Odin's Thoughts

  UGA Instant Analysis  Week 9:  W @Florida; 8-0  You might think Georgia should be happy with a 34-7 victory over Florida, which included shutting down one of the best offensive playcallers in football for over three quarters. Unfortunately the score does not reflect the execution, and there are questions left unanswered, and outside of winning the SEC East today, Georgia is not any closer to winning a national championship. The good news? The best defensive players in the country at just about every position wear red and black.  The question on every dawg fan’s mind is “can Stetson win a national championship?” This question earns the offense the first position this week.  The answer is yes, by the way, Georgia can win it all with Stetson. However, they wouldn’t win BECAUSE of him, and Coach Monken needs to keep his skill set in mind to keep him from losing any games moving forward. Because of the talent around him on offense, and the monsters on defense, Georgia can beat anyone even

  UGA Instant Analysis  Week 8:  7-0 (DNP) Georgia enjoyed a bye in week 8 of this tremendous football season, and it came at a critical time for these dawgs. With injuries stacking up and a string of tough games, the Bulldawgs needed time to regroup and get healthy. From public reports, it sounds like JT Daniels and some of the receivers made significant strides, Darnell Washington continues to regain his health, and Chris Smith got some extra rest this week. Unfortunately those same reports came with the news of a Kendall Milton injury, which is manageable with the tailback depth, and confirmation of a torn ACL for transfer Tykee Smith which further dampens the secondary strength. An overall positive trend in the health department along with an extra week to prepare for Dan Mullen’s impressive scheme is a good sign to me. Despite Florida fans’ displeasure, make no mistake Dan Mullen is one of football’s best play callers and can spring an upset on Georgia if they’re not focused. This

UGA Instant Analysis  Week 7:  W vs.Kentucky; 7-0 Most of this season we saw a big blowout on the scoreboard that came along with big concerns. This week was the opposite: a somewhat close game on the scoreboard that wasn’t really close at all. Georgia dominated Kentucky physically and schematically, and they did so without playing anywhere close to their best ball. Certainly not a perfect game but another quality performance against a good team in the national spotlight. Bringing Georgia back down to Earth a little though — Kentucky struggled to beat South Carolina and UTC this season, so I think their #11 ranking was slightly lenient.  In keeping with the order of worst unit first — by far the most terrible performance of the day was submitted by the officials in black and white. The refs were awful, at best they were awfully inconsistent. The most notable discrepancy was found in the dreaded “holding” penalty. I get it, I spent a lot of time blocking bigger, stronger defensive linem

  UGA Instant Analysis  Week 6:  W @Auburn; 6-0 Full disclosure: my parents took their granddaughter to Disneyland this weekend so my attention to the game was limited. It was a blast. The trip greatly decreased the frustration of what seemed like a much tougher and closer game than it should be. Considering it was Georgia’s first true road game in front of an opposing crowd in over a year (I don’t count Vanderbilt), and no other team at the top looked completely dominant, I’ll take it. I have to practice what I preach, so maybe I was wrong about Auburn. I thought they would be awful this season. They still aren’t great but certainly shouldn’t finish last in the SEC West. So credit to Coach Harsin and his staff, other than his OC who I can never give credit to, and to the players who gave Georgia a heck of a fight.  I’m going to simplify this week and only highlight significant notes and concerns. Since I’m a “bad news first” person I’ll start with concerns:  Georgia has a lot of injur

  UGA Instant Analysis  Week 5: W vs.Arkansas; 5-0 I had a coach who always told me nothing is as good as it seems, and nothing is as bad as it seems, when watching film. Basically, if I had a bad game, there’s gonna be positives to build on, and if I had a good game, there were still areas to improve. Today is one of the “not as good as it seems” days for Georgia. While a blowout against a top ten team is great, and Arkansas is a very tough team, there are some places Georgia must get better at.  Offense occupies the bottom position today. You might see 37 points, especially with the backup QB, and think it was a good day, and it wasn’t terrible at all. But there were many missed opportunities on the field, and frankly many of the points scored belong to the defense and special teams providing short fields and a TD of their own. To be fair, the game flow and the advantage led to primarily running the ball (which I’ll get to in a minute) but when the passing game was called on Georgia