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Greg Wilson Column

Greg writes a column weekly throughout the season.

Greg spent 17 yrs as a coach (2 of which were in HS Football at Banks County HS and 14 yrs as College Basketball Coach) Currently serving as Area Director of Greater Augusta Fellowship of Christian Athletes & Head Girls Basketball Coach @ Westminster School of Augusta.

11/23/09

UGA @ GA Tech

Ouch! That one hurt!

The first loss to Kentucky in Athens in 32 years provided DawgNation with even more evidence for the removal of coaches, the reassessment of the direction of the program, and plenty of doubt for the rest of the season.

It’s that “rest of the season” part that’s just so darn disconcerting, isn’t it?

We are finally getting to feel what a whole lot of folks feel on a near yearly basis but we have avoided for some time now. Our beloved program showed more signs of implosion on Saturday as the UGA turnover bug became Kentucky’s best friend.

Clearly overmatching the Wildcats on both sides of the ball, the ultimate equalizer (turnovers) did Georgia in.

And for a proud program chock full of gridiron tradition like Georgia’s, it’s one thing to lose begrudgingly to the top programs in the SEC like Florida and LSU, but quite another when we lose home games to opponents from the dreaded second or even third tier of the SEC.

So what now? What’s next? How do we handle this? Where do we go from here? And how do we get there?

COX’S PASSING INACCURACIES LIE IN SHORT PASSING GAME

All college quarterbacks go through a maturation process. Some struggle with various facets of their development. Technical skills such as drop-back footwork, ball skills (how to handle the football during fakes and such), and how to make different types of throws all figure into the often-confusing mix.

While Joe Cox is not likely to be an NFL quarterback, he has demonstrated a proficiency in throwing the deep ball as well or better than any UGA quarterback in recent memory.

I know we all were in love with the strength of Matthew Stafford’s arm. We loved David Greene’s ability to make every type of throw imaginable. We loved D.J. Shockley’s ability to make something out of nothing.

Taking nothing away from Stafford, Cox’s deep ball is by far the most consistently accurate deep pass we’ve ever seen coming from a Georgia signal-caller. He routinely puts the right amount of touch on the ball and is able to place the ball only where the receiver can make a play on it.

However, as with any offense, a team cannot rely solely on its ability to throw the ball deep.

Georgia Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo shares his boss’s affinity for a balanced offensive attack. Running and throwing short passes via the I-formation is a solid approach, albeit a bit old school nowadays, but this philosophy also belies our starting quarterback’s abilities, or disabilities, rather, in the short passing game.

Cox has struggled all season with the deception required of him on screen passes, dumps to backs over the middle, and even some of the tight end drag routes.

At this season’s outset, I and others could have sworn tight ends Orson Charles and Aron White would lead the team in receptions after A.J. Green. Based on appearances, these big targets gave the impression that utilization of the tight end would be a rediscovered option for the Georgia offense. At times, it truly has been exactly what we thought it would be. But oddly enough, there have been other times where the shorter passes tossed to these talented offensive weapons have been dawggone difficult to catch.

Cox’s inaccuracy in the short range passing game was a huge problem on Saturday as he tossed a screen pass to a Kentucky defensive lineman. On our final offensive play, Cox tried to hit Caleb King on a short route over the middle only to hit a Wildcat linebacker square in the hands with the ball.

This reversal of all things natural leaves the Dawgs’ fans, not to mention UGA’s coaching staff, scratching their heads – to be so accurate deep would seem to indicate that short passes would take very little effort to execute, but this simply has not been the case for one Joe Cox.

RUNNING GAME SLAMMED IN SECOND HALF

I’m not sure what adjustments Kentucky Head Coach Rich Brooks made at halftime, but suffice it to say that they were the key to the game.

I know. I know. The Dawgs turned it over repeatedly, which ultimately led to our demise. You’re right.

But we actually had a chance to dominate this game, and actually did so statistically, and the key to achieving this was our running game, which flattened Kentucky’s linebackers and D-linemen with frightening efficiency in the first half, only to look eerily clueless in the second half.

So what happened? Did we quit blocking them? Did Kentucky stuff 8 or 9 guys in the box?

From the perspective on television, I did not see any scheme adjustments being made. What I did see were some tough Kentucky players deciding to stand up and say they’d had enough of Georgia’s run-blocking attack. They began to toss us around as if they owned the place.

And by game’s end, they did.

RAMBLIN’ WRECK MORE THAN SOLID

Now, all things college football go against Georgia. Think about it.

This week’s game is at Tech’s Grant Field.

Tech is ranked in the top 10 nationally.

Tech is coming off a rejuvenating “bye week.”

Georgia, meanwhile, is unranked and has its worst football team in over a decade.

We have to face one of the nation’s leading offenses in Georgia Tech’s triple-option attack. The Dawgs’ defense has to play assignment football, which requires a doubling of the homework hours as our defensive squad literally has to study for this one, a task made 100% more difficult with the mindset the Georgia team is surely experiencing after Saturday’s embarrassing defeat.

Our team’s best weapon and only sure-thing save for Blair Walsh’s leg is gone – we have no A.J. Green.

One thing I’ve not seen mentioned as a hardship is that of the degree of difficulty of preparation for the next game is made oh-so-much more impossible by the hint of jobs being at stake and this being the final regular season game for our coaching staff.

Trust me, this coaching staff knows that if any of them belch out loud while filling their car up with gasoline at the corner quickie mart, their indigestion is going to be monitored, heavily scrutinized, immediately reported over the internet, and then topped off by the mart’s surveillance cameras making a copy of the video-burp available to all local media outlets for their evening news reports.

It’s just the nature of the beast, but this nature is made twice as incorrigible by the sad appearance of this year’s team, who continues to befuddle even those who are closest to them. The inordinate amount of penalties and turnovers indicates a deeply disturbing lack of focus.

And to top it all off, our All-American kicker Walsh is not “allowed” to consistently try and kick it deep. Couple this with one of the worst coverage units in America and you have a kickoff unit that resembles the Keystone Cops.

For these reasons and more, this week will not be pretty.

Close your eyes, Dawg fans, it’s almost over, and hopefully, we will cease being so familiar with these distraught feelings of insecurity that so many other programs face on a more regular basis than we do in DawgNation.

UGA: 20

GA TECH: 52