re: Would you trade your coach?

My honest assessment of Richt is broken into three categories:

Xs and Os: He's as good as anyone here. There are few coaches who are as good as Richt at scheming, play design, and planning around the strengths of his teams. His FSU offenses were awesome and can attest to this.

Recruiting: He's good. He's had some big, notable in state misses on players he should get, but under his watch, UGA has landed Stafford from Texas, Knowshon from New Jersey, Gurley from NC, Murray from Florida, among others. He could recruit better but it could also be a whole lot worse.

Motivation: This is where he fails spectacularly, over and over again. This is why it seems like UGA has a ceiling every season, no matter how talented the team is. For whatever reason, every season has a 2014 Florida game (a bad performance against a horrible team). I was at the 2008 UGA/Alabama game, and I noticed during warmups that UGA players were seemingly going through the motions while Alabama players were excitedly jumping around the whole time. The 2012 team had no business losing by 4 TDs to anyone, but they showed up super flat and couldn't match USCe's intensity (this is a growing trend, by the way). I can't explain this and don't know why it always happens, but it is what it is at this point.

Overall, he's solid. He could be better and he could be worse. We basically know to expect a 9-3/10-2 season that has half of the fan base excited and the other half wondering why he can't do more. Rinse, repeat.