My deep breath analysis

dapolla, good stuff on your post as usual. Your sixth point is very interesting. You know, me and my crew are usually furious anytime UGA loses but for some reason we were all very calm and collected leaving Sanford on Sat. night. This is very encouraging that you noticed other fans behaving the same way. I think after witnessing the complete turnaround last year, Dawg fans should know better than to give up on the season this early!

My 2 cents:

Sadler is spot on about our team looking a bit dazed in the early going. I really can't explain this one and perhaps this wasn't even the case, just the way it looked? One thing's for sure, Bama showed up MORE ready to play than our Dawgs did on Sat. night. Still, I trust CMR will not let this happen again.

Now, for everyone critizing Willie and calling for his head, do you think the offense helped out the defense enough by holding onto the ball for all of 9 minutes and 55 seconds in the 1st half? Jeez, the 1985 Chicago Bears defense would be giving up points too if they were on the field for 20 of the games first 30 minutes. IMHO, Bobo has got to COMMIT to the RUNNING GAME. This will help both our offense and our defense.

I just looked at the game stats for the 1st time and they were very revealing. In the 1st half, Knowshon rushed the ball all of 5 times (count em' on 1 hand) for a total of 22 yards. Last I checked, if you can avg. over 3.5 ypc, you can move the chains all day long simply by pounding the rock. Sat. night, Knowshon got 9 carries for 34 yards (3.8 ypc). The best UGA team under CMR was our 2002 squad and in every single game that year you could count on Musa Smith getting his carries (Musa averaged over 20 carries per game in 2002); why should it be any different w/a running back of Knowshon's caliber?

So yeah, I do agree that Willie and the defense have plenty of work to do but the offense is not blameless either. IMHO, we can RUN THE BALL on ANYBODY if we would just commit to doing it. Remember the 1st drive in Jax. last year, all Knowshon all the time, not EVEN a single pass. That was my favorite UGA drive in a long, long, time.
PLEASE BOBO, RUN THE D#%N BALL NO MATTER WHO WE ARE PLAYING!

Ok I'm done playing armchair QB now.
I am certainly NOT at all happy to see UGA go down but as I said before the season started and again last week, the schedule really set up perfectly for a Bama win and they came out and took it to us. I can live with it & maybe we get a chance for revenge in Atlanta? However, I truly believe that this HUMBLING loss was just what our team needed. Also, this is the PERFECT time for our BYE week. Our coaches and players now have 2 LONG weeks to hear about how OVERRATED we were and figure out what changes need to be made. A wounded Dawg is a dangerous animal and I personally cannot wait to see how HUNGRY our Dawgs look come 10/11 when they take the field against Tennessee!
WE HAVE PLENTY TO PLAY FOR STILL INCLUDING THE SEC CHAMPIONSHIP!!!




TIME TO HUNKER DOWN DAWGS!!!

I don't feel I'm piling blame on WM, I just think people are too accepting sometimes of lapses while playing, those penalties and decision making skills come back to coaching.

I looked at this as a bully punch to the mouth but after that we didn't regroup or change schemes and I'm not saying its just the defense but its glaringly bad on defense against good teams. I think the head shot and the roughing the passer is what really took all the wind out of our sails, they were fighting up until that point and I think if that penalty is not made the game would have been closer. Momentum is a valuable tool in any game.

I think we will be back and I really hope to see them in Atlanta at the end of the year.

Everyone who's posted on here for the last couple of years knows I'm not the president of the Willie Martinez fan club. However, I think he's doing the best with what he has to work with. I'd love to see more heat put on qb's, but I'm not sure if our secondary is up to the task. They had to commit several PI penalties because they couldn't keep up with 'bama's wideouts. And when we're playing a team that primarily runs, we can't blitz every play because they'll run right by us. This was a team that's committed to the run, and we did a pretty good job containing it. We just didn't expect them to beat us in the air, but they did. He's got to get this secondary shored up and aggressive, then he can work on pressuring the qb.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda's.....forget about it, we just got whipped, no excuses.


BTW, agree with you sadlerdawg.

wlayton wrote:

forget about it, we just got whipped, no excuses.

And that, my friends, is the bottom line.

What's frustrating is that I thought our defense would be the strength of our team this year. No excuses, but when we lost Owens, it seems we lost the soul of the defense.