Hard to think straight with the cowbells clanging in my ear, so we’ll just run down some bullets:

• I really can’t accept this gift. If Mississippi State can point to one thing as the source of its problems on offense, it would be turnovers. The Bulldogs are last in the SEC with 8 giveaways through their first three games. They aided a weak LSU offense with five turnovers last week alone. Georgia’s offense could use that kind of a break, but can the defense come through? After a promising start which generated three takeaways in the season opener, the Dawgs have just one in SEC play – a fumble recovery at South Carolina. Several possible interceptions were dropped against Arkansas. If MSU is willing to be generous again, can Georgia cash in?
• Option defense. It’s not Paul Johnson’s triple option, but Mullen’s spread option offense is a close as you get in the SEC (including whatever Meyer/Addazio are running at Florida). Georgia’s faced the brawn of Lattimore and South Carolina, and they’ve faced a pass-based offense from Arkansas. Now they’ll see a different kind of challenge from the spread option. The option can make an aggressive and overpursuing defense look silly, so it will be a test of how well Georgia can focus its attacking scheme while respecting assignments and discipline. One thing missing from the MSU attack is a big threat at tailback. It’s tough to replace someone like Anthony Dixon, one of the most underrated players in recent SEC history, and MSU hasn’t. They have a trio of tailbacks that split the load pretty evenly, but none has managed more than 39 yards in an SEC game. QB Chris Relf has been the most consistent rushing threat, and at 6’4″, 240 lbs. he’ll be a challenge for a Georgia defense that has struggled at times with tackling.
• Grantham vs. Diaz. It’s a minor point, but new MSU co-defensive coordinator Manny Diaz was mentioned during Georgia’s search for a recruiting coordinator (though never officially a candidate). Both Diaz and Grantham preach an aggressive style of defense, but each has hit a bump or two en route to consecutive SEC losses. Hopefully Georgia’s new star coordinator won’t be upstaged by the new guy on the other sideline.
• Tight ends and creativity. I really doubt that teams are scheming to take away Georgia’s tight ends, but let’s grant that they are. Last weekend we saw two tight ends feature in big games against SEC competition – Arkansas’s DJ Williams and Clemson’s Dwayne Allen. Neither was a surprise to their opponents, but they still managed to lead their teams in receptions. We saw them lined up everywhere from the slot to the traditional tight end spot to the backfield. Seeing Allen in the backfield reminded me of Shannon Mitchell – the H-Back isn’t a new concept, but it’s another way to get a tight end on the field…especially with Georgia’s starting fullback sidelined.
• Return of CK4. We’ll see if it carries over to this year, but the running game looks better with both King and Ealey available. I thought we’d test this theory against South Carolina, but it’s taken two more weeks.

Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams is the latest to suggest that a small stipend for student-athletes could be enough to help ease their financial load while maybe even keeping a few in school longer. (h/t Blutarsky) Anyone who went to college appreciates the need for a little spending money, but I’m never quite convinced that proponents really think through the finances. That’s before we even consider whether a few hundred bucks would keep away the hundred-dollar handshakes and stop marginal players from turning pro.

Williams seeks to limit the financial hit by limiting the stipend to players from revenue-producing sports. There’s a few gotchas with that plan:

• What’s a “revenue-producing sport?” Not all sports are revenue-positive at all schools. Of course Williams means football and men’s basketball, but even those aren’t universal money-makers. Just 68 of 120 Division I FBS football programs make money. Basketball is similar. Using a revenue-positive test, would the significant number of football and basketball programs that lose money be precluded from offering a stipend and consequently put themselves at a clear recruiting disadvantage? Or would they be forced to add that expense and lose even more money?
• Even if an individual sport is revenue-positive at a certain school, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the athletic department is rolling in cash. Only 14 of 120 Division I (FBS) athletic programs are in the black. Athletic departments rely on their revenue producers to fund the rest of the program, and even then most usually come up short. That’s after all of the money from the TV contracts and the basketball tournament has been distributed. Williams should know better: even his own athletic department and his own program has had to cut its budget recently.
• I’m sure the Title IX folks would love a stipend system where the vast majority of payments would go to male student-athletes.

For those reasons, especially the third, I’ve always seen paying student-athletes as a binary decision. Either you pay all scholarship student-athletes of both genders, or you pay no one. After all, football and basketball players aren’t the only student-athletes who often come from poverty or feel the financial pressures of remaining an amateur.

Here’s the math anyone floating a stipend proposal will have to work with: A major program like Georgia has around 500 student-athletes on scholarship. 500 scholarship student-athletes receiving $200 each month is $1,200,000 over a year on top of the cost of the scholarships. It’s $900,000 if you limit it to a 9-month academic year. Even if by some miracle you’re able to limit the stipend to football and men’s basketball players, you’re still looking at around a quarter of a million dollars annually. A few major programs have that kind of cash on hand. Most, including Williams’ own Maryland program, don’t.

Maybe I’m wrong, and perhaps the NCAA is sitting on some huge treasure trove of cash as Williams seems to think. So let’s shift the burden from the schools to the NCAA. Paying $200 monthly to the scholarship student-athletes of the 346 D-1 basketball teams as well as the 120 FBS football teams would take just under $36,000,000. In perspective, that’s just about the entire surplus generated by the NCAA in their last fiscal year. And, again, that’s before the Title IX crowd has had its say.

You don’t even need a super-secret access code. Colorado has released a limited number of singles, pairs and threes for the October 2 Georgia game.

Tickets range from $75 to $100 depending on location. Unless you’re hoping to pick up some under face value on location, this is about as good as you’re going to do now. Tickets throughout the stadium and in larger quantities are also available through StubHub and other brokers. Tickets on StubHub start at $92 and go up but have gradually been coming down over the past week.

(h/t Bernie)

Our hosts next weekend have declared Georgia a ‘blackout’ game. The Buffs are 1-1 in earlier attempts at a blackout, and the mixed results don’t surprise us at all. They’re already set to honor their 1990 national champions, so it’s going to be a big weekend.

We could oblige them and participate in the blackout, but Bernie and the Colorado Dawgs have a much better idea: when the nation tunes in to FSN, let them see a stadium full of black…and red. I can’t think of a better way to show just how many Georgia fans are coming to this game than to highlight them against a backdrop of black.

By no means are we overlooking this weekend’s road game at Mississippi State, but the Colorado trip is suddenly less than two weeks away. Due to a smaller stadium, high demand for tickets by Georgia fans, and a ham-handed approach to selling tickets by Colorado, it’s been one of the harder tickets to come by. If you’re among the many who are waiting to see what happens in the secondary ticket market, there’s finally a little bit of movement.

Over the weekend several sets of tickets started to come down under the $100 threshold on StubHub. The prices are still generally in the $90+ range to just over $100, but that’s within sight of the $65 face value of the tickets. It’s possible and likely that prices will continue to come down over the next ten days before we all head west, but anyone still looking for tickets and wanting to have them in hand before the trip might want to start checking the StubHub listings. I doubt we’ve reached the bottom of the market yet.

Colorado is currently 2-1 and will be off until the Georgia game, so they won’t have a result next weekend to cause a mass dump of tickets into the secondary market (or a massive buying spree).

I don’t know what it is about these past two losses bringing back bad memories of some infamous games from the 1990s.  Maybe it’s my subconscious commenting on the direction of the program. As Lattimore pushed Georgia around for Spurrier last week, I was reminded of Errict Rhett’s Jacksonville performance in 1993.

We’ll get to the offense in a minute.  But as we watched Arkansas complete crossing pattern after crossing pattern, I couldn’t help but think back to that 1999 game against Auburn. I don’t really mean the flow of the game; the Arkansas game was much closer.  But the way Arkansas attacked and exploited Georgia’s aggressive defense was a little too similar to what Ben Leard did that night eleven years ago.

I doubt (and hope not) that Todd Grantham is another Kevin Ramsey.  Ryan Mallett also deserves a little more credit than Leard. But in both games we saw the opponent handle Georgia’s pressure, attack the spots on the field where the pressure came from, and put Georgia’s linebackers in some very awkward pass coverage situations.  We’re reminded that even experienced defenders like Justin Houston are still learning new responsibilities, and they can be made to look very bad.

It’s not that Georgia didn’t bring pressure.  They tallied just one sack, but they also affected several other pass plays. Arkansas did a good job of picking up the pass rush, and Mallett is now a pro at feeling the pressure and getting rid of the ball.  The Razorbacks talked about extra offseason preparation for this game, and you could tell that they weren’t surprised by much that the new Bulldog defense threw at them.  Georgia was defeated with brawn at South Carolina; scheme did them in defensively against Arkansas.

There’s only so much you can put on the defense though.  It’s small consolation after the porous defense at the end of each half, but they did make the stops Georgia needed to come back and even be in a position to win the game.  Their stop after Murray’s second half interception was huge at the time. Tackling was better, and Arkansas got little in the running game.

But bringing up turnovers leads to one of the big disappointments of the season:  the lack of takeaways.  It was an area of emphasis in the offseason, and things looked good after one game.  In SEC play though the Dawgs have recorded only one takeaway – the fumble recovery at South Carolina.  The Razorbacks had turned the ball over three times in each of their games coming into Athens, and forcing a few on Saturday would have definitely helped to slow Mallett.  The Dawgs had their chances, but the several dropped interceptions led to Arkansas points and possibly cost Georgia a defensive score of their own.

Of course you can’t bring up disappointments without talking about the offense and the line in particular.  Murray scrambling was one of Georgia’s more effective plays, and he misfired on several throws while he was feeling the heat.  One of the nation’s most experienced lines gave up six sacks to a team that had a total of five in two games against lightweights.  It wasn’t just one side or player – tackles were beaten, and Ealey whiffed at least twice to lead to a couple of sacks.  There was perhaps no more crucial missed block than on the failed 3rd-and-4 play that stood between a fair scoring chance to win the game and the punt that started Arkansas on their brief game-winning drive.

The excuses are ready-made. Caleb King, perhaps a better blocker, was unavailable.  Georgia had to shuffle its line without Chris Davis in the game.  Sturdivant remains limited.  Even with all of that, Georgia didn’t vary much from its play-action, and the plays that took eons to develop were tailor-made disasters for a quarterback who himself had a role in the sacks. It was very nearly Murray’s first signature comeback win, but the shortcomings of the offense were too much to overcome with the game in the balance.

We’ll learn soon enough whether Georgia’s schedule was really front-loaded with two of the conference’s better teams.  Of course no conference game is a given win now – even Vandy seemed to find their legs a bit on Saturday.  If the Dawgs are going to start to turn the season around, they’ll have to do it on the road for the next couple of weeks.  Mississippi State presents their own unique challenges, and we saw how closely they played Auburn in Starkville.  This will be another game where – on paper – turnovers and mistakes have hurt the opponent.  Will Georgia be able to take advantage of those tendencies this time?

Instead of the usual pay-per-view route, Georgia will partner with Atlanta-based WSB-TV to air the November 6th game against Idaho State. The game will start at 12:30.

The game is being televised under guidelines which allow each Southeastern Conference school to produce one game per year outside the conference CBS and ESPN contracts. WSB TV is the number one rated station in Atlanta and has a coverage area that includes the 53 county Atlanta TV market as well as cable systems in Albany, Macon, Savannah, Columbus, Chattanooga, Greenville and Tallahassee. The game is also available on both DirecTV and DISH to subscribers who receive WSB TV.

Start countless questions about whether a particular cable system or Gameplan will carry the game, but start with the assumption that if you can’t pick up WSB-TV now, you won’t get the game. Athletic director Greg McGarity explains why the free broadcast as opposed to PPV:

“This free-of-charge broadcast is a way to give back to our fans throughout the state. We believe making the game available on WSB TV and its coverage area is a way to show our appreciation to Bulldogs around our state.”

So we’ve learned the kickoff time for a couple of additional games this week. Here’s what we know now:

• Sept. 18 vs. Arkansas: Noon ET(ESPN)
• Sept. 25 @ Miss. St.: 7:00 ET (FSN)
• Oct. 2 @ Colorado: 7:00 ET (FSN)
• Oct. 9 vs. Tennessee: TBA
• Oct. 16 vs. Vanderbilt: TBA (but you have to figure a 1:00 start or earlier due to Homecoming)
• Oct. 23 @ Kentucky: TBA
• Oct. 30 vs. Florida: 3:30 ET (CBS)
• Nov. 6 vs. Idaho St.: 12:30 ET (WSB-TV)
• Nov. 13 @ Auburn: TBA
• Nov. 27 vs. Georgia Tech: TBA

Nearly every wrap-up of the South Carolina game has noted how out-of-character it was for a Steve Spurrier team to lean on the running game en route to victory. True, the man will always be defined by his stormy relationships with his quarterbacks and a preference for throwing early and often. Spurrier might pass to set up the run, but his best teams have always been able to run. Earnest Graham, Errict Rhett, and Fred Taylor were every bit as valuable to Florida football as any of the celebrated quarterbacks and receivers during the Spurrier era. Three of Florida’s top five in career rushing yards played for Spurrier. Emmitt Smith left for the NFL rather than play for the pass-happy Spurrier, but within five years a Spurrier tailback (Rhett) replaced Smith atop Florida’s career rushing yardage list.

What I’m leading up to is that watching Marcus Lattimore on Saturday gave me more than a sick feeling about the current Georgia defense. There was also a strong sense of deja vu. Lattimore’s performance took me back to a rainy WLOCP against Florida in 1993 – the last Georgia/Florida game at the old Gator Bowl. Georgia fans will instantly remember it as the Timeout Game, but the turning point in the game was an extended Florida scoring drive that took up much of the third quarter.

Georgia trailed 13-3 early on and had all but abandoned their running game. “Air Georgia” was in full effect, and Eric Zeier ended up attempting a school-record 65 passes – most of which seemed to be to Shannon Mitchell. Despite the heavy rain, Georgia’s passing game got them back in the game and saw them nose ahead 20-13 late in the first half. Florida answered, and the Gators had pulled back ahead 23-20 early in the second half. Then Rhett took over.

We’ll let the NY Times tell the story. Rhett “carried 14 times for 46 yards during an 80-yard touchdown drive he capped with a 1-yard dive for a 30-20 lead late in the third quarter.” The rain helps the metaphor: it was water torture. This wasn’t the quick-strike Fun n’ Gun. It was yard by excruciating yard, first down after first down. Rhett averaged just over 3 YPC on the drive, and that seems about right. It’s not that he’d go for 15 on one carry and lose ground the next. He’d get just over three yards on every damn carry. Georgia had chance after chance to stop the march, but Rhett kept falling forward just enough to move the chains. Even his scoring play took just a yard.

That 1993 game is remembered much more for how it was lost rather than how it was won, but Rhett’s unstoppable drive in the rain and mud was the real story. Rhett finished the day with 183 yards and two touchdowns. Lattimore finished Saturday’s game with 182 yards and…two touchdowns. Neither did it with incredibly long runs or amazing speed. Both instead beat Georgia with a consistent toughness that the Bulldog defense couldn’t match. South Carolina has an interesting passing game with an experienced quarterback and everything from tall receiving targets to explosive waterbug Ace Sanders. But given a capable tailback, Spurrier has as much experience as any coach in the conference when it comes to leaning on that tailback en route to a successful season.

Georgia’s players are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to their reaction to a loss. If they turned confrontational and started on the whole “in the arena” business again, things would be ugly enough. But even when they fall on their own sword and own up to poor play, that too sometimes just doesn’t sit very well.

I do appreciate Rambo admitting to leaving a lot in the locker room and noting a need to step up his play. The Rambo vs. Evans question was at the heart of many fans’ dissatisfaction with the defense and the staff last year, but Rambo hasn’t exactly been dominant or sharp so far in his short time as the starter and leader of the safety position. It’s not exactly Tebow’s Promise, but at least he’s not pleased with his current level of play.

Darryl Gamble’s assessment might be more troubling.

“I’d say it was maybe a little effort and a little bit of guys being shell shocked out there in their first SEC game – a lot of guys weren’t ready for it.”

Not ready for their first SEC game? What? Pretty much all of the defenders who played Saturday, save Hamilton and a few others, have seen SEC action before. This wasn’t Georgia State going to Tuscaloosa. This was a noon start in Columbia for a ranked SEC contender against a team the Dawgs had lost to once in the past seven years. And they were the ones shell shocked? How in the world has this happened from a team ranked #1 just two years ago?

Not being prepared, focused, hungry, and unfazed in such an important game is a big deal. Again, it’s a program problem. Put alongside the sub-par play from the offensive line, and it wasn’t a team prepared to compete for important early-season position in the SEC East. It’s a laziness we put on a certain group of coaches last year, but the problem persists. It hasn’t been long enough to let a culture change kick in, but steps in that direction we thought we saw in Week One were erased the second that the next opponent started pushing back.

Talk about rededication and fiery Sunday film sessions now rings about as hollow as it should have back in 2008. Enough talk.

Unfortunately, it’s our next road game. Georgia’s September 25th game at Mississippi State has been set for 7:00 ET and will be televised by FSN. For Georgians, that means Fox Sports South.

After three straight noon-ish starts to begin the season, Georgia’s fourth and fifth games (@ Mississippi State and @ Colorado) will each kick off at 7:00 ET.

A day later and I’m still not sure what to make of the game.  Georgia never trailed by more than 11 points, and they spent much of the game within a single score.  Still, the challenge to come back seemed as steep at times as it ever did in the blowout losses of the past two years.  Credit to South Carolina for taking it right at Georgia, and credit especially to a freshman tailback that had one of the most impressive SEC debuts you’ll ever see. To have a chance Georgia needed a spark on offense, and it wasn’t going to come from the 2005 Georgia/Florida gameplan. 

Spurrier and Lattimore can cackle about the zone read as if it were some sort of brilliant strategy, but Georgia had the players in position time and again to challenge Lattimore, and that first contact often came at or behind the line of scrimmage.  Lattimore’s more important observation was one that’s sure to be repeated and stewed over by disgruntled Georgia fans:  "Our offensive line was in better shape than their defensive line." Georgia was pushed around on both sides of the ball, especially on the lines.

It wasn’t just the defensive line.  Georgia, from the line to the secondary, put on the worst display of tackling since the 2008 Georgia Tech game.  Even a safety who came to Georgia with the nickname "Hitman" was among the many leading with their shoulders and bouncing off a more physical freshman tailback.

The lack of physical play wasn’t limited to the defense.  Georgia had trouble running between the tackles for the second time in two games.  Again the line had much better success on outside running plays and in pass protection, but the push just wasn’t there – especially in the second quarter when the game began to get away.  It’s interesting that Richt singled out the guards on Sunday.  The guards of course are key to those interior running plays.  It’s hindsight now, but I wondered how much Cordy Glenn, a solid All-SEC lineman, was knocked down by a preseason bout with mono.  He’s recovered the weight, but it takes a lot out of you. Key I think to this problem is the return of Trinton Sturdivant.  If Sturdivant is able to contribute, Boling becomes another option at guard and can really beef up the rotation there.

Yet with all of the negative things that were going on, this was a one-possession game for much of the second half.  You’re not going to win many games scoring six points, but you stand a fair chance of winning many games giving up just 17.  We’ve spent the past two years tearing our hair out over defensive meltdowns that saw opponents put up 30 points in a single half.  We can debate whether it’s better to get lit up or suffer death by a thousand cuts, but the defense did at least keep things from getting out of hand waiting, waiting for the offense to finally get going.

More positives? I liked the pass coverage. Yes, there was a longer pass completed and a few others just missed.  Generally though Garcia was at his most uncomfortable in straight passing situations, and there were even a few coverage sacks.  The Dawgs didn’t give up the big play.  For all of Lattimore’s success, South Carolina only managed around 100 yards of second half offense, so there were some adjustments. Adjustments, fewer penalties, turnovers, all of the things we’ve asked for were there, but it wasn’t enough as the basics of tackling and any consistency on offense eluded the team.

Then there’s Murray.   

Without getting into the details of the game, Murray’s effort was good enough that coaches "think he’s prepared to just run the system as we have it." In other words, opening up the offense and putting more on Murray’s shoulders.  Now much of that depends on the supporting cast.  A team that can’t run the ball effectively is going to be inconsistent no matter who’s under center.

It’s good that the staff has come to that realization about Murray, and maybe it took two games of actual experience for them to see what he can do.  But if Richt and Bobo ever end up on any kind of hot seat, their hesitancy in situations like this will prove to be central.  A friend last week joked that Bobo should be told that A.J. Green was playing anyway, referencing the Israel Troupe play against Auburn last year.  South Carolina felt more than comfortable putting the game on a freshman tailback, and I doubt they cared very much how well he pass-blocked.  I’m glad to see Murray ready to take on more, but it’s not as if he showed up on campus this August.  He was an early enrollee in 2009 and has been through two spring practices and spent over a year and a half with the team. It took an unproductive loss at South Carolina to understand his capacity for running the system?

The comments about Murray and the interior line do make me wonder if this team will struggle with an identity crisis.  Bobo put it plainly: "we were gonna play to our strength: The play-action pass and the running game." It wasn’t just the fans who anticipated a good running game to develop behind a veteran offensive line.  I don’t expect the Dawgs to go 5-wide for the rest of the season, but the promise of a more involved Murray does make me question if we, the media, and even the coaches have the strengths right.

There’s a lot of football between now and the October 2nd game at Colorado, but residents of Boulder have a lot more on their minds this weekend. The largest wildfire in Boulder County history is currently raging in the highlands to the west of Boulder. The town itself and the CU campus itself isn’t threatened yet, but the fire has displaced many residents and has captured the attention of everyone in the area. As many as 9,000 residents are on standby for possible evacuation. At least 169 homes have been destroyed, and the fire currently affects nearly 6,500 acres in the hills and canyons west of Boulder. Westerly winds have pushed smoke across the town, and strong winds make it a difficult fight.

I had heard during the summer that the full Redcoat Band wasn’t making the trip to Columbia. That seemed strange because 1) the Athletic Association isn’t hurting for cash and 2) the full band typically makes all trips that can reasonably be made without an overnight stay. That includes the Alabama schools, Tennessee, South Carolina/Clemson, and of course Tech.

Sure enough, the Red and Black reports that just a pep band will be supporting Georgia at South Carolina. Did Georgia suddenly come up short of cash? Did a greedy athletic department want to sell those seats to fans? Nope. It all has to do with other SEC schools and some contrived notion of fairness:

“The rest of the athletic associations in the SEC are hurting a little bit, whereas ours is sitting on a budget this year so we are all right…So to be fair to everyone, they cut one of our band trips because all the other band organizations cut their band trips by one.”

Are you kidding me? Because some other SEC programs have to cut back band trips, the school will voluntarily hold back its loudest group of supporters in a key SEC opener on the road. South Carolina will have enough of a homefield advantage without keeping 3/4 of the Redcoats home. Why have a successful program and a budget in the black if you’re not going to use that advantage? Georgia isn’t going to cut back its recruiting budget or its facilities plans because some other SEC school can’t keep up, so why do it here?

I know UGA has made kneecapping itself into an art form, but this is ridiculous.

They might run the state of Georgia, but can King and Ealey run the Palmetto State? Georgia’s biggest win without A.J. Green was last year’s upset of Tech in Atlanta, and the Bulldogs compensated for their missing star by leaning on a nasty running game that made fans of old school I-formation football all warm and fuzzy. Will another heavy dose of the running game be the strategy in Georgia’s first trip to a hostile stadium since that memorable game last November?

The running game was fair last week, but the stacked line used by UL-L resulted in a lot of ineffective runs. It wasn’t the best day for the line or even King himself. Mark Richt reminded us that, between injuries and Cordy Glenn’s bout with mono, the starting line hadn’t worked together much, and it showed. There were two false start penalties, Murray was scrambling a lot more than we’d like, and Georgia generally had trouble running straight ahead. Georgia’s most successful runs were plays to the outside – the end-around to Smith that started the second half or tosses to Thomas that allowed he and the athletic offensive line to get away from the traffic jam in the middle.

It’s reasonable to expect Georgia to lean on the running game this weekend – both to make up for the absence of Green as well as helping Murray along in his first road start. So King’s 47 yards in the opener are a bit concerning. Georgia didn’t fare particularly well on the ground against the Gamecocks a year ago either. The Dawgs tallied just 107 yards rushing, and 65 of those came on Branden Smith’s jaw-dropping run. The cast of characters has changed a great deal in just a year though. Neither King nor Ealey played, and the offensive line was still coming to grips with another season-ending injury to Sturdivant.

But Ealey is back now, and King and Ealey, like Hall and Oates, are much better as a duo. The two battled injuries during the first half of last season, and neither was as effective without the other at full strength. King’s best effort without Ealey was a 59-yard contribution at Arkansas. As Ealey started to emerge midseason, his best effort was 71 yards at Vanderbilt while King was limited by a broken jaw. The turning point followed the Florida game when both were finally healthy. Ealey was averaging 48 YPG following the Florida game. King was averaging just 31 YPG. As a tandem down the stretch, both improved. King averaged 88 YPG over the final five games with no game lower than 60 yards. Ealey’s averaged shot up to 105 YPG over the last five games with 77 yards against Kentucky as his low point.

I was surprised to see that the Gamecocks allowed just 67 yards on the ground to Southern Miss last week because it seemed like it was much less. USM just got nothing from their rushing game. We’ll carry the standard disclaimers about it being Southern Miss and their woefully inexperienced offensive line. Still, you’d expect South Carolina to be solid against the run: their competent secondary allows the front seven room to take some chances. Georgia has averaged just 114 yards rushing against South Carolina over the past three years, and not even Knowshon could help much. Will the team of Ealey and King make the difference this time? The Bulldogs will be hoping for a result more like 2006 when they put up 198 rushing yards in support of another freshman quarterback making his SEC debut in Columbia.

If you were on the fence about heading over, there are still a handful of tickets available to Saturday’s game. The “best available” are in the 900 level, so it’s getting closer to a sellout.