What to make of Kirby Smart’s inaugural year, and what 2017 might bring

Life is all about expectations, and if you were one of the many Georgia fans that expected great things from Kirby Smart’s inaugural season you were left disappointed. I was somewhat in the middle. At first I had the Dawgs 8-4 (losing to Tenn, Florida, and Auburn plus UNC). I then put UNC in the win column.

I never saw Vanderbilt coming, though I did admit Georgia Tech worried me. All in all I would say I lean to being disappointed by the season, though not in any major way. Losing to Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech at home is inexcusable, but beating a North Carolina and Auburn were nice scalps, too.

But I want to take a more macro look at the season and what I feel needs to be improved upon the most heading into next year, where some see the Dawgs bouncing back while others see another long year.While I wasn’t thrilled with Kirby’s first year as head coach, when you look at the previous six head coaches’ first seasons his wasn’t too far off the pace setter.

• 8-5 (4-4) Kirby
• 8-4 (5-3) Richt
• 5-6 (3-5) Donnan
• 6-6 (4-3) Goff
• 7-3-1 (3-2) Dooley
• 3-7 (2-5) Griffith
• 5-6 (1-3) Butts

Now, Kirby’s opening year came off of a 10-3 season, which makes his 8-5 look less impressive, but anyone who sat through Richt’s final season knows that 10-3 wasn’t anything to gloat about. Having said that, here are my thought on the season and what I’m looking for in 2017.

Things I saw that I expected to see

-First year mistakes on the sidelines and on the field. Jacob Eason looked every bit like the true freshman he was. He would make one throw that left you thinking about the Heisman in two years then he’d immediately make one that had you looking at Greyson Lambert with a hopeful eye.

On the sidelines Kirby was the young, excitable coach we expected, but with that came some clock management blunders. It’s always hard to go from the right hand man to THE MAN, and I hope Kirby got most of his rookie mistakes out of the way along with his QB.

-Nick Chubb isn’t back yet. No, he’s not some scrub, but Chubb wasn’t the dominant back we saw in 2014 and the first part of 2015. He lacked speed (see above clip, which would have been a TD two years ago) and burst to the outside and he never seemed to trust his knee and ask it to perform the jump cut that made him devastating. With Chubb (and Georgia’s best RB, Sony Michel) coming back for their senior years, I’m hopeful we’ll see the “old Nick Chubb” in 2017 and the dominant running game will return.

-Offensive woes shouldn’t have caught anyone by surprise. Jim Chaney is viewed by many as a very forward thinking pro-style offensive coordinator, but his numbers have never been super impressive. Add to that a rookie coach who learned from the master of the “don’t hurt us” style of offense who handed the keys over to a true freshman and voila!, we get what we got.

I’m less skeptical of Chaney than most Georgia fans for a few reasons. One, they had a new system with a new offensive line coach and a true freshman QB. Two, their best offensive player wasn’t the same back, meaning churning out 7 yards per carry wasn’t happening. Lastly, the wide receivers weren’t reliable. So you have an inexperienced QB, and star RB coming off of injury, and a group of WRs you can’t fully trust. I’m not sure what offensive coordinator would excel with those conditions.

Things I saw that I did not expect to see

-I did not think the offensive line would be a disaster. I wasn’t expecting Tyler Catalina, the Rhode Island transfer, to be some stud. In fact I said him coming to UGA was both good and bad news. But I didn’t expect the senior center, Brandon Kublanow, to get bullied as much as he did. I didn’t expect Greg Pyke, a road-grading OG, to have to play RT. Sam Pittman is considered one of the best OL coaches in college football, but he has to do more with what should be a deeper OL in 2017. I’m not expecting the OL to be dominant a la Alabama, but I am expecting a solid amount of improvement from 2016.

-Georgia’s red zone defense was comically bad. The team finished 36th in total defense from a yards-per-play standpoint, which was solid if not spectacular. Yet when teams got inside the 20 yard line Georgia’s defense went to hell, finishing 121st in red zone touchdown conversions. They failed to bow up and hold teams to field goals and it cost them some games.

-The young defensive lineman were better than I thought. David Marshall was a late addition to the class and he played major minutes from the jump. Julian Rochester looked like the 5* DT he once was before he added too much weight. Tyler Clark and Michail Carter added quality depth behind Trenton Thompson and John Atkins. Georgia still lacks consistent outside pressure, but the interior of the defensive line is going to be beastly the next few years.

Things I need to see in 2017 for it to be a success

Truly feel @skinnyqb10 is going to be great. But he has to see the whole field. Check out how open Sony is here. pic.twitter.com/sKtgAvp9Nb

— Parrish Walton (@ParrishWalton) January 4, 2017

-Eason has to read the field better and take the easy chunk plays he missed in 2016. Terry Godwin was open deep down the field in almost every game at least once, yet Eason almost rarely (if ever) connected. That has to change. I’m not saying Eason needs to turn into Peyton Manning, but he needs to be a lot closer to Jacob Coker by the time we hit the opening weekend. If the deep shot is open, hit it. That simple.

-Georgia needs to woodshed the bad teams it faces. Losing to Auburn or Tennessee on the road happens, but letting Nicholls State hang with you is inexcusable. Good teams beat bad teams into the ground, and Georgia has to start doing that with regularity.

-A wide receiver, literally any wide receiver, needs to step up and consistently make plays. Georgia doesn’t need a Heisman candidate, but it needs a Chris Conley or a Michael Bennett-type player who is reliable. No more easy drops.Whether that WR is Godwin, Javon Wims, Riley Ridley, or anyone else it doesn’t matter. But someone needs to step up.

Way too early 2017 season prediction

I still think Georgia is another year away from truly contending for anything of note. That doesn’t mean it can’t win the SEC East, which will be very competitive in 2017. I expect the bottom of the division to come up while the top (Florida and Tennessee) slide back a bit. Georgia has four road games of note (Auburn, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech) plus Florida in Jacksonville. Expecting anything better than 10-2 is lunacy. Pending some catastrophic rash of injuries or payer departures, I think 9-3 is in play and winning the SEC East should be a reasonable expectation. There are too many “ifs” for UGA to have sights set on anything above winning the East. The offensive line is going to have to gel. The QB is going to have to make a major leap. The coach is going to have to do likewise. I do think 2018 is going to be huge for Georgia, but I hope others will give Kirby one more year to right the ship.

What Georgia can do to jumpstart its offense

Yesterday I sort of danced around my concerns of Kirby Smart. He’s a Nick Saban disciple, so expecting “The Process” to adapt itself four games into its implementation is probably a fool’s errand. Saban is undoubtedly steadfast in his beliefs and it’s safe to assume Smart took that with him to Athens.

So I don’t expect Smart to make wholesale philosophical changes, like a switch from a drive blocking scheme to a zone blocking scheme. I might disagree with that as I don’t feel the current personnel in Athens lends itself to an offensive line playing like Alabama, but if you’re Smart you do what you know.

I understand that line of thinking, but it does frustrate me. Great coaches adapt, even in the first month of their first head job. And right now Georgia needs to adapt offensively or it will continue to sit in the bottom third of SEC offenses. A place no good team wants to be.

But what can Smart and Jim Chaney do to help jumpstart the offense? Kirby isn’t going to go full spread, obviously. And Georgia won’t develop a dominant offensive line this year, either. But that doesn’t mean things can’t change. We all know they need to change, too.

Yes, the OL isn’t good, but Georgia isn’t lacking skill players. It has a stable of very capable running backs. It has two match-up nightmares in Isaiah McKenzie and Terry Godwin.

During the last podcast Dave mentioned the Georgia offensive plan in the Missouri game reminded him of Purdue during Jim Chaney’s tenure as offensive coordinator. I think it makes sense for Georgia to go a bit more in that direction.

No, throwing the ball 55 times is not something that should happen with regularity, but getting Eason in the shotgun where he’s more comfortable also gets opposing defenses to spread out more.

Right now Georgia wants to be the power football offense Kirby is used to, but defenses aren’t having it. Any time Georgia lines up in jumbo set and announces its desire to run the ball it can’t follow through.

However, with Sony Michel, Brian Herrien and a healthy Nick Chubb—who may not be back this week—Georgia has backs capable of playing well in space. If you can’t line up and create space in the I-formation, why not spread teams out and run more horizontally than vertically, where space will happen naturally?

Georgia has found success running to the outside via sweeps, tosses and stretch plays in each game thus far. Yet it keeps going back to the ground and pound style Kirby wants. The problem is it’s just not working.  Georgia needs to commit more plays to attacking the edges.

Smart also needs to help protect its offensive line. Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss has done a fantastic job of this the past couple of years. Ole Miss hasn’t had that great of an offensive line, so it calls plays that help negate the deficiency. Kirby needs to do likewise.

Screens (traditional, tunnel, bubble) and draws help take some pressure off of a bad OL while also slowing down aggressive DLs. You know, like Tennessee’s.

Georgia hasn’t run many (any?) screens thus far. It needs to help its young QB while protecting its weak OL. That’s damn hard to do. But I do feel Chaney and Kirby could be doing more than they are.

After being embarrassed last week I would hope we’ll see some changes made. If not in personnel (there’s only so much you can do when your best isn’t good enough) then hopefully we’ll see Chaney begin to better utilize what Georgia does well. If not I’m afraid more games like Ole Miss are coming, beginning this week at home.

The curious case of Nicholls State, and what it means for Georgia moving forward

Last week wasn’t a dream. It happened. Why it happened isn’t so much the question. The question is will it happen again.

Kirby Smart will tell any reporter who’ll listen that Georgia isn’t where it needs to be from a talent/depth standpoint along either line of scrimmage. For all of Mark Richt’s success, one of the consistent points of constraint among fans was his inability to recruit and develop dominant lines of scrimmage.

Against Nicholls State Smart saw first-hand what he must change about his version of the program. Nicholls State isn’t a good FCS team. This isn’t an Appalachian State-beats-Michigan sort of deal. This middling FCS team walked into Sanford Stadium and whipped the Bulldogs on both lines of scrimmage.

Have fun with the SEC, Kirby.

It seems one holdover from the previous regime was line-of-scrimmage play that left you wanting. The play against North Carolina in the opener was a bit of fool’s gold as the Heels just aren’t good against the run.

While the performance against Nicholls isn’t likely to be a weekly trend—many teams have tried to stack the box against Georgia only to see Nick Chubb gash them—the performance against North Carolina won’t happen each week either.

Georgia is going to have success running the ball only to follow it up with several stalled drives. This is what reality looks like when your QB options are either a raw freshman or one more seasoned yet lacking above-average talent. Those options lead to conservative playcalling.

Jacob Eason’s first start wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, either. Had Michael Chigbu held onto the two balls hitting his hands Eason is staring at 13-20 for 240(ish) yards. Again, not bad, but nothing that will wow anyone watching.

The interception Eason threw was a classic freshman mistake. Not only did he throw it late over the middle, but he did his best Mike Vick impersonation and fired the eight yard pass with way too much heat. A deflected INT led to a 91-yard return, making the game all too close for comfort.

One thing that could help Eason is the comfort blanket of good TE play. About that…

For the second year in a row Georgia fans were led to believe the tight ends would be a focal point of the passing offense. Through two games Georgia TEs have a combined 2 catches for 30 yards.

There have been some drops, sure, but the TEs aren’t even getting the targets most were expecting. There’s also the continued issue of either a) QBs missing open WRs b) open wide receivers dropping the ball or c) WRs simply not getting open.

Again, this happened against FCS cellar dweller Nicholls State. Literally every team remaining on Georgia’s schedule has more talent.

I do think the noon kickoff coupled with playing a no-name team the week after a marquee game had a major impact. I think the quick scoring drive to open the game probably played a part, too, as it would be human nature for a team to relax a bit.

The problem is that’s exactly the attention-to-detail stuff Smart was supposed to improve. As frustrating as it was seeing Richt’s teams piddle around against lesser foes, it never came close to losing a game to an FCS school. Georgia fans—certainly those who wanted Richt out—have been telling everyone Smart will have the team ready to handle anything and the “little things” will no longer be an issue.

That attention-to-deal improvement could be proven true over time, but last week we saw a head coach that looked just as green as his young freshman QB. The decision to pull Eason late in the game in favor of Greyson Lambert makes little sense to me unless the coaches don’t trust Eason. That’s the only sensible explanation.

Of course that wasn’t Smart’s explanation.

“The decision to go with Greyson was more of a change-up,” Smart said. “Go with him, let him go in there and show a little confidence in him with the four-minute offense and be able to shift and motion some people and hopefully run the ball and get some run game going and let him execute the flow of the offense.”

The last part of the statement has some truth to it. The motion and flex stuff Georgia likes to use is a bit headier than what offensive coordinator Jim Chaney did with Eason. But that first part? That’s total spin room BS.

Smart didn’t trust Eason to run the offense and get out of the game with a win. It’s that simple. Lambert hadn’t played all game and immediately after an Eason interception is put in with the team nursing a lead. Yet it was all about getting Lambert some confidence? Not sure how dumb Smart thinks we are, but we’re not that dumb.

Smart is going to have to trust Eason more than he showed last week for Georgia to contend for the SEC East. To do that, Smart is going to need to put Eason in better situations where he can earn Smart’s trust. Running the ball 68% of the time quickly becomes predictable. Teams with far more talent will be able to do what Nicholls State did last week.

I’m having a serious case of deja-vu as I remember making similar statements about Georgia’s offense a year ago. Teams will see UGA wants to go big and physical with three TE sets, but if you don’t pass out of those sets to soften teams up you’ll see a lot of 8- and 9-man fronts. Georgia needs to make teams defend the entire field. Right now it’s not doing that, and the meat of the schedule is nearly upon us.

The good news is Georgia has two weapons on the outside in Terry Godwin and Isaiah McKenzie who should be able to open things up for its running game. The bad news is both are tiny and can’t hold a block. This is the dilemma for Chaney and Smart. Do they try and force UGA into the physical brand of ball they prefer, or do they tailor the team to the talents on hand?

The answer, of course, is obvious. Great coaching adapts to the roster while going out and getting what it wants via recruiting. This season will be an interesting test for Smart. He’s not had to choose varying styles of play for almost a decade as Alabama always had what it wanted. Now, in his first head gig, Smart has to choose between going full bore into the power game he seems to want, or making “sacrifices” that better fit the scheme.

Many-a-promising coach has fallen victim to stubborn pride. Will Smart do likewise, or will he adapt? Time will tell.

 

Header imagine via The Telegraph