Georgia 28, Austin Peay 6. In the end, the Bulldogs didn’t lose on the scoreboard on Saturday, so you have to at least soak that positive in. But if the goal of a two-week span of games against lesser opponents is to help a team feel good about itself going into starting SEC play, it’s debatable whether or not that box has been checked.
At any rate…
1. Ok, Georgia has shown that is has a strong desire
to run the ball, and if the plan was to make sure these last two weeks were spent giving Nate Frazier, Dwight Phillips, Jr., and Chauncey Bowens plenty of touches, you can surmise that the metric was met. But how much desire is there to stretch the vertical passing game? So far, Gunner Stockton has shown that, if the play is executed, he can hit guys on short and mid-range routes. Finding a receiver deep? So far, there has not been much consistency. Has offensive coordinator Mike Bobo held a good bit back so as to not give Tennessee anything to look for? Perhaps. But you would think that time spent against lower-end opponents would be used to develop a downfield passing game against live competition. So far, we don’t know this team’s offensive identity. That’ll be known on Saturday, and the result could force a mid-season adjustment of it.
2. Look, I don’t care if you are playing the Delta State Fighting Okra. And I don’t care about injuries. Having four plays inside the five-yard line and not being able to get in the end zone is inexcusable. Full stop.
Yes, I know that the right-side offensive line starters were out, but this is why you develop depth, and this is why you recruit elite offensive linemen, to step up when the time is needed. There’s a reason why players are at FCS programs like Austin Peay, it’s because in most cases that they were not good enough for a major conference, let alone a Group of 5 program. For Georgia to not be able to get enough push inside the five-yard line is embarrassing.
3. Florida did the University of Georgia Athletic Association a great service with its loss to USF. As funny as it was, it also provides an important lesson. That flagship schools like Georgia should never schedule a football non-conference game against a lesser in-state program. Yes, those with an axe to grind toward the SEC will claim there is some sort of obligation for the Georgias and Georgia Techs to support schools like Mercer, Georgia Southern, and Kennesaw State. But Florida lost to USF, a program that any reasonable football fan in the state looks down on. It may very well rate as the Bulls’ best win in program history because of who it was against.
Georgia Southern may have won multiple 1-AA titles, but if they had beaten Georgia in 2015? It’d be one of the biggest win in school history, and something that Savannah-area Dawgs would STILL not be living down.
4. It was good to see Nate Frazier rebound from a rough start on Saturday. After an opening-drive fumble, he rotated back in for Georgia’s second touchdown of the game. Turning it over is not good, and in all honesty, it likely set the tone for the lackluster day. But it was good to see Frazier not rattled by the early turnover.
5. If you want to see a generational divide, just mention a baseball sliding mitt to older baseball fans. Yes, there was a time when players played minus wristbands, gloves, etc. Which brings things to the second half on Saturday, when the offensive malaise included a London Humphreys fumble. Coincidentally, Humphreys next pass catch came after he removed received gloves. To quote the Kirby Smart phrase, ‘keep the main thing the main thing.’
6. Do we really know how good Tennessee is? A week ago, you’d of thought DJ Lagway was a Heisman winner after the 55-0 win against Long Island University, who many I am sure didn’t know a month ago had a football program. South Carolina’s sloppy win until putting Virginia Tech away last week? Well, the Hokies lost by 24 points to Vanderbilt…so congrats to VT on being like Spain and not being to, as Lewis Grizzard said, not being able to beat Vanderbilt. As for Tennessee? It ran up the yards against Syracuse, which yesterday lost to…UConn. How good are Georgia and Tennessee? We’ll find out on Saturday.
7. It was obviously made easier since Saturday’s game was a streaming-only broadcast, but announcing an hour-earlier adjustment to kickoff on the morning of a game came as a surprise. It was clear later in the day that the weather concerns were legit, but at what point do you bear in mind the fact that not all fans live within a 90-mile radius? Imagine driving from places like Moultrie or Dawson and leaving early, only to find out your time schedule just got squeezed a bit more? Games like Austin Peay are also slam dunks for chances to take a fan, young or old to their first game, do you really want to lessen that first-game experience? There’s nothing wrong with a schedule adjustment, but should it be too much to ask waiting until within seven hours of kickoff to announce it?
8. There’s an old saying, and it’s true. The most popular person on a football roster is the backup quarterback. If Georgia goes to Tennessee and loses, especially due to passing ineptitude, it’ll unfortunately fall on Gunner Stockton’s shoulders. And with a gunslinger in the wings like Ryan Puglisi, it’ll also breed quarterback controversey. Georgia under Kirby Smart has been filled with quarterbacks that you were not sure if they could handle the moment, until we realized that they could with the paths of Jake Fromm and Stetson Bennett. It may be unfair to say that Stockton’s leash could be shortened based on what happens at Neyland Stadium, but the SEC is a very unfair place for quarterbacks.
9. So there was this silver lining from the offensive slopfest on the Georgia side. It did allow Brett Thorson to get in to punt four times, his first since the ACL tear last December. It’s probably a good thing that his first punt of the season won’t come on the road at Tennessee.
10. Yes, we’re already Munsoning over here. With three o-line injuries already this year, he’d probably say something like “My God, do we even have enough linemen to block? And did you see how many yards that kid at Tennessee threw for? Do we even have guys who can stop them from running that thing up and down the field on us?”
Go Dawgs!
