Miss. State coach recruited Murray for Gators (and lots more notes)
Cleaning out the notebook before heading to Starkville:
- If Dan Mullen, the Mississippi State coach and former Florida offensive coordinator, had gotten his way, Aaron Murray would be a Gator. Mullen said this week that he has known Murray since the UGA QB was a freshman at Plant High School in Tampa. That’s when Murray came on the Gators’ recruiting radar.
“Watching him develop now,” Mullen said, “you see a guy who has a lot of talent, has a very, very strong arm and has the athletic ability to improvise and get himself out of trouble and make plays with his legs.”
- One day this week, Kris Durham was wearing the gear of two of pro sports’ losingest franchises — a Detroit Lions T-shirt and a Kansas City Royals cap. There’s an explanation. Durham’s former roommate is Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, and his brother-in-law is Royals relief pitcher Blake Wood.
- On the practice field early this week, defensive backs coach Scott Lakatos was heard reminding his players, loudly: “380! You gave up 380 [passing] yards last game!”
- Georgia and Mississippi State are the only teams that are 0-2 in the SEC. The other teams that have played two conference games are LSU (2-0) and Vanderbilt (1-1).
- It has been 20 years since Georgia lost three games in a row.
- Georgia was on a two-game losing streak the last time it played Mississippi State, too. Georgia won 27-24 on Oct. 21, 2006, in Athens as freshman Stafford threw two TD passes and defensive end Charles Johnson stripped the ball from MSU QB Michael Henig at the UGA 23 in the final seconds.
- Georgia opponents have committed only one turnover the past two weeks. Mississippi State committed five against LSU last week.
- Akeem Dent said he doesn’t get over a loss “till I get the next win. . . . You have a nasty taste in your mouth until you get the next victory.”
- Georgia players will get to do something Saturday they haven’t been able to do before any game this season: sleep in a bit. It’s the Bulldogs’ first night game of the season.
- Surprised that, after three games, Rantavious Wooten has only two catches for 14 yards.
- Saturday night’s game will be played in the nation’s second oldest Division I-A on-campus football stadium. Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium was built in 1914, making it one year younger than Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium. “We are going,” Mark Richt said, “to the home of the cowbells.”
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246 comments Add your comment
Dirty Dawg
September 24th, 2010
11:11 am
Oh, and another thing. If Richt doesn’t feel he wants to start calling plays again – too into the head-coaching thing now – then why not bring brother-in-law, Brad Johnson, into the booth and have him call plays into Bobo’s ear-phones. I mean surely the guy’s had enough experience at play-calling and recognition of what defenses are doing, or are trying to do, to improve our what we’re doing. Don’t wait til the end of the season Mark, do it now…Bobo’ll just have to understand that three-heads are better than one or two – particularly if the newest one has a lot more recent experience and knowledge than the other two.
Enquiring minds need to know
September 24th, 2010
11:11 am
Whoever the new coach will be (probably Chris Petersen or Jon Gruden), there will be a clean sweep of the coaching staff; although if it is Gruden, Grantham’s potty mouth will be a perfect fit.
Delbert D.
September 24th, 2010
11:13 am
“My buddy who was at the game noticed CMR with the laminated sheet covering his mouth”
Read some excerpts from Coach Richt’s press conferences. See if you can figure out his comments without the necessity to read lips.
DAWG with bag over his head
September 24th, 2010
11:15 am
RedPants Dawg, I was thinking the same thing when I read that about Durham. He’ll probably be suspended for the rest of the season.
bat hunter
September 24th, 2010
11:17 am
GRANTHAM!!! HOLLER!!! This Dawgs bandwagon is fun!!!
Slow start, tough finish for UGA
September 24th, 2010
11:17 am
Is Delbert D. a Georgia Tech fan?
Group 2
September 24th, 2010
11:18 am
IF RICHT WAS FIRED AFTER THE SEASON, WHO DO YOU GUYS THINK WOULD BE THE TOP CANDIDATES TO REPLACE HIM?
Common Sense
September 24th, 2010
11:18 am
Bobo was an average college QB who was an above average HS QB from Thomasville GA.
He is a below average OC.
I’m out of abbreviations, and Bobo is out of time. Start putting up points, Shut your mouth and stop criticizing your starting QB.
LOL.
WDE
September 24th, 2010
11:19 am
So does that mean that Akeem Dent won’t have the nasty taste out of his mouth until you get 2 wins?
dawgfacedboy
September 24th, 2010
11:19 am
I would also like to know why Richt ever decided that Bobo was experienced enough or qualified to take the play calling duties of a program like UGA. I heard last night that the Miami coach has 20 years of play calling experience, some of that at the NFL level. Mullen was so good they gave him his own SEC program. WE have Bobo, go figure.
Atticus
September 24th, 2010
11:20 am
Dude, lay off the Chris Petersen bit, he is at Boise!. How is the last Boise coach doing at Colorado? And he is the one that actually built the program. Potty mouth…? Classic, what is this a kindergarden class?
not optimistic
September 24th, 2010
11:21 am
im not optimistic this week. but we should win and then, the disneydawgs will be telling us all how great things really are and how we need to stop being down on the program.
what i find interesting is how we all can see these problems and yet everyone in the media seem to be circling the wagons around the uga coaching staff. guess they all want to protect their access…..
Lane Frank
September 24th, 2010
11:22 am
I am hoping for a breakout game here, with a decisive MSU win. I think they are much better than they have played so far. And also Auburn and LSU have their best teams in years.
Atticus
September 24th, 2010
11:23 am
Dawg faced that is my same point. Not saying never giving a guy a chance but after 4 years, it is clear he is NOT elite. It is not just about playcalling, it is the total packaeg, running the entire offense, preparation, gameplan, personell….everything. UGA should have the BEST OC they can find, one that has shown proven results, not consistently underachieved….and then make excuses.
Pago Pago Dawg
September 24th, 2010
11:23 am
At least this game won’t be on national tv!
David Granger
September 24th, 2010
11:24 am
Aaron Murray has played fine, to the extent he’s been ALLOWED to play. You can tell he’s a redshirt freshman occasionally…but the problems with Georgia this year has not been at QB.
The OL really needs to step up and PROVE itself. It was supposed to be a key cog in the team this year, and the poor performance so far makes one wonder if they took themselves a little too much for granted, and didn’t work as hard as they should have.
Gary
September 24th, 2010
11:24 am
Interesting tactic used by Bama. Give an underperforming player a medical scholarship so they can finish school but open up a spot for a better athlete. I most cases the player had recovered from an injury so it would not appear to be an issue with the NCAA, however few if any of the players felt they had a career ending injury and had completely recovered. Article in the WSJ today. Not saying it is dirty, but Georgia has quite a few players that might fall into this category. Recovering from injury and underperforming or keeps getting injured. Let them stay in school but give someone else the starting spot. if it works for Satan we should try it until the NCAA takes another look at the rule.
Frankie Laine
September 24th, 2010
11:24 am
MSU 30
UGA 24
Popeye
September 24th, 2010
11:24 am
@Group 2, how about a coach who knows how to win and isn’t scared to call out his players and demands Wins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maura
September 24th, 2010
11:25 am
Is it to late to bring Zach back?
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater
September 24th, 2010
11:26 am
new OC, keep Richt. Defense will hopefully come out swinging tomorrow after their horrible loss last week.
Atticus
September 24th, 2010
11:27 am
Maura—-go root for someone else then if you are that clueless…Aaron Murray is better than Matthew Stafford at the same point. Go watch the WNBA
Gary
September 24th, 2010
11:27 am
I will say the coaches need to start lowering expectation pre season. This should have been refered to as a rebuilding year with a new QB, the loss of a bunch of NFL caliber players and a new defensive process. I think there would be a lot less criticism flying around. You when everybody is happy. You loose, we understand why.
dawgfacedboy
September 24th, 2010
11:29 am
Group 2- they aren’t going to fire him with a new D scheme and a freshman QB.
Enquiring minds- why would Gruden come to UGA when he can have the Dallas job after they fall short of Jerry Jones’ expectations. Chris Peterson is intriguing but they play a jv schedule other than 1 game. Whose to say he would be succesful when he has to put his big boy pants on every week?
Gerald
September 24th, 2010
11:29 am
I wonder if any of the books about UGA football include the perspective of someone speaking for the late Jan Kemp? The perspective that “student” athletes like Lindsay Scott were playing years without taking college level courses? That the proudest moment of the football program was earned by players who never earned a single college credit?
Dawgtards love to return to 1980, but their memories are really short when it comes to remembering an earthshaking event that happened a few years later that showed the world what a joke UGA athletes were and what a scam artist their beloved Vince Dooley was (and is). So for all those dawgtards with short memories or who think their athletes are actually taking real courses and trying to graduate, here’s the quote that broke the trial wide open and showed what a slimeball Dooley is:
O. Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for the defense, offered a justification for the favorable treatment accorded the athletes, citing a hypothetical player. “We may not make a university student out of him,” he told the jury, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbageman when he gets through with his athletic career.”
Nothing has changed at UGA, they just do a slightly better job of keeping things quiet, but that’s hard to do when 45 of your player-thugs have been arrested in the last three years and you have a moron who hits parked cars while drunk in the middle of the night, isn’t it?
UGA: WINNER OF THE FULMER CUP AND THE CESSPOOL OF THE SOUTH.
ga gator
September 24th, 2010
11:29 am
My belief that part of UGA’s struggles and UF’s struggles is the fact that both Offensive Coordinators are on the sideline. For UGA it would be an easy fix to move Bobo up top because the only player he coaches is the QB and he can talk to him on the headset when he comes off the field. For UF, it was a dumb choice by Urban because Adazio cannot go up top because he had 5 O-linemen to coach when they come of the field and can only talk to one at a time on head phones. Just some observations from an old NON-Georgia hating Gator.
ManiacalDawgHoyden
September 24th, 2010
11:32 am
It’s been 30 long years since the dawgs won their only mythical football national championship.
Atticus
September 24th, 2010
11:33 am
ga gator…..Florida’s offenisive struggles are due to the fact that in successive years they lost their offensive coordinator and two of the best players in the history of college football. Georgia’s are because they have the wrong guy running the offensive side of the ball and they have a head coach that makes excuses year after year instead of demanding excellence and discipline. And they play a physical sport timidly instead of with an edge to exert their will on the other team.
dawgfacedboy
September 24th, 2010
11:34 am
They play like they did for the S.C. game and for 3 quarters of the Arkansas game and we can expect the same result. Until we run the ball better we won’t win another game.
Tuna
September 24th, 2010
11:36 am
I agree, too much props to a coach (Chris Petersen) at a low-level conference school that has been the media darling for years.
dawgfacedboy
September 24th, 2010
11:36 am
Atticus- Bingo!!
gbal
September 24th, 2010
11:38 am
I feel that we should not design plays that call for a 220LB RB to block a 260-275LB defensive end or tackle. We have 5 interior linemen, possibly a TE and a FB to handle the rush. That leaves 3 people running patterns and A QB. Put the RB in a dump pattern. Ir the D russhes more than 6 we should be able to hit the dump or throw away.
BAMA STAN
September 24th, 2010
11:41 am
13 NATIONAL TITLES – 22 SEC TITLES!!!
To my UGA friends – SCREW the fact that your SEC record is 0-2.
Tomorrow – starts a new season!
One Game at a time.
Focus on improvement.
When Nick Saban arrived at Alabama – switched to a 3/4 – and we went 6-6. We had a lot of busted plays similar to what UGA had against Arkansas. The next year – we were undefeated in regular season play.
And by the way – Todd Grantham was recruited by SABAN.
Dorsey Hill
September 24th, 2010
11:42 am
Gary,
We are not going to oversign and we are not going to make players quit or run them off or put them on medical scholarships just because they aren’t good. It isn’t the right thing to do so we won’t be doing it. If a player doesn’t pan out, its the coaches fault for recruiting the kid in the first place. We make a commitment to these players and their familes and we are going to live up to it. If you want to pull for a team that will do anything to win, I think they’re playing in Fayetteville Saturday. Success is the hopeful by-product of doing things the right way. Its the same in business, life and sports. There are no short cuts. Bama can have their trophies and attention and everything that comes with it. I’d rather have my dignity.
gdawginkalamazoo
September 24th, 2010
11:47 am
Thanks SPanky and Lowcountry on the Arky comeback input.
Reality
September 24th, 2010
11:49 am
Agree with the comments about a new OC and CMR getting his mojo back but the comments about we should be a program expecting an easy win in Starkville are off base. Even in UF glory days they struggled at Ms. State. I watched Auburn struggle there earlier this year and quite frankly after watching Auburn/ Clemson game, they will put it to us. Bottom line whether we are 2-0 or 0-2, I will take a 3 point victory in Starkville any season. Folks seem to forgot the biggest problem with college football is every weekend, half the teams lose.
Matthews Dawg
September 24th, 2010
11:54 am
“My God a Freshman”….you got me! But, we SHOULD KEEP CMR!
Matthews Dawg
September 24th, 2010
11:56 am
BAMA Stan….you are all over it! Dawg fans quit panicking
Reality
September 24th, 2010
11:57 am
Gary,
Do you really believe UT, UF, AL, etc. have better academic and ethical standards for their players? The problem is money and it is common to most division one schools.
gdawginkalamazoo
September 24th, 2010
11:59 am
Thanks BAMA STAN. Patience. If you look at Richt’s HC tenure he did start out with a bang the first five years, then we had 2007 where we ended up #2. Things went off track a little back in 2006-07. A lot people don’t recall but his wife was fighting cancer during that time. I can understand the hires he made. First his best friend WM as DC because things were going pretty good at the time seemed like a good hire. It proved to be not so good a hire. He dealt with it last year. Around the same time the fans were yelling at him to “be a HC” and hire an OC to call the plays so that he could focus on everything else, ie, defense/SP etc. So he promoted MB because he was comfortable with that because MB had been there a few years. Okay that may or may not be working out as the play calling indicates that we are not scoring up to our potential. So I believe MR will probably be a little quicker to deal with this than he did WM. He learned. He was got distracted from football with his wife and her battle for short period of time (Which in the scheme of life is a whole lot more important than UGA winning a football). He is making the changes and learned a lot from the WM deal. I think we might go 7-5, 8-4 this year with all the changes. It’s not like we lost to SC by a bunch or that the Arky game was horrendous. Mallet will get his yardage this year from a lot teams. It will interesting to see what he does Sat.
gdawginkalamazoo
September 24th, 2010
12:07 pm
BAMA STAN, so that’s how we end up where we are this year so far. With us being “down” so far all I hear is that SC and Arky had “big wins” against us. SC’s 10 spot jump in the polls and Arky’s move into the top 10 tell me that we still aren’t on the mat yet and that we have a long season to go. The kids didn’t quit or give up which says a lot about the coaching and desire to win.
robodawg
September 24th, 2010
12:08 pm
Definitely surprising about Wooten. After such a great freshman season, what gives?
ugatiger
September 24th, 2010
12:09 pm
PLEASE Bobo, get that freshman out from under center where he does not have to turn his back to the defense on every snap…..
McDawg
September 24th, 2010
12:13 pm
hey Gerald drink some more Kool-Aid
TheXman
September 24th, 2010
12:20 pm
just let the season play out before all the crying guys. UGA will end 6-2 in the sec and a shot at the sec title with a south carolina fallout
jasont13
September 24th, 2010
12:22 pm
Rantavious Wooten has been hurt most of the year. He has a nagging hamstring injury that has limited his time a practice and in the games.
edumacated
September 24th, 2010
12:23 pm
Who is this psycho who keeps on about the Kemp thing from the 80’s? Get a life dude. Sheesh.
JAGLAW
September 24th, 2010
12:29 pm
THINK ABOUT THIS:
CMR was coaching at FSU and playing for NC in 2000. He had talent.
New system at UGA his first year– he gets a pass, but talent was still there.
2002-2005 he had the players and the coaching.
2005-2009: CMR has allowed willie maritnez to delapidate the defense. Bobo has not developed, but b/c MR is an offensive coach, we still have gotten players on offense.
If he doesnt fire Bobo, recruits will stop coming b/c lack of production. Dont believe me? Look at the defense.
When Van Gorder left, WM was not developing players and did not get the right players. Remember, Thomas Jones, Greg Blue, and those other huge safeties? That is what TG is trying to get back to.
Bottom line: CMR always has had players combined with coaching. By keeping WM too long, he has lost the stockpile of players needed on defense. If he keeps Bobo, the same will happen, and is happening on offense.
CMR is facing life without proper personal for the first time in his career due to his own fault. U cant win without the players, just ask Spurrier.
Since Vince
September 24th, 2010
12:34 pm
Hire Jim Harbaugh !!!!!!
Got ear bling? AJ Do!
September 24th, 2010
12:37 pm
Fire these clowns in Athens ! The program has dipped to a new low and I’m sick of these buffoons.