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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Tuesday Tidbits: Auburn Week

Quick notes from Mark Richt's Tuesday news conference:

-- Richt said he would like to get time for Logan Gray again this week at QB, but would not promise it would happen. He said the plan was actually to give the third series of the game to Gray last week, but he delayed due to the success Georgia was having on offense to start the game.

-- The policy of pulling a player from the game after a penalty will continue again this week, Richt said, but he wasn't sure if he would stick to keeping players out for the entire series. Joe Cox said the constant changes last week made thing particularly problematic on the offensive line, with A.J. Harmon coming in at one point having no idea what was going on.

-- Cox also said that what Tennessee Tech was doing to get Georgia to jump was clearly against the rules and that Georgia's players pointed it out to the refs several times, but the refs refused to call it. So during practice this week, Cox said that Stacy Searels is making a point of mimicking Cox's cadence to try to get the line to jump.

-- Geno Atkins' numbers have increased dramatically the past three games, but Richt said that's more a function of the better play by the defensive ends and that Atkins has been performing well all season.

-- Despite the weather, Richt said Georgia would practice in full outdoors today.

-- Richt on Branden Smith playing offense longterm: "I don't know if we'll get to Champ Bailey numbers as far as the amount of plays in a game, but I don't think that's out of the question." Richt said that Smith has had to concentrate on defense this year, but he expects more time in the offensive meetings for Smith during spring practice.

-- Richt said that, despite Marlon Brown's minimal playing time, he has no regrets about not redshirted the freshman receiver. "He is absolutely improving as a route runner, ball catcher, blocker, his understanding of what we're doing is much better. He's so much farther ahead right now than he would have been just hanging around on the scout team. And we think he's going to be making a big impact sooner than later."

-- Richt said Justin Houston should be ready to play Saturday and said that A.J. Green practiced in full on Sunday with no ill effects. He said there were no other serious injuries that should keep players out of Saturday's game against Auburn.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Dave, I have a three part comment/question. Sorry to be excessively demanding of your time:

1. I would love to see your thoughts on a conference power ranking at this point in the '09 season. The national media seems to be ignoring the question of which conference is most dominant, likely because it's really difficult to tell but it appears as though the SEC, Pac-10 and Big East all have strong arguments with a top heavy argument for the Big 10 (gross) which I would argue is largely a result of attrition and precipitous drop off after the top 4. Still it's an interesting question to me and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

2. Ignoring momentarily all the negatives about the dawgs performance so far this season, I wonder if there isn't a tiny glimmer of 'maybe we're okay' in our 5-4 record. We've lost to the #1, #8, and #19 teams and, depending on who you ask, a top 30 team. Two were devastating final scores but the 4-4, post jax version of the dawg nation seemed to ignore the meatgrinder of a schedule we've faced. No one, including me is happy about where we are but maybe if we can win this weekend and head to Atlanta with some momentum...? LSU gives us reason to believe we can beat the nerds and retain some dignity. I could be wrong but I don't think Bob Stoops is facing the sort of criticism CMR endures and his circumstance isn't much different except that his QB returned and was injured instead of heading for the motor city kitties.

3. In perusing the blawgosphere Monday, I saw a story about other negative rushing yard performances by the hairy dawg D and noticed that in the days of old lots of players had pretty awesome middle/nicknames like "lightning legs" etc. I would love to see that trend renewed for present-day dawgs. Great nicknames are the sort of silver-lining that doesn't disappear with one bad game.

DevildawgNC said...

A.J. Green needs a nickname. A super-sweet nickname. Do his team members have anything for him? Great point, Noyle.

PS - anyone ever get yanks and midwesterners asking you why you're wearing a red Green Bay hat?

Donn said...

I agree with Noyle.

Anonymous said...

I would like to see our D earn special shirts similar to Nebraska's "Black Shirts". Maybe just a "Junk Yard D" t-shirt that is EARNED. Who knows, maybe they will play inspired, nasty D. Oh yeah, that shirt can be yanked at any point due to poor play (read Bryan Evans)

Rick said...

@Anonymous

Careful not to bash on Bryan Evans or Ally might go off on you. And someone will insult Ally. And then someone will defend her. And then someone will post something so vulgar that David Hale has to step in and remove the comments. And then they'll insult Ally AND David. And then comment moderation will have to be enabled. It's a vicious cycle.