re: What Georgia's Missing

quote:

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people are losing their minds

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Yeah.. it makes it a lot less interesting to come to the boards honestly. I'm on a lot less frequently.

One of these days, I'll probably formulate all my thoughts into some single post, but here's a bit of stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness as it may be for me with a newborn at home and a kindergartner in virtual school ensuring that I never get any sleep...)

I think there is a solid middle ground between:
1) Kirby is an idiot and mismanages everything, we're fricked and will never win anything of consequence going forward

and

2) Everyone is overreacting, we're super close and just have had bad luck, Kirby is a genius and knows more than all of us, etc...

Not to say you or anyone specific is exactly on those 2 extremes, but that's what it feels like often is being shouted back and forth because of the extreme hyperbolic nature of fan commentary.



Anyone who thinks Kirby should be fired or even on the hot seat hasn't looked around at the college football coaching landscape. There isn't a single coach that I'd be jumping up and down to grab even if I could wave a magic wand.

Saban - tGOAT, also is in the twilight of his career, no interest in moving on just to hit a dead end 2-4 years later and be back at square one (not even like he's an option)

Orgeron - no thanks. Clearly is only going to be as good as the coordinators he can hire

Riley - no thanks... I like his offensive prowess, but every single deficiency that people think Kirby has on offense, Riley has on defense it appears

Day - not enough of a body of work, but as with most tOSU coaches, feasting on a shite schedule IMHO

Swinney - The ACC is fricking hot garbage. They play a 2 game schedule once the playoffs start.


If you think Smart should be on the hot seat or replaced, you better have a really good idea as to who should replace him *and* be damn confident that you can land *and* keep them. There aren't many coaches I can envision that would be targets equal or better than Kirby that wouldn't be immediate flight risks for the NFL.


On the flip side of that, Kirby has a stubbornness that I'm not sure can be eliminated... maybe masked or minimized, but I think it will generally always be present to some degree. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he'll be more hands off with the offense and it's just the 2020 conditions have made it difficult for us to evolve (QB leaves, transfer QB leaves, 2nd transfer QB not healthy, etc...) but coming off of an open week before playing UK and having that stale of an offensive gameplan was disconcerting. Kirby wants to play the kids who practice the best and then seems surprised when we can only execute the type of plays that he seems to emphasize. In game situations, we don't take a lot of deep shots, and unsurprisingly, our QBs and receivers seem less than prepared to make those plays even when the play design has gotten them open.

This isn't really a knee jerk reaction, but rather something that feels like it shows up periodically, our pass defense against WRs is generally only as good as we are allowed to be aggressively physical in coverage. More often than not, it seems like Kirby's MO is to take away the run at all costs, and then by forcing teams into a single dimension, we can play a little more aggressively in pass coverage and it pays off. I recognize that modern football has made it extremely advantageous on the offense, but seemingly anytime we face a team with a QB capable of leading a WR a reasonable amount, we struggle. In the Rose Bowl, while we were getting beat, we were able to keep pace offensively. Fast forward to not having 2 all world RBs on the roster and a less capable QB, and obviously that's a lot more difficult.

It does seem odd that it usually takes Kirby and Co until half to make significant adjustments defensively. In the UF game, it was pretty clear they figured out a way to pick us repeatedly and that our ILBs were going to struggle covering wheel routes as they had them dialed up... The picks never getting called as penalties is pretty irritating (any reason why we don't do this more ourselves if the refs are going to stuff that flag up their asses?) but the wheel routes being left uncovered or having ILBs out of position routinely felt fixable before half at least (caveat being that I know Monty Rice is not at 100%).