prude or conservative nellie, but great googly moogly the scumbag sitting behind me in Section 215 was an all-time jackass for the ages. He was a Georgia fan who used the line on another Georgia fan (a male), "I'd have you writing bad checks by sundown" to describe his plans for the other individual. I don't even know what that means, but given the broader context of the convo..it was the creepiest thing I've ever heard.
For the takes of other UGA bloggers:
Kyle on Football
Gunslingers
I'm a Realist
Hamp Tanner
The Drizzle (profanity)
Hey Jenny Slater (caution raw analogy)
Oh well. A season recap and 2006 predictions note is coming soon. Once I pull myself together.
pwd
Labels:
College Bowls
13 comments:
A photo of Steve Slaton actually being tackled? Son, sell that picture to the National Enquirer so they can put it up alongisde their photos of Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster.
Dead on regarding linebackers not getting off of the blocks. There were also examples of LBs side-stepping blockers and taking themselves right out of the play. Happened on Slaton's first 52 yard TD.
Jancek needs to work very hard this off-season to coach up some tough and fast linebackers or we will see more of this next year with Gerald and Kedrick missing from the middle.
LB play was our achilles heel throughout the year. And I will say this, which will be slightly unpopular... Blue is a step slow. He hits like a sledge hammer, but he is a step slow as seen when chasing McFadden, Aromashodu, White and Slaton. Thomas Davis had closing speed, but Blue is a step slow. I still hope he will have a great NFL career, but I think he will have to beef up and play outside linebacker. Too slow for safety.
Go Dawgs.
Blue's issue is less speed than Angles.
He takes some lousy angles at times that have flat out killed us. Two of the big runs in the Sugar and McFadden's long run were both horrible angles from Blue. He's not as instinctive in that area as TD, Jones or Phillips. More like Bierra in that regard.
What angers me the most about this whole situation is that everyone in America knew what WVU was going to do in this game, yet Martinez was unable to plan accordingly in a month. Why in the world did we have only 6 men in the box most of the game against a team that couldn't do anything BUT rush? Why did Martinez not force them to beat us deep? I could stomach the loss a lot more if we had forced them to beat us through the air and they did, but we simply let them run all over us -- we didn't even try.
That, coupled with the inability to realize WVU would probably fake punt, is what kills me. Did anyone watching the game not realize that WVU could easily, and probably would, fake the punt? Losing games I can handle, but simply being be ignorant towards the other team and the situation is unacceptable.
I'm not in the know, but what do you all think about Martinez's future? Auburn and now WVU, and its not exactly like they beat us with smoke and mirrors, both teams simply ran the same play over, and over, and over again and we just "couldn't figure it out".
I think we need to give Martinez more than a year, for crying out loud. Van Gorder's 2001 defense was quite porous at times as well.
Don't think I'm not frustrated by the scheme we seemed to have in place Monday night, though, becasue I am frustrated by it. I just also think that Martines shouldn't be anywhere close to a hot seat yet.
I'm willing to give Martinez considerable benefit of the doubt given that this year's defense was widely predicted to fall off quite a bit with the loss of Pollack, Davis, and Thurman, yet in many respects was considerably better than the '04 model. Yes, the D soiled their diapers against Auburn and WVU, but peformances like the ones they had against Boise State, Tennessee, and LSU earn them a lot of good will in my book.
We were very hot-and-cold against the run this season, though. And a lot of that has to do with the injuries we sustained in the middle of the season, but I'd still like to see us toughen up in the middle in 2006. WVU was probably an extreme case, but with guys like Kenny Irons, DeShaun Wynn, and Arian Foster on deck for next year (does anyone else think it's hilarious that Tennessee has a black guy named Arian?), there's very little margin for error in terms of run defense if we want to make it to 10 wins again.
Martinez isn't going anywhere. Nor should he.
But he must get more aggressive and make adjustments faster. And the LB play must improve.
Why cant we make an adjustment? Ok, so we didnt prepare worth a #$!* but why cant we, after going down 3 scores, make an adjustment? They still put up 17 more points on us! Are they really that fast? Cause they looked it, is their 4th string RB really the best RB to ever play in a Sugar Bowl? We made the kid look like #34! I know we turned the ball over and gave them decent field position but they were scoring on plays that would have scored from their own 2 yard line, and it was THE SAME PLAYS over and over. Why are both our safties 25-30 yards away from the line of scrimage? Why do we never get more than 6 guys in the box on a team that was going to run it (up the middle no less) 80% of the time.
I know they were running a no huddle at some points but it was like the coaches and players had never seen it before.
Thanks to DJ for atleast keeping it respectable and if it werent for another huge screw by only rushing one guy, ONE GUY on a punt then we probably win cause they werent going to stop DJ on his last posession of his career. The kid was frustrated and finally just took over, rushing for over 70 yards and totaling over 340 with 3 td no picks. How do you fumble the ball 10 yards down the field and it not have your arm moving forward btw?
Yeah, in the final analysis, if you'd told me in August "Georgia's going to go 9-2 in the regular season, make it to the SEC Championship Game and annihilate their opponent, then get waxed in a BCS bowl," I'd have probably taken that. Which doesn't really salve the sting of losing so badly to West Virginia, but still, to accomplish what we did in what was allegedly a "rebuilding year" still speaks volumes about the heights to which Richt & Co. have taken this program.
a 3 point loss isn't exactly getting waxed
While I appreciate the glass-half-full approach to post-game analysis, I can't stop being pissed at Willie Martinez. It's like he refused to watch video for this game. WVU is a one-dimensional offense, although they execute their one dimension well. WVU did exactly what they've done all season on offense, and we were not prepared to commit to stop the run.
Conventional wisdom would say if a team is dedicated to beating you on the ground, load the box with 8 or 9 guys and make them either switch to the pass or fight against a loaded defensive line. But for some incomprehensible reason Georgia mostly had a 6 man defensive front. WVU did pretty well running the ball 8 on 6.
And the punt. That fake punt and our utterly clueless response to it made me want to uncork a profanity-laced tirade that would have made Clark Griswold's Christmas Vacation rant look like a nun's prayer. WVU had no choice but to keep the ball. They'd not successfully stopped Georgia on offense the entire second half. I thought on 4th and 6 they would go for it. But, the lined up to punt, which was odd because why would they want to give us the ball back with just under 2 minutes left? Then they got into a funky punt formation I hadn't seen since Jacksonville...wait a minute...didn't Florida...try to...FAKE FAKE FAKE!! But it was too late.
Our coaching staff gets paid good money to anticipate stuff like fake punts, and when 4 people in my section are screaming "watch the fake!" before the ball is even snapped to the punter, it makes me wonder what the hell they spent the month of December doing.
LawDawg put my exact thoughts into words. I'm not calling out Martinez because of the simple fact of a lost, or a 28-0 start, or a simliar start with Auburn, but the fact that the seemed completly clueless as to what WVU was about and what they were going to do, which was run the ball. Had we put 8 man in the box and forced them to pass, something they attempted 4 or so times in the entire game, and they beat our pretty good secondary for a 28-0 score early on then I would certainly not hold it against Martinez. But the complete disregard sickens me!
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