Munson opened his wrapup of last weekend’s games with our struggle to finally jerk away a win over Miss. St. That was followed by Tech getting whipped on the line of scrimmage and run over at
Clemson. The close wins by Tenn., Texas, Notre Dame and Cal also drew attention.
Ashley in Waycross opened asking about the OL. Chester Adams practiced today (non-contact). He’ll be held out of inside drills tomorrow and hopefully let him go full speed in pass protection drills. Nick Jones came out of the MSU game pretty well. CMR told him before the game he had nothing to prove. Jones gave the thumbs up after pre game warm-ups. Milner sucked it up and went today in practice. When he jogged back you could tell he was still sore.
Munson noted every phase of the game had a bandage or two on it. CMR said the coaches had opted to redshirt more guys than usual early in the year. Because of it, we don’t have quite the number of bodies we’d like so starters are having to do more on special teams. But we have enough.
Brandon in Winder didn’t like fans booing MoMass. It’s a really emotional game for everyone. CMR really hates college kids getting booed. He heard it, didn’t really like it, but can understand the fans frustration that things aren’t going like we all want. Richt figures most of the people who booed probably now wish they had not.
Fred in Calhoun asked about setting goals and is this team moving fast enough towards meeting goals. The main goal is for everyone to play hard for 60 minutes, play to their potential and not make the same mistakes over and over. CMR noted that some think we may not seem as inspired all the time. It’s not a real pretty 6-2 but there are lots of games still to play. Hopefully we’ll get better really quick, win some of these big games and make everyone proud.
David in Grayson thought Stafford made some great touch passes in the last game. What role will Joe Cox have? CMR agreed Stafford made some good ones, some that were caught, some that got knocked out. But there were some bad ones. One just behind a guy, one long ball to Mikey that he actually threw a bit short – very unusual though Stafford probably wanted to keep the ball in play for Mikey - and another he probably wished he had back. CMR wanted Stafford to grow up fast. We’re headed to Jax where he’ll have to deal with lots of crowd noise and a very good defense, and not throw into traffic.
Cox probably would have gone in first if needed had something happened, since Joe T’s ankle and shoulder are still bothering him. CMR does want Cox to play more.
Sonny in Evans wanted keys to our chances for an upset, based on what CMR might have seen in the Fla-Aub film. We need to play as close to error free as possible. Turnover free would help a bunch. We need to play our special teams as good as we did early in the year. We hardly had penalties there in the first three games. If we can do that we can take it down to the wire. If we make a lot of mistakes in special teams and struggle on defense it will be a long day.
Perry in Macon asked how WRs have done in practice catching the ball, and asked about freshmen being redshirted who have stood out. CMR remembers bragging on the WRs in camp, and thought it was the best he’s ever seen them in camp. You can’t expect every ball to get caught but they’ve done a pretty good job. Goodman made a great catch today in practice. We’ll keep banging away at it.
Redshirts –Reshad Jones and Quentin Banks – two big, physical safeties who in the future should be able to make the kind of big hits we’ve become used to.
LBs – Dent, Hebron Gamble – all very athletic guys with very good speed ..
several DL - Doods, Tripp, Woods and Lemon – no question they’ll help us in the very near future.
OL – Chris Davis, Josh Davis, Perez; Moreno (RB), Tony Wilson (WR). We think we signed the best class since we’ve been here.
Johnny in Daytona saw one young guy on camera (Perez, who’s hurt his elbow) and thought he’d grown a lot quickly and wondered why he wasn’t already playing. He’s sick of losing to the gators since he lives in Daytona. And why is there no fire on our defense? Is it because the games haven’t been attractive to them? CMR thinks what we’re lacking on defense are big licks that will put fear in opponents and fire ourselves up. The two that need to play outstanding are Johnson and Moses. They’re capable of taking over a game. They did that last game – 3 sacks and 10 QB knockdowns between them. Of course, this is the same defense that had two shutouts earlier in the year. CMR thinks they’re willing and want to, but can we hit them hard enough to knock the ball out.
Brent in Woodbine went over what
Auburn did to Leak to rattle him. Should we turn Ellerbe loose like Auburn turned Tray Blackmon loose? And shouldn’t we give Lumpkin more carries? CMR says those are all good suggestions. Ellerbe is the guy, out of the guys who are playing, who has speed and agility and can put pressure on.
Lump ran well from the gun and from the I. CMR thinks Lump is in good enough condition to run it more than 15-18 times he has been getting. Also, Ware ran well against
Florida last year.
Mike in Covington challenges the defense – any defensive player who can make Tebow look through his earhole can get the guys fired up…maybe CMR can back it up with double dog bones. CMR knows it’s a 90% chance he’ll run. But they’ve got a nice little passing game with him too. We have to come after him but be disciplined too. CMR doesn’t care who’s running the ball but only that they get hit. Some of the tackling issues seem to be guys have too much space. If everyone controls their gap, then a LB or safety filling in gets more of a squared up shot.
AJ in Tucker thinks we’re in a similar situation to about 10 years ago (actually, 1997) where no one gave us a chance. CMR agrees and says every week is a new week. If we had no turnovers last week who knows how that game would’ve gone and maybe everyone would be feeling good about Georgia. If we can straighten out mistakes and get back to playing physical football we have a chance. Ever since CMR has been here, players and coaches have gone into every game thinking we had a chance. This week is no different.
Scott in Grayson thinks the secondary is getting worse and worse, and it came to a crescendo last week. How could MSU move it 60 yards in two plays near the end last week? Have we considered using Mikey Henderson as our main kick returner? CMR noted Tra Battle had an INT and returned it 40-50 yards to set up our first TD.
Near the end last week, we punted them deep but they came out. Part of the problem was their QB had too much time to survey the area. We have to move with the QB. We have scramble rules on defense. Their QB made a couple of good throws. But it put us in a situation where everyone had to hold their breath. The play before the last one, Johnson took their tackle, put him in the lap of the QB and forced an early throw on a flag route. Then the next play he stripped the ball to decide the game.
CMR thinks Mikey would do great if the blocking was just right and he hit the crease. Kickoff returns are higher impact than punt returns. On punt returns, you need a jitterbug type and Henderson is perfect for that. As we saw with T. Brown and Asher Allen, the licks are harder on kick returns and we need someone a little more physical there.
Bob in Athens remembers back in the 1980s when we held the upper hand, and says teams who are very physical do well. He thinks Florida seems to lay down against more physical teams even if they may have better athletes.
CMR thinks that’s a very good point, seeing what Auburn did. Auburn had some plays made – if they don’t throw and catch well, they don’t win. But they stayed true to the running game enough. They didn’t have an offensive TD in that game but did control the clock and played physical on defense in the second half. They had to have a lot go right. There were a lot of really close calls also that went their way. We have to play physical, protect the football, play well on special teams and then we’ll have a chance.
Clay in Maryville thinks this is a chance for us to shock everyone. He again points out that Leak struggles when he is pressured. CMR thinks we blitz more than people give us credit for. Do we blitz where we send one more than they can block? Not much. If you do, you leave yourself exposed. Maybe we have to force the issue.
Brett in Albany thinks us fans are a bunch of spoiled kids since we’ve gotten used to winning. CMR told the players today that there isn’t a high percentage of the population who gives us a chance, and those few are probably their moms and dads. It will be great day if we can get this done.
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