It was about as bad as it could get in Jacksonville this year. Ugh. I had serious doubts about this year's game, given the twenty or so guys that have suffered injuries for Georgia, but even that shouldn't have led to this sort of blowout. It just got out of hand. Bleah.
Mark Richt has been at UGA for about a decade now. He's great for the university and I hope he stays there until he's Joe Paterno's age. If he stays that long, he'll probably go on a run against Florida or win a national championship some time. But he's never solved two problems and, at this point, I doubt that he ever will.
First, UGA is not a very smart (disciplined?) football team. That's strange to say about a Richt-coached team; he seems like he would want smart guys. But they're not. Throughout Richt's tenure, UGA does dumb things, stuff that teams coached by Saban or Spurrier do not generally do. Dumb penalties. Bad clock management, particularly at the ends of halves and games. Constantly running the play clock down to 1 or 2, which slows the game, costs you momentum, and inevitably burns timeouts. UGA almost always calls a bad time out or 2 in a game. Bonehead special teams plays. One or two trick plays a game that don't work and hurt you on field position. Coming out of timeouts and not knowing the formation or having the right players on the field. Under Richt, they just do this stuff and they've done it since the day he arrived. It's not going to get better.
Second, they're lousy in the red zone--the area between the other team's twenty and the end zone. When UGA gets close, they freeze or, yes, get dumb. And it's been true since he arrived (which is why UGA is only really good when they have an excellent kicker; hurt the kicker, kill the Dawgs). There was a two or so year period, ending now, when they handed the ball to the fullback and he scored. But that's been it. Before and after that, they run complicated plays that ask people to do stuff they can't do or aren't used to doing (they threw a fade to Moreno yesterday). They take too long to call plays down there and the plays take too long to develop. They're geniuses at taking sacks (which is why the kicker is SO important; the Dawgs seldom offer chip shots to their kicker). If you want to know how good the Dawgs will be in a given year, check the kicker. If he's experienced and good, they'll be good. If not, they'll be mediocre. And they've done this stuff since the day Richt arrived. It's not going to get better.
So, with a coach, you take the good with the bad. Sweet Lou inevitably decides not to trust a player or two every year (Scott Eyre) and once you're in the doghouse, you never get out. That's why the Cubs need to negotiate a release of some sort for Fukudome. Lou doesn't like him. As long as Lou is there, Fukudome is not going to play a ton. And he's too expensive to sit around.
Mark Richt just isn't good at this stuff. I don't know why. Some intelligence--no penalty on the Prince Miller interception, no onside kick--and some red zone competence--touchdowns instead of missed field goals in the first half--and they're even in that game yesterday, although they probably don't have enough healthy talent left to win. But this is what you get with all of the great things Richt does. Outbursts of stupidity. Bad red zone offense.
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