Fun Free Office Pools - Week 5

Awesome job by Romedawg with the perfect slate in week 5.   Richt Flair takes over the top spot for the season.

Standings for Week 5
Rank	Selection	Edit	W-L	Pts	Tie Breaker AL-UF 38-10
1	romedawg's picks		11-0	66	34-17
2	Meat686's picks		10-1	63	24-21
2	DinDawg Fan's picks		9-2	63	28-30
4	allyugadawg's picks		9-2	62	31-17
4	uga009's picks		10-1	62	27-20
6	sowegaboy's picks		10-1	61
7	aueagle's picks		9-2	60	34-27
7	DawgRocker's picks		9-2	60	31-17
7	dfreemsuga's picks		9-2	60	27-24
7	aladawg's picks		9-2	60	24-13
7	The Green Notebook		8-3	60	24-20
7	SWGADAWG's picks		10-1	60	24-21
7	dcdawg10's picks		10-1	60

Season Standings:

Overall Standings Through Week 5
Rank	Selection	W-L	Pts
1	Richt Flair's picks	43-14	302
2	aueagle's picks	45-12	298
3	jondeal's picks	44-13	297
4	blaked04's picks	44-13	296
5	Hobnail_Boot	42-15	293
6	wdouglas's picks	39-18	292
6	jud92's picks	44-13	292
8	contrarian's picks	42-15	291
9	ecdawg's picks	42-15	289

All Saturday games again. Get your picks in. 
TD

Marrying Down

That is all.

TD

Which is it?

Is it "we should never lose to Mississippi State and Ole Miss" OR is it "the wins are only Ole Miss and Mississippi State"?

Say what you will (and you are), but while you are busy finding reasons to not be happy, we know our defense is substantially better than the last few seasons.  Hey, hate Richt/Bobo/McGarity/Grantham/JT3/Kasay all you want.  Be honest about the place we are in.  Not recognizing the improvement is being as intellectually dishonest as the inveterate homers that want Richt regardless of 13-0 or 0-12.  

At the same point last year, we had lost to Colorado (who only had beaten two meh teams).  We had lost to Arkansas (who had only beaten FCS and Sunbelt teams, as well as a pedestrian, to that point, A&M and lost to Alabama).  We had lost to South Carolina (who had wins over Furman, Southern Miss, Alabama and a loss to Auburn).  The difference was we weren't competent doing anything other than punting and kicking field goals.

I'll grant we have much more to go before we'll come close to calling this thing turned around.  Three years of mediocre and worse isn't solved in four games.  I recognize we are trending in the right direction and with the defense we have, that will likely continue.

TD

Tennessee and Vandy TV Info Announced

Two TV notes for Football:

-ESPN2 will air the 7pm Eastern game between Tennessee and Georgia this week (Per the SEC official website).
-Fox Sport South will air the 7pm Eastern kickoff in Nashville between Vandy and Georgia (Per Georgiadogs.com)

For those out there that think Georgia's recent run of noon and 1pm kickoffs is solely because of the quality of football, well...this is my response.  It might make it easier to get the request to play early approved, but there is still a request coming from somewhere.

TD

Mississippi State Review

The Good:

• The defense.  I could have a whole section on their play, but Washington was a beast, Rambo continues to impress, the interior line was spectacular. Oh, Jarvis Jenkins Jones was everywhere.  I am a little surprised he wasn't there to stop Nickoe Whitley from peeing on the hedges.
• John Jenkins: Body slam artist.
• Crowell's running in the first half.
• Run blocking.
• Not getting rattled on defense.  Mississippi State had over a quarter of their offensive output during the FG drive in the first quarter, with well over 90% of those yards on that little screen thing they ran.  We stayed the course, brought the pressure and didn't allow them to have anything close to that kind of drive again.
• Play calling in the first half.  We had them off balance from the start.  Crowell's running was a factor in that, but the two TD passes were perfect calls at the perfect time.  With the one to Orson, three guys were open and the first read was the easiest, since Charles had position on his defender the whole time. As for the second half, as long as we see the defense play like this and we have a 2 or more score lead, get used to it.
• Figgins and Thomas' blocking.  Carlton blocks like a much bigger player.
• Five more sacks.  

The Bad:

• Gates false start on 3rd and 6 during the long drive in the fourth.  You knew Bobo wasn't going to let Murray throw another ball. Samuel had a 7 yard run.  Walsh trotted out and missed the FG. Instead of continuing a drive that had the potential to make this a game we'd all go Yes! about, the 5+ minutes was just time off the clock.
• Conditioning.  The offensive line looked gassed in the second half. The starting tailback looked completely uninterested in fighting for extra yards in the second half.  The game isn't won getting to 100 yards of rushing, despite what some pundits go to bed wishing for.  The game is won on getting stronger as the game goes on.  We didn't do that on the offensive side of the ball.
• [insert obligatory offensive line pass blocking snark here]
• The hurry up and wait no huddle.
• Walsh's shanks.  He didn't miss a single second half warm up (that I saw).  His attempt in the second half was pure wiffage.  We all know he is a spectacular kicker.  As Blutarsky put it: "there’s a young lady out there who needs to step up and do the right thing by her man."

The Ugly:

• Murray's throws to the players in white, particularly the one returned for a TD.  The first took a decent play to come up with it. The second was a nice mental play on an ball that needed more arc. But that third one.  Wow.  About four things went wrong, the worst of which is under throwing a sideline route to a 6-3 manbeast that might be able to flatfooted jump over a truck.

Boys, we are back in this thing. No one is ready to proclaim all is awesome, but Grantham's defense is playing very well and in the SEC that will get you places.  Bobo's offense is playing competently, especially when strong plays are called.  The play calling has significantly improved, for that matter.  The players looked coached up.

What did I miss?

TD

3 Questions Answered: Mississippi State

Now, that is a win. Am I right? Anyone?

1. Does last year's loss, and all the malaise that resulted from it, play into the game this year? Not sure if it was last year's game or the non-sense at the beginning of the game, but Georgia hit the field ready to play.  This game wasn't in doubt after Crowell got jobbed ran out of bounds, but he made the State defense look stooopid on his run.  As strong a defensive effort as we have seen in many, many years.  We Boboed℠ them in the second half, so the score wasn't as pretty as we'd have liked. Domination Defense was the phrase of the day.
2. Can we make Relf look like he did against LSU? Yes.  Oh, hell yes.  
3. Can we game plan competently enough on offense to counteract Mississippi State's very active defense? Murray still got hit a lot.  His first half was good, not great, but still good.  Mississippi State's D got snookered time and again on play action and also had a hard time figuring out if we were running inside or outside.  

Obviously, this is a different quality win than Ole Miss.  Not to say we'll put together another game like this again, but if we play defense like we did on Saturday the rest of the season, there isn't a game we won't be in.  

TD

Boboed℠  and Boboing℠  are service marks of The Georgia Sports Blog.  Boboed is the service of frustrating the shit out of Georgia fans in the second half of games using extremely conservative play calling when holding a 8+ point lead with Todd Grantham smiling because his defense isn't going to give up points, bitch.

Game Day in Athens

It never gets old.  The feeling of excitement.  The sun on your face.  The crowd that seems to become less throngs of people and more an organic being the closer you get to Sanford.

There is a palatable adrenalin surge when you walk through the tunnel into the bowl.  The noise goes from loud to being a part of you.  Your sounds are not longer yours, but a part of the sounds of the stadium.

92,000 of your closest friends.  Red.  Black. The lone trumpeter. Glory, glory. Spell Georgia. Defend the "G". Krypton Fanfare at the start of the 4th Quarter. Hail to Georgia. The Alma Mater.

These are my people.  This is my home.

Go Dawgs!