And just like that…Kirby is now the elder among SEC coaches make that the eldest.
Among all SEC coaches, only three can claim appearances in the SECCG…Sark, DeBoer, and Kirby. Difference is, Kirby’s been there eight times.
Life comes at you fast…and, to think, the hottest commodity in college football right now is Lane “Never Won a Thing” Kiffin? Hmph.
A couple of big road upsets occur on what was supposed to be a boring Saturday of college football. Needless to say, the message boards lit up across the fruited plain as usual on a Saturday. Before we start our trip, take a quick look at this (remember most of these teams have beaten a ranked opponent at the time of the game).
Let’s get started this morning this morning in the Classic City where it’s clear BBN isn’t happy with basketball season starting the first week of October.
Kentucky is probably the best job for a coach looking for stability while being the worst for maintaining consistency and acquiring talent. It’s the exact opposite of their men’s basketball coaching job. The problem is their fans are starting to expect close to the same performance from their football program that they expect from their basketball program.
Stoops is probably now a dead man walking unless he finds a way to beat Tennessee to save his job. I’m guessing Kirby told him after the game that he has a spot in his coaching rehab program when the time is right.
On to the game, I don’t understand why Kirby doesn’t coach this game in Lexington the same way he does in Athens. Turn the superior athletes loose and let them make plays. Kudos to Stoops for hitting the over for his buddies in Youngstown by leaving his starters in while Georgia was emptying the bench. I was surprised he didn’t try an onside kick to get a field goal to cover the spread.
Let’s move on to Tobacco Road to check in on the Bill Belichick Experience.
Before the season no one would be surprised that Clemson was going to beat North Carolina. I’m not even sure I would have been surprised to see the Tiggers beat the Heels convincingly.
I am surprised at how quickly things have gotten sideways with Belichick. I thought it was a dumb hire for a Kentucky type of program (football at a basketball school) to attempt to short-cut their way to national relevance, but this has gone worse than I thought it would.
Does Bill have the class to step down and go play golf after 1 year in Chapel Hill? We’ll see.
Let’s stay in the ACC to check in on Seminole Nation.
Yes, the final score was only by 6. -3 turnover margin gets you beat, and many times gets you run out of the building. Down 28-3, the Noles scramble to score 19 in the 4th quarter.
After the Alabama game, I thought Norvell had probably saved himself. His buyout is probably the only thing saving him now as the Noles season is officially on the brink. Trips to Clemson, Raleigh and Hogtown loom for the Tribe.
Is it just me, or does the new Doak just not have the same degree of home field advantage as the old one?
Now, we head to the 2 places you’ve been waiting for this week. Let’s start out at the land of the Big Bang Theory … Pasadena, California … to see how the Lions are doing this morning.
James Franklin has made a lot of money in Happy Valley by beating teams his team is supposed to beat. They went out and hired Jim Knowles away from the hated Buckeyes and threw a bunch of NIL money at players hoping to replicate what anOSU did to win a title.
Instead, now the season is close to half over, and they allowed Oregon to beat them twice. UCLA is one of the worst Power 4 teams in the country, and they controlled much of the game with Nico I accounting for 5 TDs and outplaying the preseason #1 overall pick in the Yankee Cade Klubnik.
I think it’s safe to say that Franklin is quickly wearing out his welcome and a trip to Columbus looms.
Let’s end today’s trip in Hogtown not for the reason we thought at the start of the weekend.
You ain’t wrong, collin12345. But we all think you’re a “laughing stock” because no one wanted you.
In the name of a meteor game, the north central, meth lab geniuses aren’t getting a pass this week.
Where’s F-bum today as Arch Manning’s Heisman campaign, after his moment against (checks notes) Sam Houston, crashes and burns in The Swamp? Watching this Texas offense has to be making the Shorthorns wonder where is the Sark who is supposed to be an offensive genius. The problem on Saturday was they sucked on defense as well.
To the Handbags, congratulations on keeping the Sun Belt Billy farewell tour going for another week. A trip to College Station to face an AgCult team who is now taking on the toughness of its coach probably isn’t going to end well for you.
That’s what I saw this week. Share your well wishes to Texas and Penn State in the comments.
https://youtu.be/NZNRkRX4LYU?si=zCsUhDggGr0hSZ63
It’s October, so it’s time for Kentucky fans to start looking to the start of basketball season. This axiom has particularly been true after the Wildcats visit Sanford Stadium. Both teams are coming off losses last week … Kentucky to South Carolina and Georgia to Alabama. The Cats have back-to-back games on the road and are looking to their open date next week before hosting Texas.
Let’s get to the preview.
When Georgia has the ball
Kentucky’s defense has been shredded in SEC play. Ole Miss rushed over 200 yards while South Carolina used ground out 180 on almost 50 attempts. Those 2 teams combined for 6 rushing TDs against the Wildcats. Against the pass they may be worse, Kentucky has given up over 10 yards per attempt in SEC play so far, but they did get 2 interceptions against Ole Miss.
Given how the Kentucky defense has fared, this is a game where the Dawgs need to take what the Cats are willing to give. If they want to protect their secondary, crank up on the league’s best running games. More likely, they are going to stack the box and force Stockton to throw. Gunner should have opportunities to create explosives in the passing game.
Final thought … stay away from turnovers.
When Kentucky has the ball
Kentucky is last in the conference by a fair margin throwing the ball. That includes games against the defensive stalwarts of Toledo and Eastern Michigan. Mark Stoops is going to try to shorten the game by running the ball and milking the clock. If there was a time to commit the front 6 to run stopping, today is that game. The Dawgs defense has been difficult to run consistently against, and I expect that to continue on this afternoon.
Get the Cats behind the chains and keep them there, Dawgs.
What will happen
Will Kirby try to out manball Stoops? If so, expect a game that doesn’t reflect the superior athleticism we have over Kentucky. If Kirby coaches this game as we have seen in Kentucky’s past games in Athens, this game could get out of hand. It would be a sight for sore eyes to see this team get off to a fast start on both sides of the ball and end all hope of a massive upset early.
I think this game ends up somewhere between those extremes.
Dawgs win by a final score that doesn’t reflect game control.
Final Score: Georgia 38, Kentucky 17
That’s not a grammatical error.
“We’ve got to affect the quarterback,” Smart said after the game. “We’ve got to do a better job of affecting the quarterback. I mean, we’ve got more packages than the man in the moon to affect the quarterback, but we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to do it, and we’ve got to go out there and execute and be able to do it.”
Interesting statement, as I’ve seen in more than one place in the socials and in comments that it seemed as though Alabama knew exactly what we were going to do throughout the entire first half of Saturday’s game.
That sounds like someone has some top flight analysts right there. Whatever bag of tricks Kirby and Schumann might have, they need to pull it out in the first half instead of “adjusting” in the second half. Perhaps some film study of the opposing offense might tighten that up, but I’m sure they’re doing that. Aren’t they?
Also from Weiszer’s article:
“I think we’ve put together some really good game plans,” coach Kirby Smart said on Monday Sept. 29. “I don’t know that we’ve executed them all the time well. There’s a line between execution responsibility, me, coaches, players, everybody’s involved in that. But I mean, the same calls that we called in the first half, we called in the second half. We got some stops, and we made some plays. It’s not about just calls. It’s about execution, putting people in a good position. Sometimes it’s playing with confidence, and we got to do a better job doing that.
Georgia has given up 45 points total in the first half the last two games. It allowed 65 points in the first half the entire 2021 season. Alabama had 24 of those in the SEC championship game in a 41-24 win.”
Before fire, passion, and energy, all the talk was about being “elite”. Might be time to re-engage an old refrain, or at least coach them up to that level. While execution is certainly a key component of the game, you also had two weeks to prepare for Alabama and likewise saw some glaring issues that Tennessee exposed that needed shoring up. While we didn’t have secondary players flailing to the ground while a receiver moonwalks into the endzone, the secondary was still picked apart and the affect on the quarterback was nearly non-existent in the first half.
Still, to be fair, someone was executing at a high level, and it was Simpson, who was getting the ball out quickly which I can only attribute to Grubb knowing what Georgia was going to show and exposing the gaps there to get quick hits and nice gains. Alabama was rarely in a position of playing from behind the sticks or in third and longs throughout the first half. That’s excellence in game planning and execution, combined, but sounds like some of the planning was better in one coaching room and maybe less in another. Whatever happened in the second halves of the Tennessee and Alabama games, I’d at least imagine, shouldn’t be rocket science to Smart and Company to recall what and why adjustments were made, though Kirby insists they dialed up the same looks and they worked (note – Alabama fans insist that DeBoer “took his foot off the gas” in the second half, which is laughable considering Alabama nearly lost the game last year, so they’re likewise insisting Kalen is a slow learner).
Why things work better in the second half instead of the first, though, is the thing the staff needs to figure out, and in short order. As Weiszer stated, we are in the NIL era and simply “outmanning” our opposition isn’t going to be ethos for the Bulldogs any longer.
Affect the quarterback, yes. Playing with your ass on fire from the opening whistle to the end seems to be a bigger priority for the team. A noon snoozer sandwiched between the Tide and the Tigers against the Wildcats awaits. If Kentucky is still a ballgame in the third quarter this weekend, we could be in for a long season.
Dawgs and Cats face off between the hedges on Saturday at high noon in what could be Mark Stoops’s last visit to Sanford as Kentucky’s head coach. Our Dawgs look to keep Alabama from beating them twice. In the meantime, Kentucky has lost their 2 conference games and look for a way to claw to bowl eligibility. Let’s get to the first look.
Series record
Georgia has dominated the series throughout with a record of 64-12-2. The Dawgs have won 15 in a row.
Last meeting
Georgia wins a tight game in Lexington 13-12. The Dawgs play a terrible game offensively and enable Kentucky to play keep away with the ball on offense. In a classic game in Lexington, Kirby is more than happy to play the game close to the vest. This game was what could happen when Kirby decides not to use his decided talent advantage … thank goodness we didn’t get burned.
Gambling degenerate facts
The Dawgs are currently a 20.5 point favorite with a 48.5 point total. The Dawgs are a -1800 favorite on the money line.
Interesting statistic 106.27 – team passer rating
Considering Kentucky has played 2 cupcakes, this statistic is downright awful. If the Cats can’t find some consistent passing game, they really have no chance to move the ball consistently against the Dawgs’ defense.
Early outlook
Without creating cheap field position with turnovers or special teams, Kentucky has a very narrow path to victory. Stoops must shorten the game to have a chance to pull the upset. Will Kirby try to out physical Kentucky and continue to run into stacked fronts, or will he allow the passing game to get athletes into space to create explosive play opportunities?
Is it too much to ask for this team not to play around and make this much more difficult than it needs to be?
What’s your thoughts on a Wednesday morning? Let us know in the comments below.
Interesting stat from Saturday’s game.
To say that that figure is simply concerning is an understatement. Allowing Simpson to sit in clean pockets certainly didn’t help, as I can remember too many situations where Simpson could comfortably check down and find wide open options to make for easy conversions. Given that our defensive linemen aren’t named Carter or Davis, some form of adjustment from Schumann et al would suggest bringing more pressure from linebackers could certainly help. Georgia has amassed, to date, five sacks in four games, all of which came from linebackers. No sacks from DLs or DBs is a strange stat to behold.
But all hope isn’t lost, as they say. The defense certainly adjusted in the second half, though one has to wonder how are serving as analysts and what is happening in film study that leads to such a slow start on defense. It’s not as if Alabama didn’t have any film or that they were throwing many nuanced wrinkles at us (seriously, when you see an offensive linemen shift to receiver, what the hell are you expecting to happen?). Whatever is happening, the finger wagging is shifting from offense to defense, which is something I never thought I’d be saying about a Kirby Smart coached squad.
It was obviously brutal on the social yesterday, but one common refrain across many platforms was back on Kirby’s choice of his coaching staff…great recruiters, but not great coaches. We aren’t built to simply outlast and overwhelm with talent as we used to be, so coaching up what we’ve got is becoming a greater priority than just getting talent on campus. But that’s also a part of college football discourse, as much as it ever has been.
So what are our odds to finish out…maybe compete for an SECCG?
Hey, at least it’s not zero. Missing out on the SECCG wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Georgia can make the CFP, but it’s still a goal that is in sight.
So how will Kirby and Co. respond? We get Kentucky this weekend, which could either be a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter or could be another disappointing slog fest of a game where Manball (hey, we are running better, so there’s that) rules the day and a listless and likely sleepy and distracted – it’s Homecoming – noon home crowd won’t do us many favors.
One thing’s for sure…what’s happening on the defensive side of the ball will be under greater scrutiny than on the offensive side of the ball. Will the bitter taste of another loss to Alabama deflate or will we rise to the challenge and respond? The team’s not out…but how down will we collectively be?
Just a PSA for those of you ticket holders out there.
Kind of seems appropriate. I hope we aren’t sleep walking after Alabama and before the Auburn tilt, because Kentucky can be a tough out. Plus a noon game where crowd energy could be low…
Holy shit.
That’s the #6 Wildcats, who just dropped 106 in a win against top ranked Florida on Saturday. The best game I can remember from my days in Athens was a visit from UNC during the Tubby Smith days. The place was electric and loud the entire time….but it looks like this might’ve been a bit more juiced:
Go Dawgs!
I don’t have a lot to say about the game on Saturday night. I’ve been on an extended business trip and have not watched the game since it occurred in the middle of the night for me. Nevertheless, our geniuses will be prominently featured in today’s post.
I haven’t watched the post-game presser, but I can safely say to this genius that Kirby cares more about Georgia football than this guy. It would have been easy to throw in the towel in BDS, but this team scrapped and clawed its way back. That’s a tribute to the man at the top of the program.
On the other hand to this genius, Kirby tried like hell to keep Monken in Athens. The last time I looked Monken and Bobo didn’t have anything to do with the defense. At some point in a game like this, the defense has to step up and make a play especially in the 1st half. When Dabo Swinney made his bandwagon comment, he had natty or bust fans like this in mind.
If the author of either of these comments happens to lurk here, sorry to call you out.
Let’s move on to Oxford where a team with a pulse showed up.
I knew Rebel fans had grammar problems, but accept the fact that your coach and program beats up on little sisters and then gets exposed against real competition. Even after losing just one game, they are ready for Joey Freshwater to find his next gig or to run him out of Oxford.
We’ll end our quick tour of the message board universe with another stop in Greater Opelika.
The Auburn family is ready to Brian Harsin Hugh Freeze and become a full-fledged basketball school. For this guy who saw Auburn ruin our season too many times, it warms my heart to see this. Let’s finish them on Saturday afternoon between the hedges.
Sorry for the short post today, but hope everyone has a good week especially those recovering from Helene.
After last night’s escape from Lexington, I needed 12 hours or so to think about how the same team that beat the hell out of Clemson could be taken to the brink by a team that lost by 25 at home to South Carolina. We’ll get to our geniuses in a bit, but for now, let’s enjoy a little from the message board universe.
I had to start today with the Hogtown dumpster fire mixed with Busch Light, Axe body spray and eau de paper mill.
https://twitter.com/boardgeniuses/status/1835326918352384034?s=46
Jort Nation can’t decide whether to fire Sun Belt Billy now or force him to earn his buyout by taking the brunt of this season on his record. The Handbags made the AgCult’s offense look functional. They also learned that DJ Lagway may become a great player at the college level but he isn’t one right now. The mostly empty 2nd half Swamp made these 90s eyes cry tears of joy. I hope SBB makes it through the season because it will make the Florida recruiting class so bad the talent gap between us will look like the Gulf of Mexico.
Good times indeed.
We’ll move a little west toward the Redneck Riviera for our next stop in the message board universe.
Losing to Georgia Tech sucked but at least there was plenty of Guinness, Harp, and Irish whiskey for sorrow drowning. Being bullied by Boston College was surprising and shocking. Getting punked at home by Memphis has to be rock bottom. At least that’s what Nole fans have to be thinking. When your unconquered fans are now saying we don’t want any part of a big boy conference and longing for the days of Willie Taggart, it ain’t good in Tallahassee. How low can it go now especially given FSU is tied to Mike Norvell.
Let’s take our little trip now to the surface of the sun aka Columbia, South Carolina for a double feature.
Gamecock fans are delusional, but usually, their delusion is gone by this time of the year. The idiocy of the typical Poultry partisan has never been in doubt. The combination of the 2 in the TwiX above is incredible – the delusion that South Carolina could play for the SEC championship combined with the stupidity of not knowing the divisions are gone now is the USCjr stereotype.
OTOH, the Leprechaun continues to lose Corn Dog Nation. Beating South Carolina by 1 is not the way to prove to the proud Cajuns that you have things under control. Garrett Nussmeier’s awful decision that should have been a game-clinching pick 6 was bailed out by a call that would have never been made anywhere else on the field involving any other player on the field. Does anyone really think Brian Kelly was ever going to be a good fit on the bayou? Add Tiger fans to the list of those who believe they can convince Saban to leave his cushy ESPN job combined with his ability to play golf whenever and wherever he wants and the money Bama is paying him to be around the program.
Let’s move on to the backwoods of the SEC, StarkVegas.
I normally never think about Mississippi State, but this nugget from last night’s beatdown the Bizarro Dogs took at the hands of Toledo made me laugh. When you think MACtion talent is an upgrade, you know you aren’t built to win in the SEC. Those Disney checks still cash very well.
Our trip around the world of CFB now takes us to the capital of the Empire State of the South.
https://247sports.com/college/georgia-state/board/59462/contents/congratulations-236307855/?page=1
I have saved this space for relishing in the pain of others, but I had to give a shout out to Dell McGee for his Panthers’ win over previously undefeated Vanderbilt last night in Atlanta. McGee seems to be doing things right in downtown Atlanta by taking what he learned from Kirby and applying what works for his current situation. Good for him and I hope he can make life miserable for Brent Key.
Let’s end our weekend travels on the Kentucky bluegrass.
Now it comes to our geniuses who know more football than all of us but just haven’t gotten the chance to show it. I was disappointed in how we played Saturday night (I had a growing Munson throughout the day yesterday that only happens for late games I don’t attend) especially across both lines of scrimmage. Yes, I understand we had a lot of guys out on the defensive line, but we had plenty of chances to get backs on the ground for TFLs or short gains and didn’t do it. The offensive line did not play well at all for most of the game. We got outplayed physically on both lines for most of the night. Said differently, Mike Stoops wanted to play the game in a phone booth to shorten the game, and Kirby was happy to oblige.
For our geniuses, “Fire Mike Bobo” is the hammer for every nail that is a problem at UGA. I don’t know if the game plan was bad because the execution was generally putrid last night. The guy from southwest Georgia that takes a potshot at Beck and Jake Fromm can stick it for all I care … they’re both DGDs.
Those are my thoughts on the weekend that was. Finally, this bye week comes at a good time where Kirby can chew some back sides and get this team focused on the task at hand … Beat Bama.