The Dawg-gone Blog

The Dawg-gone Blog
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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Man, from listening to ESPN and reading the comments on message boards and at the AJC, you'd think that Matt Stafford, Knowshon Moreno and Mark Richt all went down Saturday and will be lost for the season. I've never seen so much white-flag waving in all my life after a WIN.

Speaking of which, if you believe all is lost, I'm looking for tickets. I'm sure myself and the rest of the Bulldog Nation would rather you not be at any of the next few games anyway.

Seriously, you folks that are drinking the Doomsday Kool-Aid need to put it down. Even though the Jeff Owens injury looks bad, all is not lost. While it may be tough to replace a guy like Owens in terms of intangibles like leadership and focus, we have players that can (and hopefully will) step up and handle the production. Guys like Atkins, Weston, Irvin and Tyson are all names that you should be familiar with. Also, don't rule out Wynn sliding over from DE to help out some. All you need to know right now is that thoughts and prayers should be with Owens and that he makes a strong comeback from the injury. Whether he's lost for the year or not, we will see him in a Dawgs uniform again.

Moving on from the injury bug, a lot of folks also seem to think that because GSU scored 21 on us, that we're not the No. 1 team in the land. Initially, I thought the same. At first glance, I thought we played uninspired football and looked like we felt some sense of entitlement to the ranking. Then I looked over some key stats that made me think otherwise:

It was 38-0 before GSU scored...IN THE THIRD QUARTER!
We ran and passed the ball very efficiently. To the tune of 535 yards of offense.
In the first half, GSU only racked up 88 total yards of offense.

So when you look at those three things, you have to think that SOMETHING was going right yesterday. I'm not saying we put the second string in and then GSU ran loose on us (because we didn't...they ran loose on the 1st team), but we did some things right before I think the team felt like they "earned" the chance to slack up. Now, you and I know that's incorrect and that's why I think Richt left the 1st Team Defense in so long, even after the 1st Team Offense came out. They started playing sloppy, so he left them in. Sounds like tough love to me.

Look, all in all, some people had career days yesterday. Kris Durham got his first career TD catch, as did A.J. Green. For those people terrified about how our O-line is going to hold up, just remember that on Knowshon's 24-yard scamper to the endzone, he ran LEFT. We still have work to do on the line, but we didn't get dominated, either. I think by South Carolina, we'll have some necessary things locked down and we'll begin to find our stride in that area.

So please stop with the bellyaching and whining about yesterday and how we're gonna get killed by so-and-so, and they're so much faster than us, and USC is the best team in the nation, and how our injuries will be the death of us. Seriously, stop it. Anything of that nature needs to be left up to Larry Munson to do. He's better than you at it.

Until next time kids.

Be safe.

Labels: College Football, UGA Football

Journalistic integrity compromised at 1:06 PM.

1 comments

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

amen brother-dawg. tell it!

4:05 PM