re: Blue chip ratios for first year coaches

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The Gump: Again, I'm not saying it was a bad team or anything. I'm saying you benefited from an easier schedule.


The Dawg: Man i cant believe you typed a full 5 paragraph essay about why our schedule is apparently weak despite 4 ranked wins , an SECCG win, playoff win, and multiple 30+ blowouts of SEC opponents.

That is such a big fricking melt just to try and put down a team from 7 years ago dude get real

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The craziness of it is we were actually number 1 over Bama in the initial CFP poll because we had a much, much better win (@ND) than Bama had that year. Our schedules were basically the same except we played Auburn a second tiime and played ND and they played LSU. Ironically ND and LSU met up in the bowl game that year and ND beat them. Strange, strange melt.

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Because the program was stagnant and trending in the wrong direction. I think we can all agree on that. However, to say it was in the worst shape it had been since the mid-90s is a stretch.

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It might not be a correct but it's not a big stretch.

It was in the worst place it was under Richt. Richt took over in 2001 and Donnan left him with some top talent. (David Greene, Verron Haynes, Musa Smith, Randy McMichael, Ben Watson, George Foster, Charles Grant, David Pollack, Johnathon Sullivan, Josh Mallard, Tony Gilbert, Boss Bailey, Will Witherspoon, Chris Clemmons, Tim Wansley, Bruce Thorton, Jermaine Phillips, Decory Bryant, Kentrell Curry and David Jacobs all had solid NFL careers or extremely good college careers and all were Donnan recruits who thrived under Richt. Donnan was a better recruiter than Richt, but that was in in the early days of recruiting rankings where it was less known.

The reality is UGA was probably in it's worst spot in terms of talent since 1996 when Richt was fired. Now granted, that's by UGA standards, they still had a lot of talent. But it was a low talent point in terms of UGA's talent levels over the years. The biggest issue was the Senior class in 2016 (the 2013 recruiting class) was ranked 12th and it had a LOT of misses. Of the 15 4-stars in that class, the only ones who turned into anything much were Leonard Floyd, John Atkins and Tray Matthews (who transferred to Auburn before Smart came to UGA).

We're not even looking at the Donnan guys who left just before Richt came in. Marcus Stroud, Richard Seymour, Kendrell Bell, Quincy Carter, Jonas Jennings, Jaime Henderson... all drafted in the first 4 rounds that year (which by Smart standards isn't great but for pre-Smart UGA teams that was one of the best draft years ever)