Sunday Teleconference Notes (10/11)

A few tidbits from Mark Richt's Sunday teleconference…

-- Fans have complained a good bit about Richt not sounding as upset about the failures of the team as he should. First, you have to understand that it's just not Richt's personality to air that stuff in public. But he was a bit more straightforward in his criticism today.

Regarding the defense: “It’s not what we have been accustomed to at Georgia, that’s for sure. That’s something that’s gotta be corrected. There are some circumstances for those things happening but overall, everybody’s got problems. Everybody’s got issues. Everybody’s got to, whether it’s injuries or youth or whatever you might say. But the bottom line is you’ve got to perform and we haven’t performed as well as I would like our defense to perform. We certainly haven’t helped them in a lot of instances, and that’s pretty well documented with some of those things. When your turnover ratio is what ours is, we haven’t helped those guys in any way. But they’re still allowed to go three-and-out, too."

Regarding the overall performance: "We’ve got to get better, period. We’ve got to get better at defense, get better on offense, we’ve got to get better in all areas. And we’ve got to get better at coaching.”

On what he means by "coaching better": “We just have to continue that when we put our plan in, it’s not too much. We don’t ask our guys to do more than they’re capable of doing. And we’ve got to continue to motivate and all the things that coaches do. I guess the point I’m making is that is where we are right now is a culmination of everyone. I’m not pointing the finger at any one individual. I’m pointing the finger at all of us as a whole. We must all improve, period.”

-- He called this game one of the most frustrating of his career offensively.

-- Richt said he'll be evaluating film from the game and may make some personnel changes, but it won't be any wholesale cleaning house on either side of the ball. “We’re not going to have open tryouts or anything like that. We’re going to get right back to work preparing for Vanderbilt and try to get the best man at every position. But it’s not going to be some kind of open tryout.”

-- Any personnel changes, he said would be decided by Tuesday, most likely.

-- Obviously chief among the personnel questions is at quarterback, but don't expect anyone other than Joe Cox to be under center this week.

Richt on the freshmen -- Murray & Mettenberger: “They could function with a certain percentage of what we’re doing, but it’s a matter of deciding whether you want to do that, number one, as far as playing them, and then how much can you do with them, and how effective can a true freshman be at this point."

Richt on his game plan for Vandy: "Right now, my No. 1 goal is to put a team out there that has the very best shot of beating Vanderbilt on Saturday. Any personnel decisions that may or may not be made will be based strictly on who gives us the best chance to win on Saturday.”

-- Regarding Cox, I noted this (thanks to reader Jim F.) on the blog earlier today: Before the drop by A.J. in the second quarter, Cox was 11-of-13 passing. After, he was 9-of-22 the rest of the way. Take away the 4-of-5 throwing during garbage time, and Cox went 4-of-17 (29%) following A.J.'s drop.

Well, Richt may know the real cause: “Joe played better in the first half than in the second half. I think Joe took a couple shots that probably shook him up a little bit. He probably would never admit to that. But before we have any successful quarterback play, we’ve got to run the ball better and pass protect better than we did.”

-- More Baccari Rambo? That's good. More Bryan Evans? Eh, not so much.

“Rambo is beginning to play well and earn more playing time," Richt said. "He needs to play more. As a matter of fact, when it comes to safety play, we probably need to do more of a three-man rotation between Rambo and Bryan and Reshad. Rambo kind of subbed for Bryan but we really didn’t sub Reshad. Reshad doesn’t need to play every snap, Bryan doesn’t need to play every snap, Rambo doesn’t need to play every snap. We need to split that workload a little bit more and I think that’ll help all those guys. We need to be productive on a more consistent basis.”

-- And just a word to a few commenters: I've read multiple (at least three) comments today referring to Georgia as the "laughing stock of the NCAA."

Please guys, if you want to say something that silly, don't do it on the blog of a guy who follows Syracuse football. Now THAT is the laughing stock of the NCAA.