It's not time to ring it yet.

I had already made plans last night to go hang out with The Song Writer, Georgia Girl, and Blog Pong This Beer, at the latter two's casa after the game. However, when making those plans I didn't realize it would be to discuss where UGA goes from here. Hell, I thought we were just going to get drunk with our old friend Jack Daniels and talk about the good ole days.

And you know what?

That's exactly what we did anyway.

You see, I was standing outside briefly (because it got down right cold last night) and decided to take a look up and just check out the sky. It was clear and crisp outside which always makes for a great Autumn trip through space. I found Orion's Belt and just kind of sat there for a moment. At that point, I kind of just figured out that it is what it is....and what it is means that it's still great to be a Bulldog on a Saturday night.

Look, no one wants to lose and no one wants to lose to Vandy at Homecoming. Even Ray Goff didn't deserve it, but it happened. But let's think about it like this; if we were in the midst of a National Championship type season, wouldn't this have been much worse?

The Dawgs are where they are because we basically have no rallying point. Special K and myself have both made the same points in that this team has no unifying force to play for. There are no Davids, there's no D.J. There's basically no one to step up within the group and just say "we can do this and I'm going to take you there."

That's something that is missing for the first time in the CMR regime. Next year, I think we do fine. Next year, I think the offense has a leader. Next year, I think the defense has a leader. But right now, as PWD stated it so bluntly, we have no identity.

And, as a very good friend would say, I'm ok with that.

There are things we need to do before the MSU game. We are officially banged up on the O-line and we've lost Thomas Brown for the year (this is huge by the way). We're blowing assignments left and right in the secondary and our DE's are not playing up to their potential. Offensively, we're not moving the ball 4-10 yards at the time. We might move it 6+ yards every two-three plays, which is about as ineffective as it gets when you need 10 yards every 4 downs in order to create drives.

I think Willie Martinez's job is in jeopardy. I think right now he is in over his head. Guess what? It happens. It's a part of football. You find a system that works and when a cog in that system leaves (VanGorder) you try to duplicate it as best as possible. If you can't, then you have to replace the part that isn't functioning correctly.

These problems will be taken care of soon enough. These are tangibles that are irrelevant because they can be fixed easily.

It's the intangibles of leadership and heart that have really set us back this year. These things cannot be fixed easily and will take time and patience to work themselves out.

Understand that college football as a whole is really shaken up this year. I'm almost positive that a one-loss team will play for the title in January. I just don't see two teams taking it the distance from start to finish to give the BCS people a reason to breathe easy. I think this year will all break down to strength of schedule and who finishes strong. Hell, one of those teams could be UF, UT, or Auburn. Wrap your noodle around that for a minute.

We are in the midst of a down year. Shit happens.

The truth is, there's not much more to say than that. It sucks we lost to Vanderbilt, but we're still doing something really special in Athens right now that is going to make us the best team in the land within the next 2 years. Mark my words, we will have the team to beat sometime soon, and we will make the most of it.

It's time for us to pick our head back up and shake the hangover off (this is tough...trust me, I know). We, as a Dawg Nation, need to step everything up and still be jazzed about our team. There's still a LOT to play for.

It's time for us to stop being Offensive Coordinators and Defensive Coordinators.

We need to just be Dawgs.



Until next time kids.

Be safe.