From the Mailbag: Who's the Boss?

Sorry about the lack of material for the blog yesterday. I was traveling and didn't have time for much beyond the links for the day. But, fear not. I have plenty of material in store for this week, including lots of left over topics from last week's SEC meetings in Florida.

Before the meetings, I asked you guys for some questions to pose to Coaches Richt and Fox. While I wasn't able to get answers to all of them, I definitely appreciate the suggestions, and I tried to get to the bottom of as many as I could. Some of them I've already posted answers to, whether in the notes packages from last week or in the comments section of blog posts. Some of them I had already been planning on doing stories on in the near future, so I didn't get to them yet. But there were a few others that I got answers for but didn't have a chance to write about yet, so the rest of this week, I'm going to try to post them here.

This one comes from South FL Dog, who asked: How much latitude is Joe Cox going to have to change plays at the line?

It's a good questions, since Matthew Stafford was pretty much in complete control last year. Cox is in an interesting position because he knows the offense as well as anyone (and certainly as well as Stafford did), but he doesn't have the game experience that Stafford had -- and when it comes to reading defenses at the line, sometimes you really have to have done it under game conditions to get a real feel for it.

Clearly, however, Mark Richt isn't viewing Cox as any sort of rookie.

"He'll have every bit as much responsibility as Matt did," Richt said. "He understands it just as well as Matt did. He doesn't have quite as much game experience doing it, but Joe has a ton of practice experience and he gets it. Right now, he's working his tail off to learn as much offense and defense as he can, and we never worry about Joe's prep."

Talking to Richt about this issue, it's hard not to get the feeling like he wouldn't say this about just any longtime backup. Cox is special, not just because, like D.J. Shockley, he waited his turn, but because he has a real feel for the game and a dedication to his craft that allows him to get more from his talent than most QBs. In fact, Richt said, there's a bright future for Cox should he decide to follow in his coach's footsteps.

"He wants to coach when his career is over," Richt said. "As a matter of fact, in just a few months he probably will be a coach somewhere in college as a graduate assistant."