We all knew that Joe Cox wasn't going to be another Matthew Stafford. For one thing, his NFL prospects, um, paled in comparison to Stafford's. He was a hard worker though, often seen pushing himself until he got *cough* red in the face. And not only that but...
Okay that's enough of that. Cox got the "Ginger Ninja" nickname from his complexion and hair, and we all made jokes about him having the sun as his enemy. Ha ha, what fun, right? Except, it actually sort of came true:
| RECORD | COMPLETIONS | ATT | PCT | YARDS | TDs | INTs | PASS EFF |
| 1-4 | 79 | 149 | 53.0% | 928 | 7 | 8 | 110.10 |
Those numbers would look better if I had included the 1:00 PM tilt against Tennessee Tech, but not even the sun could have made that game interesting. Now how about the others?
| RECORD | COMPLETIONS | ATT | PCT | YARDS | TDs | INTs | PASS EFF |
| 6-1 | 96 | 169 | 56.8% | 1,516 |
15 |
7 |
153.16 |
That's much better, now isn't it? I included the 5:00 PM kick in the Independence Bowl because in December, that's close enough to count. The one blemish was the 34-27 loss to Kentucky, but you can't blame that all on the offense.
So yeah, you may argue that this disparity had more to do with things like facing the defenses of Florida, LSU, and Tennessee in day games while getting to feast on Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and Texas A&M in later games, but you're no fun. We all know that it was Helios up there inhibiting the play of Cox down below in those day games that doomed the Bulldogs in '09.
Fortunately, it would appear Aaron Murray has no such issues. That's one more reason for hope for Georgia in 2010: it no longer has an automatic disadvantage at quarterback in day games.