Georgia's Old Gremlins Return
by Year2 on Apr 13, 2009 2:00 PM EDT
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PrintSpring games have always been a bit paradoxical.
You're never quite sure whether the outcome of a play is good or bad. Is that long run a good sign for the offense, or does it portend doom for the defense? Was that sack a sign of an unstoppable defensive end or a Swiss cheese O-line?
However, some things are not ambiguous. Take this from Chris Low's recap of Georgia's spring game:
A.J. Green isn't going to be able to do it alone at receiver, either. There were way too many dropped passes last Saturday. Look for incoming freshman Marlon Brown to get a chance to show what he can do right away once he arrives.
It is unfathomable to me that, given how good Mark Richt's FSU offenses were, he can't cobble together a sure handed receiving corps anymore. It's been so bad in recent years that Bulldog fans have frequently blamed dropped passes for Matthew Stafford's fairly low completion percentages across his first couple years.
It sounds as though things won't get better this year unless hyped receiving recruit Marlon Brown can come in and be the second coming of A.J. Green. I don't mean that Brown has to come in and lead all SEC freshman in receiving yards as Green did, but rather that he would need to actually catch most everything thrown at him.
UGA receivers coach John Eason is also assistant head coach, and he's been there as long as Richt has. In other words, a change in the position coach is unlikely unless Eason is hired away or until the 63-year-old retires. (Eason is no longer the receivers coach. See comments. -Ed.)
If the system in place can't for some reason teach guys to stop dropping passes, then the recruiting their way out of this predicament would be the only other viable option. With Green in 2008 and presumably Brown in 2009 as dependable guys, the situation is improving.
Whether the Bulldogs can compete for national titles while bringing in just one reliable receiver per year is another question. Given that Richt signed three four-star pass catchers in his '09 class (Brown plus Orson Charles and Rantavious Wooten), it appears he's trying to pick up the pace.
Unfortunately, no one in Athens will know if they are the answer until the fall when they finally show up to campus. Right now, it appears the status quo with the Georgia receivers hasn't changed.
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Receivers
I’m pretty sure that the only pass dropped by a scholarship receiver was one by Aaron White, and he’s been pretty reliable in the past.
John Eason is no longer receivers coach. He will be the new Director of Football Operations on 7/1/2009 with the retirement of Steve Greer. Tony Ball is now the wide receivers coach (the position he held at VPI for the eight years before he came to UGA).
If the “status quo” for UGA is having players holding down spots 1 and 3 in receiving yards per game, then yeah, let’s keep things the same (I’m not holding my breath).
Thanks for the info on Eason. I didn’t get to watch the game for a variety of reasons, but when I see a reliable reporter like Low plus Richt in the postgame press conference make references to too many drops happening, I assumed it was substantial.
A simple Google search turns up plenty of evidence regarding Bulldog receivers dropping passes in recent history (exhibits A, B, and C, for example), so I stand by that. It’s been a serious problem over the past couple of years.
Problem
What I left out of my comment was that I, too, found to dropped passes at G Day troublesome. I don’t dispute it’s been a recent problem, going back more than a couple of years. Last year was a bit different, due to a combination of having a mature senior and a phenom true freshman at wide receiver and a freak-of-nature QB finally establishing reasonable consistency. Watching the game again off TiVo, however, I’m less troubled, given who it was doing the dropping. But in our offense, everybody (TBs, TEs, WRs, and maybe even QBs once in a blue moon) have to be able to catch the damn ball.
I realize it's football and so we're obligated to pontificate on it
but this is about as nutrient-free of an event as you’re going to get. As NCT noted, only one scholarship receiver dropped a ball, and many of the drops were on the other end of bullets thrown by Zach Mettenberger, who is a bet-the-mortgage lock to redshirt this season.
If you want a do-over on this post, I’d focus on the ho-hum ground game. Even still, there were 30 players who sat this one out with various injuries and the playcalling was done by Stafford and Knowshon, not by OC Mike Bobo, so you’d have to be a magician to extrapolate anything here.
Here are the big takeaways for me:
1. Somehow 45K showed up for this on the same weekend as Easter and the Masters
2. Somehow Damon Evans convinced ESPN to produce a recruiting infomercial for Georgia.
3. Georgia hasn’t forgotten the tight end.
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