amcdawg

Lol, spoken like someone who enjoys Las Vegas!

Starting to get real Duck fans, isn't it? Off-season was filled with talk about coaching, recruiting, and talk of what was to come. Now practices are happening, instead of theoretical situations we are getting practice reports, injury updates, and depth chart changes. Three weeks (three weeks!) from today will be game week. Starting to feel real.

This is awful. Condolences to his family and to all Ducks.

I was wondering if you guys tended to pull for your conference foes to win non-conference games? In the SEC it seems like fans pulled for fellow conference members in non-conference games for as long as I can remember. Other conferences seemed to start doing that more with the advent of the playoff and more focus on strength of schedule. Is it maybe a case by case decision? If you think having a good Utah will help Oregon in a possible playoff scenario so you pull for Utah for that reason? I am pulling for Utah against florida. I will not pull for florida unless it directly helps UGA. Is Washington that team for you guys? It seems like it based on the comments I read here. One other thing, do you think the other Pac 12 schools are hoping you beat UGA to help the conference's image or will they want you to lose? Just curious on your thoughts.

I think it is safe to say Greg Sankey played a lot of RISK as a youngster. Keep your territories together, only expand if you can defend your borders. Georgia and Florida and chillin' like Eastern and Western Australia. Those who played get the analogy.

Congrats Ducks, nice pick up.

What is your favorite recruiting win (and most devastating loss)? Favorite was George Pickens. Our entire fan base was shocked, he was committed to Auburn for about a year and it came outta nowhere. When the rumors starting he may flip the names were Miami and Tennessee, but not Georgia. The Auburn meltdown was glorious. For me the worst recruiting loss was Laremy Tunsil, 5-star OT that went to Ole Miss. He was committed to UGA for a long time. Completely out of left field and to Ole Miss??!! That is when people starting thinking Hugh Freeze was cheating, and turns out he was (in more ways than one) What's your favorite Georgia college tradition? I like Ringing the Chapel Bell after winning football games. It always puts a smile on my face. What's your favorite "away" game venue? Sorry but for me it is not technically an away game it is the neutral field game in Jacksonville against florida. I am old now but if you are a young man you need to spend a weekend there. You will have a blast and may remember half of it. Why can't you admit that Texas BBQ is the best? Brisket is good and I will enjoy Texas BBQ when I have the chance to partake. But brother, smoking a whole hog means you are cooking it basically on a bed of bacon. Did you hear me brother? A BED OF BACON! Swine is fine!

As an outsider I find this fascinating, but I also feel really bad for the uncertainty you guys are facing. I do think Oregon is too valuable not to be absorbed by one of the two "super leagues" (term sounds so arrogant so please forgive me, but that is what the talking heads are calling the SEC and Big10). I am curious as to what happens in the near future, within a year let's say. Does the Big 10 pause? Does the SEC counter? At one time people thought we were heading to four 16 team leagues, but now think we head to two 20 or 24 team leagues. If that happens geography is out the window. I could see two leagues like the NFC and AFC in the NFL, four divisions of 6 in each. Players are unionized and paid as employees. Biggest obstacles I think will be labor laws and Title IX. NO IDEA how that gets worked out. I could see the name of the conferences just being a brand, not really meaning anything. We already have the Big 10 with 14 schools. I envision the SEC just saying it is like KFC, it used to stand for Kentucky Fried Chicken, but now it is just KFC. SEC used to stand for Southeastern Conference but now it is just SEC. That is why I find the near future so compelling, if one of the two super-leagues (sorry) think the other wants to go to 24 does that make these moves happen quicker? Funny thing is the travel especially for non-football sports could be "helped" by going to 24. The conferences will make their own rules so they could just say for all sports other than football we will operate as 2 12 team conferences for the most part, then maybe allowing the two "champions" to play for the overall championship. Limiting a lot of your travel to 5 other former Pac 12 teams and let's call it the Midwest SEC Division of Texas, Oklahoma, A&M, Mizzou, Arkansas and LSU. Lastly, I think expansion has to happen now. You need to have enough teams west of the rockies to be able to play one another, and to keep interest up (attendance and eyeballs). But that is also why I wonder if the "crazy" idea of the SEC trying to grab teams like Oregon and Washington may not be as crazy as it first seems. 1/3 of the US population lives in Pac 12 country, that's a lot of eyeballs and inventory. If Greg Sankey, SEC Commissioner, thinks the Big 10 is going to offer Oregon and Washington membership , does he preemptively offer? I still think with USC and UCLA in the Big 10, that makes the most sense. But what if Oregon's admin (and Phil Knight) are pissed off at USC for leaving and their "Alliance" partner sticking it to them? Fascinating times.

I don't plan on getting banned until 12:29pm PDT, 3:29pm EDT, on 9/3/2022. Just kidding @Charles Fischer, please don't pre-ban me.

Good points by Dawgs and Ducks on this board. I brought this up when I joined but I would like to bring it up again, this is a great site for civil discussion about "your" team and "our" game. I always get nervous when I see a Georgia poster because I am worried one of our "crazies" found this board. But so far, at least what I have seen, we haven't had too many visit. I imagine the odds will go up as we get closer to 9/3, but until then thanks for welcoming us!

In UGA's spring game we play the 1's versus the 1's. Not 1 vs 2.

First of all as an unbiased observer I think beating Utah is much, much more important for you guys. Also ,Jon in case no one has answered this yet, and I did not see it, the semi-finals are the Peach and Fiesta this year.

I don't have a bone in the Oregon/USC fight but that USC fan is just plain wrong. Coach Lanning had an impact on all defensive recruiting especially the linebackers. He stacked so many great OLB/Edge prospects UGA could not keep them all. Brenton Cox left and now starts for florida, Jermaine Johnson left for Florida State and was just taken in the first round. They left UGA because UGA had Azeez Ojulari who went in the second round last year, and Adam Anderson was starting this year. Adam was kicked off the team for legal reasons but was projected to be a 1st round player, he was the best pass rusher on the defense this year. UGA still has Nolan Smith, the #1 overall rated recruit from the class of 2019. "and anybody could have won with that kind of talent!" Maybe there is some truth to this but so what? In college recruiting is the most important part of the job, and Lanning was great at it. He missed some, we went after MJ Sherman (good but not great) and because of that was late in recruiting a kid who grew up a Georgia fan, some kid named Will Anderson who ended up at alabama. Heck if UGA had Will Anderson and Jermaine Johnson on their defense last year they would have been pretty good.

@Jon Joseph @Charles Fischer @30Duck and others, Just a reminder to you Duck fans UGA's spring game is on espn2 tomorrow at 1PM eastern, 10AM pacific. Spring games are a bit vanilla but I thought you may want to tune in or rewatch online to "do a little scouting". Cheers.

I hope my posts have made it clear I am not trying to troll at all, so please understand this is just out of curiosity: Is HS coaching clinics something that was not done at Oregon in the past?

Correct, he came to the Notre Dame game in Athens in 2019. Based on reports he and his family had an awesome time, great game with a great atmosphere. Congrats you got a good one no doubt.

Hello again! It is way too early for much X's and O's talk for UGA. We need to get thru our combine (workouts and drills before spring practice to kinda "set the board", kind of a pre-spring depth chart) and spring practice, then transfers in and out. Not to sound too old school but this game will be determined by each teams ability to run and stop the run. I would have thought UGA's OL would be a strength next year, but with a new OL coach and a couple new starters you never know how they will mesh, especially game one. I think UGA's secondary will be pretty good, luckily we got two super seniors coming back their that have starting experience and the two starting OLB's in the natty are back, but the concern is up the middle. Almost impossible to replace the ILB's UGA had last year, but there are some absolute dudes athletically at that position. But will they keep/hit their assignment?, especially game one. The DL loses three guys that are mocked in the first or second round of this year's NFL draft. A drop off is inevitable, but luckily they rotate a lot of guys so we have guys that have experience. But providing depth is one thing, will they be able to step up and produce against a really talented team, especially game one. I agree with Jon Joseph regarding the intangibles, the crowd will obviously be very pro-UGA and will be hyped after this year's Natty. I do not think you will get your wish on UGA underestimating the Ducks. Kirby has a rep of not being an easy guy to coach for (see the attrition) or to play for. He REALLY gets after people in practice as does his S&C guys in the off season. I realize all coaches do to some extent but he is a Saban guy, good and bad. They will be focused at game time. Having said all that I would pick UGA right now, but this game concerns me a lot. And I have not even gotten into the fact that Dan Lanning will know us inside and out. Take care, hope the Ducks have a safe offseason, hearing your name a lot amongst recruiting circles!

. You may be right Log Haulin!

And I thought I had until September before I was competing with my new Oregon friends, lol.

It is going to be a challenge no doubt, but Oregon has their own great tradition and just last year walked into the horseshoe and won. You could count the number of teams on one hand that I would have thought could do that. I do hope the Duck fans have patience, don't forget Nick Saban went 7-6 in year one at Alabama and Kirby went 8-5 his first year at Georgia. I don't think the Ducks will lose five this year, but remember rebuilding takes time even with as much talent as Oregon has. The 2023 recruiting class I think you will start seeing some fruit. Dan was an alpha dog in recruiting on a team loaded with recruiting alpha dogs. His OLB room had guys like 5-star Brenton Cox who is now at Florida and FSU's Jermaine Johnson, the ACC defensive player of the year, who left because they were not getting enough playing time. And every UGA fan knows Tosh Lupoi, he killed for Bama on the trail. I know the Pacific Northwest may not have the amount of high school talent as we have here in the deep south, but he will get his, I feel strongly about that.

As a UGA fan, I joined this site to learn as much as I could about our first opponent as well as to see how things are going for Coach Lanning, I want to compliment you on this website. You can tell you make a concerted effort to be informative and civil. Kudos. I just wanted to touch on this article for just a second. One thing that Kirby always talked about when he was asked about the play and the discipline of his team was the leadership of the team. This year's team was a lot like the 2017 team in that we had a lot of veteran leadership. In my opinion that is the hardest thing to cultivate in a team. The reason it is so hard in most cases you need to recruit good players, who then have to have the time to become leaders. If your leaders are upperclassmen who quite frankly are not as good as the newcomers, it is tough to convince young five star players they should listen to older, wiser players if those older players are slower and weaker. UGA had an advantage in that when Kirby got there, Mark Richt had recruited good players but also high character guys who were natural leaders. Michel, Chubb, Roquan to name a few. So even when recruiting got better, a lot better in some cases, under Kirby, the new hot shot recruits respected the older players. Then we recruit our own future leaders like Nakobe Dean, Jordan Davis, Salyer, Zaire, etc. I think finding good leaders that are also good players will be key for Coach Lanning. Coaches don't have a lot of time to build the roster the way the want. Getting players to hold themselves and each other responsible is so key. This is absolutely from the Bama/Saban handbook. I can't tell you how many times I heard a reporter ask Kirby about a discipline issue or a character issue and he would say "our leaders will handle that". You gotta recruit, of course, but recruiting at a high level and getting those high level recruits to hold the younger highly rated recruits to a standard is critical to building a great program. Lastly, I know I am not telling you anything you do not already know but I thought you may like to get a glimpse into the way I think your new head coach will look to build your team's attitude. Cheers.

Yes, Burton left for the opportunity to get stats for the NFL. He was a key cog in our championship and by all accounts a great teammate so I certainly wish him well. I still think Kirby wants the offense to evolve but I think he didn't trust Daniels to stay healthy and he knew he could win just about any game with defense, the kicking game, and being smart on offense, if not explosive. This year he was right but it took an all-time defense. However, I think you guys will definitely see Bennett as the starter. If he is replaced it will not be game one and certainly not against not only a team as talented as Oregon but against a coach that knows us as well as Dan does. Bennett is solid, and while most people will talk about how UGA will need to be more explosive (and I and most UGA fans agree), I would not be the least surprised to see even more of a running game and slowing the game down. First, that is Kirby's modus operandi but second, Kirby is a defensive coach who knows he needs to "protect" his defense, at least early on. I think he is going to want to limit possessions and try to make you guys go the length of the field. In 2021 the defense gave UGA's offense short fields, I think in 2022 he will want the offense to give the defense long fields. At least until the defense grows up some. Of course, now that I said this they will probably go five wide the whole game, lol.

@Jon JosephThat is it exactly. I hold no grudges against him, good luck except when he plays UGA. I do wish he could have went somewhere besides Bama though, lol.

I tell ya man, you guys have some talent on that defense. I do not know your roster well enough to comment on depth and as always DL players that are true "freaks" are hard to come by. But I recognize a lot of those names on your defense, it was some guys UGA went after pretty hard. Manning and Flowe without a doubt and I am still mad about Sewell. Man we knew it was a tough pull to get him to Athens but we pulled out the stops on his visit when we played Notre Dame. Our fans are still coming off the high of the natty but we know we are facing a lot of talent.

My understanding is UGA cancelled the home and home with Oregon during the conference realignment years, around 2011-2012. I think UGA cancelled a lot of their non-conference games because they did not know how schedules were going to change. I do not think Oregon put up much opposition for the same reason. I do not know if Oregon or UGA initiated the cancellation but given the times I think it was cordial.