Home / Hotline Reports / Bulldog Hotline - Sept. 15, 2008
Bulldog Hotline - Sept. 15, 2008
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Munson’s opening focused on the latest AP poll with 5 SEC teams in the top 10, for the first time in history. Also, Arizona St. stumbled hard and landed on their back out of the national rankings.
Scott in Grayson opened tonight’s call – Columbia was as hot as he could recall. He asked Richt about both lines of scrimmage and where they need to get better. Scott also thinks of himself as an old school guy who likes having a FB in the game. What about using Munzenmaier or Chapas until Southerland comes back. Richt – OL did not play nearly as well as we had been. We ran up against a much better defensive front. We didn’t pass protect nearly as well and didn’t run block quite as well. Some of it was some twists they were bringing that disrupted run and pass blocking. We have talented guy who were coachable and are getting better.
We played OK on defense. Anytime you hold a team to 1.8 yards per rush you doing something right. We’d love to see more out of the 4 man rush. If you can get sacks and pressures without blitzing that is the ideal.
FB – Chapas is playing well, got 25-30 snaps, so about half our plays did not have a FB. Munz didn’t get any work.
Eddie in Acworth – said the SC game wasn’t fun from a fan’s perspective, even though we won. The talk around the media was we’d put a whipping on them. Do we use a game like this as a humbling experience or as motivation? Why didn’t Moreno didn’t return any more punts? Let’s go show the Pac 10 how the SEC plays football. CMR – the media says stuff like that because SC lost a game to Vandy. Lots of folks don’t want to give Vandy credit. We don’t look at this as a humbling experience but reason to celebrate; we’re 1-0 in the East. We ran into adversity and didn’t faint. We won the turnover battle 2-0 and worked on recovering fumbles all week. We also talked about field position and Mimbs showed up big changing it.
We’re don’t want to wear Moreno out returning punts. We wanted him to get the ball when he was fresh, when he did. If we did that more we’d wear him out, he’d be cramping and we don’t want that.
Lance in Uvalda was satisfied with how we played – any time you get a win in Columbia it’s big. Lance remembers how our defense was with Blue and Davis at safety and how they hit. CMR agrees they were devastating hitters. Richt said when you make a play like that in a game you’re sending a message in that game and the next two or three after that. Reshad Jones has had a couple of hits like that. Q. Banks has done that some too. He’s had a knee injury but is about to come back off that. Byrd is a good tackler but doesn’t run through people. The other guy who’s shown he can do that is Rennie Curran. He’s the one who knocked that ball out on the goal line.
Andrew in Toccoa asked about the defense, in particular trying to cover their TE. (But Andrew didn’t know Ingram of Florida is out for the year.) Richt noted when we played man coverage there were a couple of times their TE got free but when we played man, their completion percentage went down and our rush went up. But you have to mix it up between man and zone. We held them under 300 yards, 1.8 yards per rush and 7 points. Richt will take that every time out.
Mark in Panama City, FL wonders if SC was taking away lots of our short routes. Richt said we had opportunities for intermediate to deep balls. We dropped the first three or those drives continue and we may have put more points on the board. SC played a lot of cover 2 so they had coverage for short routes. If a team plays 3 deep those are open. If a team plays cover 2 you should be able to run the ball better but we weren’t able to. They found out their front 7 could stop our run, which allowed them to stay in two deep zone.
Eric in Augusta is concerned about Stafford’s accuracy and how we can make him more pinpoint. What about AJ Green and Massaquoi? We’ve got these two guys and they had 5 catches between them vs. SC. Let’s show everyone how talented we are more than how deep we are. We need to get the ball to our playmakers. We’ve got too much talent to be scoring one TD vs. SC. Richt agrees we need to get the ball in the hands of our playmakers. We could say throw it to AJ no matter what, but the other team could roll double coverage that way.
Clint in Athens wonders how we’ll handle playing in the heat in Arizona since we had so many cramps vs. Ga. Southern. Richt said before the GSU game, we went over 20 practices in mostly cool weather. The next week we handled it better since we practiced in it. Plus last week we went on our field turf field which is hotter. This week it’s supposed to be about 79-81 here but 99 there on gameday. Our goal is substitue more, especially in the first half. Even in Tempe, the weather is supposed to be cooler in the second half.
Gilbert in Social Circle thinks Stafford shouldn’t throw it as hard to the guys close to him. Richt says if our WRs can’t catch Stafford there’s no way they’ll be able to catch a ball in the NFL. Plus, there were four guys at Highland Park HS who caught passes from Stafford when they won a state title. We don’t need to be throwing Stafford under a bus because he’s really doing a good job for us.
Kevin in Quincy, FL mentioned he got to meet CMR at a banquet in Tallahassee during the offseason and mentioned Facing the Giants. What about Brannon Southerland, the AP voters and maybe a blackout vs. Florida? We’re trying to get Southerland ready for Bama, but only as the personal protector for the punter, then by Tenn. he ought to be ready at FB. We’re dropping in the polls because people just aren’t impressed when you play a game and win only 14-7, and other win with a lot of numbers. There is so much football to be played and plenty of opportunity to move up if we take care business. We have the black jerseys but not sure when those will come out.
Bob in Augusta wonders if we have anything special for motivation for this game, and why our teams seem to really play better starting at midseason. Richt thinks playing across the country should be exciting for our players. As for peaking at midseason and beyond, it’s a sign of a good program to improve as the season goes along. The last couple of seasons, we’ve been young up front and the OL takes time to jell. When we ran up against NFL-caliber players like SC has on defense things aren’t so smooth. We found a way to win in a situation where last year we didn’t. Richt says in a few days people will only remember we won this game.
David in Roswell asked Richt about getting a set of dog tags on his visit to the troops. Richt confirmed that. David added that people need to remember that no matter how talented our players are, they’re still 18-22 year old college kids. Will we see a better defense than SC? Richt said we may not play a bigger or hard hitting defense. Plus they were motivated since they lost their last game. This was just a tough game. We had not faced adversity yet. We just could not separate from that bunch. So when it was gut check time our guys came through with flying colors – forcing the fumble on the goal line, Jones’ big INT and Mimbs’ big punts. Let’s not worry where we’re ranked right now. What matters is we’re winning and getting better.
Chad in Greenwood, SC thinks the goal line stand was a team effort – mentioned Wynn and Ellerbe. Also, the Stafford run, where Moreno was decoy and went running downfield and laid a great block on a SC player. Richt mentioned Stafford’s two big runs and said Moreno just loves the game. Last week, Goodman tried to stretch for a TD and fumbled it and Moreno followed the play. Moreno has really hustled and that’s why he was named one of the captains this week. Moreno, Boling, Curran and Mimbs will be our captains this week.
David in Hiram had to talk about meeting Ron Polk .. Polk said he thinks Richt is churning inside even when he looks calm. What advice does Richt have for young coaches? Richt says the first thing is to remember it’s about the players. The goal is to bless the guys we’re in authority over. The second thing is to be yourself. If you’re not, you won’t be believable.
Jeremy in Baxley says don’t worry about these polls. Richt agrees.
Chuck in Statesboro also asked about the polls. Anytime you can beat a Spurrier team you’ve done something. Chuck went on to complain about the NE media not giving the SEC teams credit. Even when GSU scored on us we brought in the 3rd string and cheerleaders. Richt says all we can do is concentrate on Arizona St. We’re not too concerned with what the final score is going to be.
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