I've waited,...

and refrained from posting, partly due to the comical and amateurish postings of the recently registered, but mostly to allow my knee jerk response to marinate. While lurking here, as well as other sites, I read a well written post that best encapsulates where I am with my thoughts.

With all due respect to the UT posters, it doesn't take much courage to espouse your allegiance with hindsight as your weapon. Prior to the game there was one, afterward there were many. This smattering of bandwagoneers have no purpose, beyond the obvious, ignore them and they will retreat to the holes that they emerged from!

That being said, I call your attention to the following post, authored by dawg quiote, entitled:

Football Psychology

Given that the topics of defensive scheme, offensive play-calling, and fundamental execution have been essentially exhausted, somebody needs to make a few obvious points about the mental and emotional aspects of college football. But first I should go ahead and say that I think that UT is a very good team, much better than last year, with a newfound toughness and discipline that they were missing without Cutcliffe . . . but UT isn’t that much better than the ‘Dawgs. What happened Saturday was, I think, mostly about heads and hearts, not hands and feet.

1. “Don’t ever make the mistake of assuming that what you can do some of the time, you can do all of the time.” This, friends, is a basic and good rule of life. Even Tiger loses a tournament from time to time. At a more practical level, how many of you are 100% at your job every day? With your family every day? I’ll speak for myself here and say that some days I’m on, and some days I’m not – especially in the mental and emotional parts of life. What I mean to say is that sometimes little things don’t bother me, sometimes they do. Sometimes I’m bursting with confidence, sometimes I’m not. And from what I’ve seen I ain’t all that unusual here. So . . . talking football. You’ve got basically a hundred young men out there, all of them dealing with everything from football to academics to girlfriends to hundreds of thousands of people watching their every move. So I’m not surprised that, despite the best coaching and the best intentions and the best training, they perform at different levels from week to week.

Especially in the mental, intangible aspects of the game. I’m sure that JTIII can shake off an interception in many cases, but sometimes it might bother him, or even hurt his confidence. Same for Lumpkin missing a block, or Battle blowing a coverage. On the wrong day this can get in their heads and make an incremental change in performance. And this isn’t psychobabble or an excuse or a rationalization – it’s basic management theory. Management is about managing human beings, and human beings ain’t perfect.

2. Momentum; the “SEC-Style Feeding Frenzy.” One thing I’ve noticed lately in the SEC is that, as we have deepened the stable of really, really good teams, many games turn into a feeding frenzy by the team with momentum. Sure, you see a lot of slugfests and low-scoring games, but you also see a lot of back-and-forth games that all of a sudden get blown wide open. For example, UGA-LSU in the 2003 SEC Championship Game; UGA-UT in 2003 (back and forth until Sean Jones blows it open with a fumble return for a TD); UGA-LSU in 2004; UGA-UT in 2005 (back and forth until Thomas Flowers blows it open with a punt return) . . . etc. You could make a long lost of these games where somebody makes a big play, gets a slight mental and emotional edge, the other team goes defensive or reactive, and then – game over. Fortunately, UGA has been on the winning side of this a lot more often than the losing side. But, every now and then, you get on the wrong side of the wave.

3. “The Fallacy of Extrapolation.” This is a pompous way of rephrasing the first point, and it means that you shouldn’t draw major conclusions from what happens on one day. So, for example, UGA blows LSU out and scores 45 points so they are clearly the BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD. Until the next week, when they have to beg and plead and steal to squeak out 14 against UT. I could find lots of similar examples.

All of this is to say, here is what I think we should take away from the UT game. UT is much better than they were last year, especially in mental and emotional toughness. We are slightly worse, and without any overt disrespect to JTIII or Stafford, it’s because the QB play isn’t what we’re used to seeing. Four years of Greene and one year of DJ will spoil you. Nevertheless, we hung toe-to-toe with UT for three quarters and took a lead into the fourth. But three turnovers from JTIII and a blocked punt led to a really tired defense, a discouraged QB, and maybe an unfamiliar sense of law-grade panic. So we went from 100% to maybe 90%. You could see that JTIII was tentative, that the defense was on its heels, and that even the coaching staff – normally the paragon of coolness – was a little desperate. That allowed UT to blow the game open. It snowballed. And we ended up giving up 27 points in the fourth quarter, despite giving up only 24 to that point.

Sorry for the long message. In any event, at this point, I wouldn’t panic. We've got six more games and we ought to win most of them. We can play with any of them, but we just need to keep our heads up and don't let this game affect the rest of the season.

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With out a doubt, this posting is insightful and takes care to consider not only the lost preseason expectations but the potential future of this team. I'll tip my hat to UT for a game and game plan well executed. They have bragging rights, as easily observed herein, as well as a measure of kharma revisited, having received several similar occurences on the other side of the wave. This team will learn and grow from this event to become better prepared for the games and seasons yet to be played!


GO DAWGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!