A Stat That Defined a Season – First Half Woes

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Here’s 2024 in a nutshell:

In 2023, the flavor was “we have to wait for the other team to score before we start playing football”. This year, it was “we have to figure things out for two to three quarters before we play football”.

I asked what’s next for the team, and the real answer is somewhere in CKS’s head. I have no doubt he’s not happy with the final result of the season, but my final summation:

  1. This year was the crossroads of recruiting endeavors that occurred prior to Coley and Searels. The OL experiment of lighter and faster from Luke obviously wasn’t going to work, as Ratledge and Truss were the last of Pittman recruits and Luke’s haven’t panned out. With Thomas and Young bouncing out, we were deploying situational receivers as every down receivers. I think, imho, there is young talent there that needs a season to improve.
  2. Defensive technique took a step back this year, and with NIL and portal madness, if people are building to beat Georgia, they know the dual threat quarterback and elite receivers are the way to do it. Something has to shift in defensive coaching and philosophy around that, otherwise our once a year struggle will be weekly.
  3. Smart hasn’t gotten anyone out of the portal yet. Is this by design? Is he adopting the Swinney Way? I wonder and worry about Smart’s stubbornness to play certain people and stick by certain coaches when results aren’t panning out. Why Tuggle and Jackson didn’t see more playing time is unusual considering the receivers inability to secure the ball, and also the reluctance to give more defensive personnel – particularly Ellis Robinson or any of a number of linebackers – a look at the field is a head-scratcher for me. Michael Jackson posted a Twix yesterday, since taken down, that showed practice film from UGA of him getting both separation and catching the ball…given the product in the field and the potential on the bench, getting guys out of the portal might be a challenge for Kirby, who has already seen several WR options pass on Georgia this year. Not sure if that will change in the post-season, but we are in an era where growth versus results is compelling coaches to opt for instant impact over potential. Given the new NCAA extension on JUCO and 5 year eligibility, the recruiting landscape has taken a major about face in 2024.
  4. Given the stat above, we did find ourselves making significant improvement over the halftime (except for ND and Ole Miss), but is this recruiting ability versus coaching ability? I would imagine a coaching staff shouldn’t have to take a full half to figure out a team with game film and study sessions ensuing the week prior, but losing guys like Monken, Brown, McGee, and Lanning and seeing the 2024 results on scheme and technique gives me pause. It could just be transitions in philosophies, could be personnel, could be something else.

We won the SEC…given the feeling after the Kentucky and Alabama games, I didn’t see that coming. We fought and clawed our way to a championship, but ran into a place where taking our time to figure things out ran out. I personally felt that we were moving the ball well in the first half, but a turnover from Etienne and a needless penalty from a walk-on DB celebrating on the sidelines undid a great amount of potential in scoring drives and had those two things not happened, could’ve been a different ball game…but admittedly I had a hard time seeing Georgia advance past a surging Ohio State and didn’t welcome the idea of facing Texas for a third time. I would’ve loved to taken a shot at Penn State, but if our O Line duplicated their performance in NOLA, we likely would’ve had the double embarassment of losing to a B1G team and James Franklin at the same time.

I still trust in Kirby. No one hates losing as much as he does, and I’m sure he is on the mother. Maybe this is our 2019, and we’re about to move from good to great to elite again. I still have to admit that I never gave up on Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, which is testament enough to what Kirby’s done in Athens. There were times where I would’ve turned off the TV and quit watching in years past, but not anymore. We’ve got that fight in us, and they proved over and over again this year that Georgia still hasn’t gone anywhere in the expansion era of CFB.

Belief is a big thing, and I believe in Kirby. Just 237 days until kickoff.

Go Dawgs.

17 thoughts on “A Stat That Defined a Season – First Half Woes”

  1. I would say we are under estimating the impact of injuries. I also think Coley is a great recruiter not a great receivers coach based on both his terms here.

    • No. No. No. No. A billion times no.

      When you stack a zillion top 3/5 recruiting classes, you have depth.

      Injuries is up there with blaming refs as a BS excuse.

      Not even scoring 10 pts in the first half????????????? 0 against Ga Tech? Come on.

    • I hate to sound like a broken record, but is Kirby going to hire an OC like Monken who he turns the keys over to and says “go score points and I don’t care how you do it”? If he isn’t going to do that, it doesn’t matter who sits in that seat.

      At Kirby’s core, his offensive philosophy is still “first, do no harm.” Notice his critiques after the game were about ball security and execution, not about play calling.

      We missed scoring twice in the red zone … the first time because of a fumble and the second time because we had to go for it on 4th down. Then, we gave up cheap field position because he decided to try to score at the end of the half when 6-3 is a virtual tie.

      I’m not defending the OC, I’m making a statement that our offense has tended to look constipated other than in 21-23.

      If we had these stats in 2024, I’m guessing we’re still playing:

      https://georgiadogs.com/sports/football/stats/2023

      • Absolutely. Kirby needs to hire the best guy available, then let him do his thing. ‘Primum non nocere’ is the perfect summation of Kirby’s approach to offense. Unfortunately, Bobo did plenty of harm in ’24.

        • But Bobo was the OC in 2023 where the stats referenced came from.

          Sorry, do I think Bobo did a great job in 24? No. Is there something deeper than “Bobo is a dummy to it”? (No, I’m not saying you are saying that.)

  3. On receivers coaches, when have we had an elite WR coach? Coley seemed to be fine before he was promoted to OC. No one cried when Hankton left. B-Mac did fine, but he seemed to think going to the NFL was the best way to get where he wants, a head coaching opportunity. Coley has his season as OC and QB coach still as a stain this time around (just like Bobo and Searles).

    If Kirby is serious about getting an elite WR coach, go put OC money and tag to Brian Hartline and hire a QB coach who can work with him. At the worst, use it to make Ohio State overpay to keep him.

  4. Thanks for that tidbit of stats JP. Damn! 35 points! Pathetic.
    Not sure I agree with the OL assessment, see earlier post (Isiah Wynn). Plus, Luke recruited Broderick Jones, Earnest Green, Tate Ratledge, Mica Morris, and Van-Pran. That’s a pretty damn good haul. Truss, a Pittman get, was middling, at best.
    I do however, double ditto, Kirby’s stubbornness to use his young personnel and continue playing those that continue to struggle (D. Harris). I assure you, if this keeps happening, especially for players like Ellis and Tuggle, big time 5* are going to go elsewhere.

    • Luke did not recruit SVP, Jones or Ratledge (not sure about Micah Morris). I believe you can see Pittman’s “yes, sir” posts on every one of those commitments.

  5. EE. I’ll give Pittman credit, but Pittman left and Luke had to still reel them in. He did get Mims and Morris. However, it did seem to go down Hill after that.

    Dec 16, 2019 — Today, we talk with current 2020 commit, Sedrick Van Pran-Granger regarding his recent in-home visit with Matt Luke and Kirby Smart.

      • Dang EE, you remind me of my brother. He’s always asking me crap like “you know what we were doing 15 years ago today and he would spit out the answer” or, “man 20 years ago today we were at the farm with so and so”. I’d be like okay, I think I remember. Which I had know frigging clue. Boy has a memory like an Elephant.

        • I can’t remember what my wife tells me we need to do today, but I remember useless stuff like who committed to whom 5 years ago. I think I need to rearrange my priorities. 😉

  6. Portal, JUCO, early signings…hard to cover all that territory scouting, recruiting, arranging visits and camps. And then package your NIL Funds correctly. That’s wayyyy more than NFL staffs have to do and they get to work with professional agents, not moms, dads, uncles, etc. This is not how it was 5 years ago. There’s no playbook or training for Kirby. At least he’s in the same boat as the rest. Saban is making easy TV money and laughing at the world he escaped. Kirby is going to be forced to be much more of a GM and less of a HC. This is big business now, not teaching children. I’m keeping a close eye on Belicek at UNC. He knows what’s happening and how to deal with it. My guess is the future of college coaching will come from the NFL than say, small colleges. If I’m Kirby I’m off to visit Bill, take notes and think about how to re-engineer “The Process”. Just trying to keep recruiting 5* talent and yelling through a megaphone on the practice field isn’t going to work anymore.

  7. Here’s the thing for me with regard to next year. We pulled the 247 Composite number 17 (Humphreys), 32 (Young), 35 (Etienne), and 117 (Yurosek) players in the portal (offense only). All four were skill positions. ETN was the best of the bunch but had fewer carries than Frazier (although he was an excellent pass catcher). Yurosek and Humphreys each only had 15 catches.

    Of the top 100 ranked in the transfer portal, only 12 are uncommitted. Seems like we are trying to put all our remained eggs with Branch but I am not convinced he is the answer any more than guys from the last transfer class. I guess we will see where things end up in the next few weeks.

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