It's time to change the way we think

I’m not sure why I haven’t posted anything since the SEC Championship Game. This season has been absolutely amazing, the best season in my lifetime for sure, and it’s not over yet!

There is plenty of time to talk about the Rose Bowl matchup, but I wanted to take just a minute to address a narrative that I have heard in a couple of places over the past week.

It goes something like this:

“Georgia has had a great season, and even if the Dawgs come up short in the Rose Bowl, the program is looking up. Georgia is going to be good for a long time.”

Now, you may have had these thoughts too, or maybe you have even said something like this to a friend. I want you to know that I completely understand this type of thinking, but I need you to do me a small favor.

Shut up.

That is a loser’s mentality. There are four teams that can win the National Championship and Georgia is one of them. Why in the world would we be thinking about how great of a season this has been when it’s not over? Why would we think we can’t win it all?

I know the reason, it’s because we haven’t. Winning it all doesn’t happen at Georgia. We have been conditioned for many years to find the positive in a season with a certain level of disappointment.

There is another reason that this thinking is flawed; we were all saying the exact same thing 15 years ago.

In 2002, Mark Richt was in his second season, Georgia had won the SEC title, and heading into the bowl season, Georgia was ranked 3^rd nationally. Sound familiar?

Georgia beat FSU in the Sugar Bowl, and the program was on the rise. You would not have been able to convince me or any other Georgia fan that was going to be the high water mark for the program under Richt.

2003 and 2004 were disappointing seasons because a team that should have been primed to win big found a way to lose games to lesser teams to keep them out of the conversation. In 2003 it was Florida and in 2004 it was Tennessee.

2005 was an SEC title season, but Shockley got hurt late in the game against Arkansas and didn’t play against Florida. Georgia lost. Shockley returned against Auburn, but the Dawgs fell 31-30 in a heartbreaker. Even though Georgia upset LSU for the SEC title, they were never really in contention because of those two losses.

2006 was a rebuild year.

2007 could be thrown in there as a time when Georgia was in the conversation, but early season losses to South Carolina and Tennessee kept Georgia from having the chance to win the SEC title and ultimately left the Dawgs out of the title picture.

2008-2010 were complete and total disappointments at different levels.

2011 was a bad team that beat other bad teams. They went 10-4, but lost to every decent team they played that season.

2012 was the outlier in the second half of the Richt Era. The team was very good, but suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of South Carolina on the road. Of course, we all remember how close Georgia was to beating Alabama in the SEC title game, but close doesn’t count. So it was another year of saying “wait til next year.”

2013 through 2015 were also terribly disappointing on different levels and those seasons are ultimately what cost Richt his job in Athens.

So from 2002, when Georgia seemed to be ready to ascend to the upper levels of college football’s
elite, until 2015 when the coaching change was made, we had 3 seasons that could be called successful, but they were all followed up by abject disappointments the very next year.

My point is this: in sports, as in life, you have to take your chances when you have them. The first one is always going to be the hardest to get. We need to get it this year.

Yes Kirby seems to have Georgia headed to places we haven’t been in nearly 40 years. The recruiting is at all-time high. The Athletic Department is investing in ways they never have before. The energy around the program has never been higher.

And for all of those reasons, this needs to be our year. From the coaches, to the players, and to the fans, we need to be bought in 100% that this is a now or maybe never proposition for Georgia.

We are one win away from playing for the National Title in our home state. When will that ever happen again? This is our year. This is our time. I don’t care who else is in the playoff. It is title or bust for Georgia.

No more talk of where we might be going, let’s take advantage of where we are.

Go Dawgs!

A New Twist to the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry

For two teams playing for the 122^nd time, you wouldn’t think it would be possible for something to be happening for the first time, but that is exactly the case on Saturday when Georgia takes on Auburn for the SEC Championship.

There are a few firsts for this game. It will be the first time the SEC Championship is played in the brand new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It will be the first time cross-divisional rivals have ever squared off for the SEC Championship. It will also be the first time in the college football playoff era that the SEC Championship Game will serve as a sort of National Quarterfinal.

Georgia leads the all-time series 57-56-8, but it was just three weeks ago that Auburn throttled Georgia on the Plaines 40-17.

There are four things that will be different on Saturday from the first meeting and I think they all favor Georgia.

First, the home field advantage that Auburn enjoyed three weeks ago will not be present in Mercedes-Benz. I think it will probably be 60-40 Georgia-Auburn, but even if it is 50/50, the Auburn defense won’t have nearly the advantage that it did at Jordan-Hare.

Second is the health of Kerryon Johnson. It has been announced that Johnson could be a game-time decision on Saturday. I fully expect Johnson to play, but how effective he will be will go a long way in deciding who wins the game. As well as the Auburn offense is playing, it relies on Johnson running the ball to keep the defense honest and open up the passing game. A one-dimensional offense against Georgia’s defense is a recipe for failure.

Third is that the coaching staffs for each team have seen what the other team has, and now can make adjustments. I’ll take Kirby Smart 1000 times over Gus Malzahn. No offense to Malzahn, but we have seen his teams be inept many, many times over the years. He is a good coach with a great system that is nearly unstoppable when it is working, but I haven’t seen him be able to come up with a plan B in all his time at Auburn.

Fourth are the stakes. As I said before, the winner of this game goes to the playoff, while the loser will have to dream of what might have been. I can honestly say that this season has been an overwhelming success for Georgia, no matter what happens on Saturday. For a team that lost 5 games a year ago, two of those games being against Vanderbilt and Tech at home, this year has been a great turn around. Georgia won at Notre Dame for the first time in school history. They defeated three of their biggest rivals, Tennessee, Florida, and Tech by a combined score of 121-14. They won the SEC East for the first time in 5 years, by going undefeated in the division for the first time ever.

Auburn has to win on Saturday to make this a successful season. Think about that. In the past three weeks, the Tigers have defeated the number one team in the country twice, but none of it will matter without another victory. Auburn’s two early season losses make it where the Tigers’ are in a unique position. Win and it could be the greatest 4 week span in the history of college football. Lose and this team will be 10-3, and largely forgotten. That’s amazing.

When you look at what Auburn is as a program, you realize that their reputation is better than the teams they put on the field. Since 2007, the Tigers have averaged 4.8 losses per season! In that time, they have lost less than 4 games only twice. So why do we perceive them as a national power? Because the two times they lost less than four games they either played for or won the National Championship. Auburn is the best team in the nation at cashing in on limited opportunities. Meanwhile, the Mark Richt era at Georgia was defined completely by not cashing in. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2012. All seasons where Georgia was in the hunt for a championship and talented enough to win it all, but they always managed to lose that one game that put them out of the title race. The one aspect of this game that favors opportunistic Auburn is that this is the exact type of season where they cash in.

There is one more factor about this game that can’t be ignored. Multiple media outlets are reporting that if Auburn loses this game, Gus Malzahn will be resigning and taking the Arkansas job. I had a friend ask me last weekend what I thought about those rumors and I dismissed them completely because it makes no sense to me. However, this seems to be real. Can you imagine a situation where by Monday, a team that has had the success the Tigers have had over the past month could be out of the playoff and looking for a new coach?

So on the field, what has to change for Georgia to win the SEC and make the playoff?

If I were numbering these, 1-100 would be that the offensive line has to, what do they call it these days…. BLOCK!!!!

Georgia couldn’t run the ball in the first game. Georgia couldn’t throw the ball in the first game. If you can’t run the ball, and you can’t throw the ball, there is no chance that you can score. If you can’t score, you can’t win. See, it’s really not that complicated.

Georgia has moved Ben Cleveland to right guard which has made the offensive line look better the past two weeks against Kentucky and Tech, but the real test for this line will be whether or not they can be effective against the Tigers.

Georgia also needs to eliminate the stupid mistakes. Georgia has struggled with penalties this season at times, but the mental mistakes made against Auburn were totally out of character for this team. Dropped punts. Kung Fu kicks when trying to rush the punter. Personal fouls on late hits out of bounds. All of these things extended drives and led to points for Auburn in the first game. Despite the fact that Auburn scored 40 points in the first meeting, Georgia’s defense played fairly well in the first game, but any defense that is sent back on the field two times after what should have been 3 and outs, is going to get demoralized and eventually break.

The one aspect of Georgia’s defense that will need to improve from the first game is tackling. There were far too many yards after contact for Kerryon Johnson. However, the worst part was terrible tackling by the Georgia secondary that allowed too many extra yards on Auburn passing plays. If Georgia tackles better against Auburn, the defense can dominate this game.

Georgia can’t be bland on offense. Too many times in the first game, Georgia ran the ball unsuccessfully on first and second down only to have either an incompletion or more often a sack on third down leading to a punt. Georgia has absolutely nothing to lose in this game and I want to see an offensive attack that understands this fact. Throw it on running downs. Run some draws. There are these pass plays called screens, they work some times. If you call a trick play, make sure you block the defensive line.

Georgia has, in my opinion, five players who are threats to score every time they touch the ball. Chubb, Michel, Swift, Hardman, and Wims. Those guys need to have the ball in their hands on nearly every offensive play. They need to all be on the field together and Georgia needs to attack this Auburn defense, rather than try to out-muscle them the way they did on the Plaines.

Can Georgia really make all these adjustments in just a few short weeks? Can they put a stop to Auburn’s dream run? I honestly don’t know. But I know one thing. I am excited to be in the position to find out.

This time last year, we were getting ready to not watch a crappy Florida team get destroyed by Alabama. This season, we are one win against a team that we have dominated for a decade away from the College Football Playoff.

Get used to this Georgia fans. This isn’t just our present, this is our future.

Go Dawgs!