Monday, December 01, 2008
Oh, Georgia....
God damn yellow jackets.
Fuck 'em. Most of all though, fuck us. You can't take anything away from Tech, they just came out in the second half on Saturday and straight WHIPPED OUR ASS. At halftime we were up 28-12. I can imagine the Dawgs were already sure they had won in the locker room. In the first 7 minutes (7 FUCKING MINUTES!) of the second half - Tech scored 23 fucking points. That blew my fucking mind. They had 201 yards rushing in the 3rd quarter ALONE which made up a part of their 400+ on the day. Their "high school offense" as I was dubbing it on the ride up to Athens walked all over us and our "high school defense".
Richt announced yesterday that Willie Martinez is coming back next season as defensive coordinator. To be honest, I dont know how I feel about this yet. The season is not even over yet and I havent been able to digest fully how bad our D looked this year. I will say this though - the one thing that is a glaring deficiency in each of our GOD AWFUL losses this year has been the defense. I dont want to criticize any college player (Except Tebow b/c that dude's a douche) but IMHO the only player on our defense that really played lights out all year and is worthy of praise is ol' #35. He is a supreme badass. Now is our shitty defensive play the players fault, probably not. I just hope this WHOLE team right now has been humbled. Even with a 9-3 regular season (which lets be honest is a great fucking year, just not in relation to the expectations this year) what makes me feel sad thinking about this year is how we weren't really even close to winning any of those three loses. Tech, maybe but still they had the emotion all second half. Bama, nope. Florida, nope.
Truly though, I think what we saw on Saturday was a renewed rivalry. Tech is not going to be the little brother we push around anymore, at least not while Paul Johnson is there. We're going to be forced, whether we like it or not, to respect them 100%. Something I dont think we did this year, at least after halftime.
With one game left I seriously hope Richt can center this team which doesn't seem to be disciplined right now. There is a damn good chance we could be playing Ohio State in the Capital One bowl, and that would be a wonderful opportunity to show the rest of the college football world who we are, because i dont know that we've done that yet this season.
One other thing that stuck out in my mind on Saturday was after the game was over. I really tried to pay attention to the reaction of certain players to the loss and the reality of it being the last home game of the season. I was watching #7 to see what his reaction was following this embarrassing loss, and lets face it - what could be his last game in Sanford stadium. Stafford was pissed, you could clearly see it. He had a fantastic game sans one pass in the first half (which looked to be the receiver's fault) and yet again had a career game putting up numbers that are mind boggling - only to be outscored by a ACC team. I also looked for #1, who had one of his best games as a Dawg on this his senior day. He was sentimental, slowly walking around to all the coaches and staff hugging them and other players, thanking the crowd, really taking in his last moments between the hedges.
Then came #24. Knowshon didn't talk to anyone, didn't shake any tech players hands, didn't look into the crowd. He just BOLTED, head down to the locker room. Didn't seem like he had any time for any sort of reminiscing. What does that all tell us, who knows? However a little part of me hopes this game (and the Florida game esp) really stung Stafford and Knowshon. So much so that they will give leaving for the NFL a second thought.
We can hope, cant we?
God damn yellow jackets.
Fuck 'em. Most of all though, fuck us. You can't take anything away from Tech, they just came out in the second half on Saturday and straight WHIPPED OUR ASS. At halftime we were up 28-12. I can imagine the Dawgs were already sure they had won in the locker room. In the first 7 minutes (7 FUCKING MINUTES!) of the second half - Tech scored 23 fucking points. That blew my fucking mind. They had 201 yards rushing in the 3rd quarter ALONE which made up a part of their 400+ on the day. Their "high school offense" as I was dubbing it on the ride up to Athens walked all over us and our "high school defense".
Richt announced yesterday that Willie Martinez is coming back next season as defensive coordinator. To be honest, I dont know how I feel about this yet. The season is not even over yet and I havent been able to digest fully how bad our D looked this year. I will say this though - the one thing that is a glaring deficiency in each of our GOD AWFUL losses this year has been the defense. I dont want to criticize any college player (Except Tebow b/c that dude's a douche) but IMHO the only player on our defense that really played lights out all year and is worthy of praise is ol' #35. He is a supreme badass. Now is our shitty defensive play the players fault, probably not. I just hope this WHOLE team right now has been humbled. Even with a 9-3 regular season (which lets be honest is a great fucking year, just not in relation to the expectations this year) what makes me feel sad thinking about this year is how we weren't really even close to winning any of those three loses. Tech, maybe but still they had the emotion all second half. Bama, nope. Florida, nope.
Truly though, I think what we saw on Saturday was a renewed rivalry. Tech is not going to be the little brother we push around anymore, at least not while Paul Johnson is there. We're going to be forced, whether we like it or not, to respect them 100%. Something I dont think we did this year, at least after halftime.
With one game left I seriously hope Richt can center this team which doesn't seem to be disciplined right now. There is a damn good chance we could be playing Ohio State in the Capital One bowl, and that would be a wonderful opportunity to show the rest of the college football world who we are, because i dont know that we've done that yet this season.
One other thing that stuck out in my mind on Saturday was after the game was over. I really tried to pay attention to the reaction of certain players to the loss and the reality of it being the last home game of the season. I was watching #7 to see what his reaction was following this embarrassing loss, and lets face it - what could be his last game in Sanford stadium. Stafford was pissed, you could clearly see it. He had a fantastic game sans one pass in the first half (which looked to be the receiver's fault) and yet again had a career game putting up numbers that are mind boggling - only to be outscored by a ACC team. I also looked for #1, who had one of his best games as a Dawg on this his senior day. He was sentimental, slowly walking around to all the coaches and staff hugging them and other players, thanking the crowd, really taking in his last moments between the hedges.
Then came #24. Knowshon didn't talk to anyone, didn't shake any tech players hands, didn't look into the crowd. He just BOLTED, head down to the locker room. Didn't seem like he had any time for any sort of reminiscing. What does that all tell us, who knows? However a little part of me hopes this game (and the Florida game esp) really stung Stafford and Knowshon. So much so that they will give leaving for the NFL a second thought.
We can hope, cant we?
