Bulldog Hotline - Nov. 23, 2009
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Scott is live at Hotel Indigo, as usual. Scott opened by wishing everyone Happy Thanksgiving. Ga. Tech (#7 ranked) was off last week. Scott then rattled off game broadcast particulars. Damon will be the second hour guest tonite. Also, Scott noted that Drew Butler has been named a finalist for the Ray Guy award and Blair Walsh is one of the finalists for the Lou Groza award.
Scott asked CMR for his thoughts on UK game. CMR – we started strong and played well on both sides of the ball. Then we come out in the second half … actually, at halftime we’re talking about getting the ball first and if we can get up 3 scores we can get them out of their comfort zone. They were probably in their locker room saying they needed to dig in and find a way to get back in.
Bottom line – we played hard enough to win and well enough to win, offensively and defensively, without the turnovers. You can’t turn the ball over four times and expect to win. Kentucky is an outstanding team and we don’t need to help them.
Even with three turnovers that’s bad enough. But we’re sitting a midfield with 1:52 left and still with a timeout. The defense did a good job after the previous series. But we go ahead and turn it over on the very first play.
Scott – Tech coming up this week and classes are out. CMR – we don’t have to give the usual day off. We’re not going to practice super hard because if you do they won’t have anything left. We had meetings today and began to implement the game plan. Tuesday and Wednesday we will have extra meetings and walkthroughs in addition to the normal practices on those days. Thanksgiving Day we practice early then let everyone go home or to a teammate’s house. Friday we have a practice in the morning to get their minds right and run off the turkey.
Scott asked if Garner will still have his big Thanksgiving shindig – CMR said yes and said they have probably already started cooking.
Robert in Sandy Springs opened the calls tonite. He said this season has been tough and tested everyone’s patience. Every SEC team is worthy of our respect. But teams we seem to have superior talent to seem to be very close. We could easily have lost two other games. When we lose turnover margin consistently it is alarming. CMR – we’ve had close games all the time. Very few times in our league have consistently dominated though Bama and Florida have recently. Go back and look at Coach Dooley’s national title teams – lots of close scores. Or the year we went 13-1 – lots of scores were very tight. We tend to forget them when we win them but remember them when we lose them. In addition to turnover and penalty problems, CMR pointed out kickers have done an outstanding job (and are finalists for their awards) but not all our special teams have done that well. We have lots of puppies out there. It’s just as tough to teach guys how to cover kickoffs properly as it is to play LB or whatever.
Fumbles – we’ve caused 12 fumbles but only gotten on 1. CMR took the tape out and watched every single one. We had guys there but when the ball squirted out it was just closer to their guys. We will keep working on recovering fumbles and ball security. We can certainly control how many turnovers we give up. CMR says he shares everyone’s frustrations. We as coaches and players need to do the best we can to represent everyones. We’ve been doing it for years. The losses have just gotten out of hand this year and we want to put a stop to it this week.
Mitchell from Calhoun asked about play calling and thinks some of it was absurd. We ran it down to the 2 after being down 6-0, then we passed, didn’t work. Then the toss pitch on the 2 late in the game. CMR – the 2nd & 1 call early in the game is one we’d try to hammer it in if we could do it over. The toss sweep – we do it all the time in practice and is a good play. You can fumble the snap or the exchange. But we have a young back who lined up wrong and took a poor angle and caused the mistake. You get good things from young players like fire and enthusiasm but sometimes you get mstakes. CMR then pointed out good things Ealey and other freshmen made during the game – Charles’ good game at TE, T. King, Ealey and Branden Smith. When something doesn’t go your way we’ve got to get them back in there and get it right.
Will from Sylvester thinks we have more educated callers the previous caller, then asked about the QB situation for next year. What does it look like next year for either of the frosh QBs and the defense for next year? CMR said QBs will compete in the spring and see if one can separate. We’re very excited about the talent at QB and will have some outstanding QB play. Every day you go to practice or to a meeting you’re proving to the coaches whether you can handle that responsibility. We like what we’ve seen out of our DEs. We lose some big DTs but have young guys coming on. Tyson, A. Jones, and we may move Wood back inside. Plus Lott and Geathers who’ve redshirted this year. You can make an impact quicker inside. CMR thinks the future is bright for our defense.
8:39 – Kia Drive of the Game was UGA’s 2 play, 80 yd. drive to go up 27-13, including Scott’s call of Cox to Wooten 43 yd. TD pass. CMR – first play was a naked bootleg much like we used to hit Orson in the first half. They jumped on Orson and we hit the second guy behind it. The TD play was a double post – inside WR ran a short post then Wooten ran a deep post. CMR thought the UK DB was hanging all over Wooten but he made the catch anyone. Wooten’s other TD earlier was maybe Cox’s best throws all year.
Mark thinks he speaks for most of the Bulldog Nation and says Richt is appreciated. Last year, we had Tech under control for a half then couldn’t stop their second half adjustments. CMR – opening kickoff he thinks we turned over. He doesn’t know that Tech made adjustments as we started trying to knock people to the ground instead of tackling. Dwyer is a big man and you can’t just knock him down. You have to wrap him up. What hurt us most is not doing a great job of tackling people to the ground. Also, Bryan Evans ended up getting hurt and we ran out of safeties who understood how to stop that offense. We have to understand it will take everyone doing their job, on every play. If someone doesn’t do their job they’re taking it to the house. They run very few plays but run them extremely well. Those plays stress your defense all the way across the field. If you option a guy you don’t have to block him and if your QB is a good runner you then have one extra blocker.
(Ed. notes – the second half of the Tech game last year opened with UGA kicking off out of bounds, giving Tech the ball on their 40. Dwyer then went 60 yds. on an option pitch for a TD on Tech’s first play, cutting UGA’s 28-12 halftime lead to 28-20 after a 2 point conversion. Also, IMO Will may want to be careful before insulting the intelligence of other callers, and Mark better read chat boards more closely before claiming to speak for the majority of the Bulldog Nation.)
8:47 – SunTrust halftime adjustments. CMR – first thing he said was anyone who touches or handles the ball needs to secure it. Anyone who makes decisions with the ball needs to do a good job. We were up two scores and if we got them behind a third score they would have to abandon their patience with the running game. Any score would force them to abandon their comfort zone. Also, honor the seniors with their play. CMR thinks the guys played hard, and with intensity, but turnovers will kill you. We have established very well how turnovers can get you in trouble this year. He was also proud of the defense for stopping UK after the fumble but then we had the INT that decided the game.
Stephen from Ringgold says he will stick with the red & black. We’re fortunate to be able to close with two bowls. We expect some kind of bowl and Tech can be considered a bowl. With Zeier giving lots of good info on the air maybe he can lend help to the staff. CMR – obviously hasn’t listed to Eric. CMR recalled when he was coaching QBs at FSU and thought they had him until UGA hired Wayne McDuffie and decided to put the FSU offense in for Zeier. Before Richt knew it not only was Zeier committed to UGA but already enrolled in school. He was the first guy CMR recalled enrolling in the mid year.
Fred from Marietta looks forward to the Tech game but is seriously concerned with how Cobb and Locke beat us to the corner. He is also alarmed by our continued lack of discipline and pointed out several bad things he saw in the UK game. He hopes we’re competitive and not to see a jaw dropping moment (before getting cut off). CMR – our guys will compete. On the plays that go outside – our perimeter has to play well. Safeties have to come up into the alleys and turn things inside into pursuit and they’ll take some shots downfield too. CBs and safeties have to play big. It takes everybody. The last thing we want is that FB to rip it up the gut because that is where the option starts.
Scott asked how many guys saw that in HS? CMR said some guys might have run the wing-T in HS. No matter what they ran before this is different. We’ve studied different defensive alignments teams have used and come up with what we think will work best. It takes longer to prepare for and especially to get the scout team to be able to run it.