Sep. 4 - South Carolina State
South Carolina State is a very good FCS team. They went undefeated in their conference, 10-2 overall, and made the 16 team playoff last season. Still, they are an FCS team and this should be an easy win.
The important thing here is that the first team offense and defense look good. Some sloppiness can be forgiven because it is the first game, but too often overly optimistic fans overlook evidence of real problems in these types of games. For example, most GT fans thought nothing of a lackluster defensive performance in the opener against Jacksonville St. during which we gave up 291 total yards, 20 first downs and 17 points. Turns out, if your defense gives that up to Jacksonville St., they give up a lot more to everyone else. In hindsight, that game exposed a defense with some serious weaknesses.
My goal for the defense is to hold them without a touchdown, and to start the game with several three and outs, or close to it. That is a lofty goal, but that is what I want. Offensively I expect us to score a lot of points, and I don’t think I will be disappointed. The real key is the offensive line, and unfortunately we should be able to push South Carolina State around even if we have not improved up front. Thus, we may not see much, but it will be something to watch anyway.
Prediction: GT by 35.
Sep. 11 – AT Kansas
This one is tough to call. I think Turner Gill is a very good coach, and will have success at Kansas eventually. But he has inherited a lot of problems in his first year. Kansas lost their QB and top receiver from an offense that was the best part of a 5-7 squad. The defense ranked near the bottom of the big 12 in pretty much every category last year, and lost 4 starters. This game on paper should be an easy win.
However, it is not impossible to turn a team around in one year. Paul Johnson did it with GT. Gill will likely bring a lot of excitement and optimism to the program. As a decent big 12 program, they probably have at least decent talent. Put this all together and I would say any win is ok, but a comfortable win is the only good result.
Prediction: GT by about 14.
Sep. 18 – AT North Carolina
This one has gotten much more difficult to call in the last few days. UNC is supposed to be loaded, and I mean absolutely loaded, on defense. Five players are currently on Mel Kiper’s board as probable first round draft picks. That means almost half of the heels defense is supposed to be a significant contributor on an NFL team almost immediately. That makes their defense, on paper, about as good as Southern Cal’s tremendous defense in 2008. However, they had a very bland offense last year, and the pending NCAA investigation has made in unclear exactly which of UNC’s standout defensive players will be on the field this season. Still this is a preseason top 25 team we are playing on the road, and the defensive line is likely to be the best we face all season. I would take a win here any way we can get it.
With this prediction, I am banking mostly on Al Groh having continued success shutting down UNC’s offense, which has averaged 12 points per game in three straight losses to Groh’s Cavaliers.
Prediction: GT by a field goal.
Sep. 25 – North Carolina State
This game looks a lot like Wake Forest last year. We will be expected to win easily, we are playing at home, and the opposing defense doesn’t scare us at all. The differences? NC State will probably be better on offense than Wake was, and will likely be more talented but not as well coached on defense. In other words, this game could be scary. Then again, we should have won the Wake game much more easily. Off the top of my head, Nesbitt overshot a wide open Thomas 20 yards downfield when he would have been gone for a 70 yard TD, Peeples dropped a 3rd and 8, 20 yard pass at Wake’s two yard line, and we fumbled the snap and fell on it on 4th and 1 in Wake territory. There were other examples. That level of poor execution cost us probably around 17 to 21 points that game.
Provided there is no post UNC let down, and we do not have a terrible game in terms of execution, this one should be a comfortable win.
Prediction: GT by 17.
Oct. 2 – AT Wake Forest
Partial revenge game here. They didn’t beat us but they very nearly did. The players will not take this one lightly. Wake’s defense looks and plays a lot like Vanderbilt. Undersized and not very talented, but well developed and well coached. Both defenses in my opinion overachieve in their respective conferences because of this coaching. But, as I have already discussed and will continue to discuss in this blog, the ONLY way to stop a Paul Johnson offense that is running smoothly is to dominate the line of scrimmage. Teams like Wake do not have the horses to do so. This game last year would have been a lot like the Vandy game (56 points, 600 total yards) if we hadn’t executed so poorly. Oh also, they do not have Riley Skinner anymore and our defense should not be awful this year.
Prediction: GT by 24.
Oct. 9 - Virginia
This one is a lot like the Kansas game, except that we are at home, and UVA’s talent base for its first year coach is probably significantly worse than what Kansas had left over for Gill. Also, Gill is a more proven head coach than London, at this point. I do think London was a good hire and UVA will make strides under him. Just not this year. Groh will smother his former team’s offense, and all Paul has to do for motivation is point out that this team beat us in our house in 2008, which eventually cost us a shot to play for the ACC title game.
Prediction: – GT by 28.
Oct. 16 – Middle Tennessee State
Very intriguing game here. Most preseason publications pick this game as MTSU’s only loss on the season. They are a very good team expected to dominate their conference. However, their quarterback Dwight Dasher, who was one of the top offensive performers statistically in 2009 and gave Clemson’s defense some problems in the season opener, is under investigation for crimes related to his gambling debts. No formal charges have been made yet, so his status to play is unclear.
I will address these issues much more in depth the week of the game. For now, even though Middle Tennessee is a good team even without Dasher, let’s just say that we should beat a Sun Belt team at home no matter how good they are in the Sun Belt.
Prediction: GT by 17, as MTSU scores a late TD.
Oct. 23 – AT Clemson
This one could be huge. More likely, it will just be big. If we enter this game 7 – 0 as I have predicted, and Clemson plays as well as I think they might, this could be the ESPN College Gameday game. Clemson has a brutal three game stretch in their 3rd, 4th and 5th games at Auburn, at home against Miami, and at UNC. They do get a bye between Auburn and Miami. If they win those three and enter 6 – 0, this game will be huge. I expect they will have at least one loss, and obviously we could as well, although our only game to this point that we arguably should lose is at UNC. We should be favored in the rest, so I would say even if we stumble in one of those we should be no worse than 5 – 2 at this point.
No matter the context though, this game will be very tough. Clemson returns a lot on defense, and Steele is a good defensive coordinator. Clemson’s defensive line is second best in the conference, behind only UNC, and according to Athlon is #3 in the country (UNC is #2). So another good test, and measuring stick, for our new and improved offensive line. Offensively, Clemson lost Spiller and Ford, but their importance is overplayed. They have plenty of athletic receivers for Parker to target, and Harper and Ellington, two very talented backs, will replace Spiller at running back. Clemson’s offense may actually get substantially better this year, because they return most of their offensive line and get Parker back, who I think could really become a great quarterback this year. Remember he was a freshman last season and played much better in the second half of the season. (Spiller and Ford will be missed the most in the return game, which is a big loss, but in my opinion not that big of a deal).
Given all of the above, any win at Death Valley would be great. Sadly, as much as it pains me to write this, I don’t think we pull it out. We have won three straight last minute decisions against the tigers, two thanks in part to very controversial holding calls, and I think they get one back here.
Prediction: Clemson by 3 (its pretty much always close, unless gameday in fact shows up. Then this prediction changes to Clemson by 56…)
Nov. 4 – AT Virginia Tech
Both teams get a by week before the Coastal division championship. I call it that partly in jest, because Miami and UNC should be really good teams this year, but doesn’t it seem like the Coastal champion always comes down to who wins this game?
I know that Lane stadium is a very hard place to win, especially on a Thursday night. And I know that VT is the preseason favorite in the ACC, and a top ten team (supposedly), but they just do not scare me. My next post is actually about this topic, but I will preview it here. VT is going to be great because they are loaded on offense? Come again? Remember that great offense VT had in 2006? Oh yeah, that’s right, you probably don’t because none of the players on it were great until they got to the NFL. Stinespring is legendary for the amazing offensive talent he can turn into… nothing. Virginia Tech’s best teams are always the ones that have playmakers on offense, but are really built around great defense and special teams. I am sure the special teams will be up to speed, and Foster will do a great job with this defense as always, but they lost seven starters. The defense won’t be as good as usual, and, read this over twice, a great offense will NEVER carry a Beamer/Foster/Stinespring team. What is the media thinking?
All that said, VT will still be a really good team this year. So winning in Lane stadium will take a great effort. But I think our offensive line and the defense as a whole will be improved, making this Paul Johnson’s best team yet, so we get it done.
Prediction: GT by 7.
Nov. 13 - Miami
Another revenge game. I would really like to wait until 4-5 weeks into the season to see if “The U is back” this year, or if they are just “back” like always.
But that would be a cop out. I am making the list now. My guess is that Miami is better than they were last year, but are still not back to the 2000, 2001, 2002 dominant level that Canes fans seem to think they have been back to for a couple years now. However, they will be very talented and very good, so this will be a tough game.
BUT, as I explained in the season preview, the way the canes beat us last year was largely due to poor execution on the perimeter. Our running backs and receivers had their worst blocking game of the season. Miami didn’t really beat us that bad up front. So, if our offensive line has improved (I hope you are starting to see the importance I place on the O line, as seemingly every game is conditioned on O line improvement) and our perimeter blockers decide to show up this time, we should have success on offense. Defense is another story. I expect a Groh coached defense to do better than we did last year, but Miami is still very fast, very talented, and if we don’t get pressure to Harris this time they will light us up again.
I foresee an exciting, back and forth game down to the wire.
Prediction: GT by 3.
Nov. 20 - Duke
Cutcliffe is doing a great job at Duke. He is bringing in better talent, and coaching em up very well. However, at this rate they are still a couple years away from being as good as Wake Forest was last year, which is just to say what everyone already knows:
Winning as a coach at Duke is really tough. Duke is still Duke, they do not appear to have improved much from last year when we beat them 49 – 10, and we are at home this time.
Prediction: GT by 42.
Nov. 27 – AT Georgia
Here it is, the only game of the year I can guarantee I will not be attending. In reality, I will probably only make it to 1 or 2 games live, but as per my policy of never setting foot in or near Sanford Stadium, I can absolutely guarantee I will not be at this one.
If you listen to UGA fans, we have no chance. The most popular reason is that they have the same O line back, and the same running backs, so we will not be able to stop them. First, this ignores the obvious possibility that we may get better up front defensively. In fact, I would argue that we should, since we were pretty young there last year and we have several pretty talented players who are now a year older and more developed.
Second, I reviewed the tape last year. (I do this for all of our games, and watch many plays over in slow motion, some several times, until I can see exactly what happened and why. This game was so painful to me that I watched every single play in slow motion this way.) What jumped out at me was that we did not lose the battle up front by nearly as much as I thought we did. UGA’s O line did win that battle, but it was close. The reason they ran all over us was simply that our linebackers, and to some extent D-linemen, were out of position and taking poor angles all over the place. A disturbing number of times, we had two linebackers fill the same lane. One can only wonder what the linebacker who was behind the other linebacker, and thus was staring at the back of a GT jersey as he filled the same hole, was thinking. Whenever this happened, one linemen promptly sealed the side of the two linebackers, and then there was a gaping hole. This particular mistake only happened maybe 7 or 8 times, but someone made a pretty obvious positioning error on seemingly every play.
Thus, it was primarily our positioning, and not so much their blocking, that left so many gaping holes and turned many runs that should have been for 3 yards into 15 yard bursts.
I do not know why this happened. I did not notice many problems with our positioning on defense the rest of the season, so it is difficult to blame Wommack. Maybe our players just had a bad game. What I think we can safely say is that a Groh-coached defense should be technically sound, and if Wommack was not the problem and it was simply a bad game, then by definition it is unlikely to happen again next year. In either case, the 2009 game should have little bearing on the 2010 game.
The second most popular UGA fan reason why GT cannot win this year is that they have figured out our offense. I touched on this point briefly in the preseason preview, but I don’t know exactly how giving up 340 yards and 24 points in 9 possessions is a good day for them defensively. In fact, given that we had the ball 12 or 13 times in 2008, and scored 42 points with about 430 yards, there really isn’t that much difference in our numbers. When you factor in that our first string QB was hurt for two possessions, and that twice we had promising drives cut short by the clock at the end of both halves, I think you could argue we actually did BETTER on offense in 2009 than in 2008. In short, I don’t think most UGA fans are very bright. We had a good game offensively, and our defense obviously lost the 2009 game for us.
2010 looks pretty up in the air. UGA has a great offense on paper, except when it comes to QB experience. By the time they play us, that inexperienced QB will have played 11 games. On defense, they are switching coaches and going to a 3 – 4 as well. They could improve same as we could. We have the advantage that we will have seen offenses like theirs all season long in our 3 – 4, while they will be seeing ours for the first time in their 3 – 4. Our offense, led by a better O line, should be the best it has been under Johnson. Our defense should improve as well.
In my opinion, bottom line comes down to this: Johnson is simply a better coach than Richt. I know that this comment will have the dawgs up in arms. Consider this: In two years, with teams that on paper are much more talented, Richt has a 3 point loss and a 6 point win against Johnson. I think Paul’s body of work so far, especially considering he started with a very young team full of players who were not all well suited to his system, makes a good case that he is one of the best football coaches in the country. Meanwhile, Mark Richt has had plenty of time to make a case for himself, and all he has shown me is that he cannot compete with the other big time SEC programs when they are at full strength. So long as Meyer stays at UF and Saban at Alabama, and Richt at UGA, I think you can count UGA out of the SEC race every season. They are more likely to be passed in the East by Spurrier at Carolina or even Tennessee in a couple years than to catch Meyer and UF.
I know that UGA fans will point out that Richt has won two SEC titles at UGA. In my opinion he won them in down years for the conference. 2002 and 2005 both fall, coincidentally, during the only 4 year period since 1990 when Florida could be described as “down”. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself who was the last SEC champion to lose their bowl game? You guessed it, 2005 UGA. And they lost to the Big East champs West Virginia, who were supposed to be the worst BCS conference champion in history.
UGA fans will also probably point out that Johnson has not done anything to prove he belongs in the same sentence with Meyer and Saban. Well, GT typically does not recruit the kind of talent that Alabama and Florida do, so I would say let’s give it a few years.
I will freely admit there are many holes in this argument against Richt. But football is a funny game. We only play 13 or so games a season, and upsets and flukes happen. So you are never going to have conclusive evidence of these points. My opinion is that Johnson is a better coach, and I think that will play itself out in the next few years, provided both coaches stay at their respective schools. Starting with this year.
Road team has won the last three. Make it four.
Prediction: GT by 3, in another wild one.
If you add up these predictions, it comes out to 11 – 1. I don’t actually think we will be 11 – 1 for one main reason, which is that many of these games are very close calls. I picked them as I think they will go, but I expect us to have a couple of poor games. If one of those games falls against UNC, Clemson, VT, Miami, UGA or maybe a few others, we will surely lose. We could in fact actually play pretty well and lose if any of those teams plays particularly well. I would say that for these reasons, 9 – 3 may be more likely than 11 – 1, and 10 – 2 is probably the most likely result. The good news is that any of these records should have us in the thick of the ACC race. The better news is that there is no game on our schedule that is not winnable, so 12 – 0 is possible.
But, these are my picks, and so I will stand by my optimistic 11 – 1 prediction, which would have us winning the Coastal by default, since our only loss in these picks is to Atlantic Division opponent Clemson.
Go Jackets!
No comments:
Post a Comment