From Athens- Game Day Friday # 5

Really believe that both South Carolina and Georgia were looking ahead to their meeting.

Did see some really good blocks thrown by our offensive line allowing 3 and 4 running room. 3 and 4 are not average running backs, and many records will be set by these two before they leave campus.

Pick six did make my stomach roll over. Stop it . . . . AM was the determining factor in many of the plays that were successful. Our fullback will hit you in the mouth . . . . more than once.

A couple of things:

If we were looking ahead... We should never look ahead past Tennessee. It's more understandable for SC to look past a Kentucky, but a Tennessee rivalry is a bit different even if UT has been down a few years.

AD mentioned that DESPITE the special ed... the turnovers.. the mental mistakes.. we still found a way to win.

We can look at the problems and say "same old Georgia", but we can also say the "same old" in the recent past has had those things cost us the game whereas this years team overcame it and won. That's a big difference in the right direction. Plus maybe we got those mistakes we were all worried about showing up out of the way this week
so we would emphasize them once again in practice and NOT make them next week against SC.

If that's how it works out... I'll take it.

There is a history between Georgia and Tennesse for sure. The unexpected should be expected.

The young pups on this team have not been through that. Coaches can speak until they are blue in the face about what has happened before. All of us on this board understand the rivalry and tradition of the series that many or maybe most of the players don't have.

Still seems a bit strange to me that two top ten teams with a history of playing superior defense were pushed by Tennessee and Kentucky. Both of these teams know that the meeting in Columbia is the next game up and could decide the SEC East. What we will see next week will not look anything like this past week, game has Champions of the East written all over it. Players on both sides know this and all of the build up thus far in the season has been marketed to and pointed at Georgia/South Carolina.

Next week will feature 3 of the best running backs in the country. A lot of lessons will be learned in Columbia by both sides. Don't want to miss this one. Both teams enter at 5-0, only one will end the game 6-0. Both sides will pull out all the stops and hidden formulas when toe meets leather in Columbia.

I for one will not accept any excuses. We won and glad we did, but do not make any excuses for the way we won. Mental mistakes=poor coaching. Same old Georgia but we won anyway in spite of the coaching, sounds like the same old issues. When we were up 27-10 I was thinking why are we sitting on this lead and playing conservative (which we were) then a few mistakes later we are busting our ass trying to tie it up. Mitchell letting the punt roll to the one, Gurley trying to field the KO in the corner instead of letting roll out of bounds is POOR COACHING.


Poor coaching will not win in Columbia east.........

Last year, we lose this game.

We can revisit the woulda-coulda-shoulda all day long on this game, and still not arrive at a comfortable conclusion. That said, I don't think the game was necessarily as close as the score suggests and, to our credit, we did all we could to keep Tennessee in the game.

Of course, you can't dismiss the impact of sloppy play from a superior team because it almost cost us this one, but the fact is that we had to face Tennessee and Georgia in this one and we still won. Take away the turnovers and this was a blowout. I do believe the D got tired. Look, how many years did we go lamenting any semblance of a high-powered offense? Well, we got one and it means that, in some cases, our D is going to be on the field longer than normal which equates to tiredness over the course of 60 minutes. Still, the D held when it had to. How many times did the opposite side of THAT coin undo us? (WM, anybody?)

I'd hate to be a Dawg in practice this week because you know they're going to pound the kids on the mistakes. Sloppy tackling, ball protection and special teams...going to be a long week. However, I get the impression that we have a lot in the tank. A sneaky good feel about this bunch of pups. Saturday will likely be another trench-fought battle, but I don't have the same pit of the stomach fear I've had in the past. I think the dawgs will come to play on Saturday.