Lots of “news” coming out of Athens this morning about Georgia’s quarterbacking situation. Best to just go down the list.

What we know:

• Logan Gray was seen working with the starters last night during the few practice periods observed by media.

The backstory:

• Rumors about Joe Cox dealing with a tired or “dead” arm surfaced last month. They weren’t helped by his performance in the season opener.

This morning’s developments:

• Anthony Dasher of UGASports.com (subscription required) expanded on his practice observation of watching Gray with the starters and reported that, according to sources, Gray “took all the snaps with the No. 1 unit Wednesday”.
• Dasher never claimed that Gray has been named the starter but concluded that Gray “could start Saturday’s game.” Dasher cited a source who says, “That’s the way it looks now.”

Muddy Waters

• David Hale followed up and reports that “Joe still took the vast majority of the first-team reps (on Wednesday).” Hale has also spoken with “multiple players who told (him) that (Gray taking all of the snaps) isn’t true.”
• Buck Belue chimed in on 680 AM in Atlanta to speculate that Cox is simply being rested during the week but will start.
• ESPN’s Joe Schad countered that “Georgia is likely to start” Gray. We don’t know if his source is Dasher or someone inside the program.

Got all that? The misinformation can’t be all bad in terms of what South Carolina has to prepare for. At the same time, you don’t waste valuable practice time on a smokescreen. If Gray was working with the starters above and beyond the usual time given to the backup, it was for a reason. If Belue is right and Cox is missing practice time to rest his shoulder, that’s not a positive angle to this story considering the problems in execution that plagued the offense last week. If Cox is going to start and play most of the game, the offense needs all of the practice time with him it can get.

Regardless, Hale notes that “we’ll find out for sure when we meet with Mark Richt around 4 p.m. today.” That should be fun.

UPDATE: Steve Patterson, publisher of UGASports.com, posted that UGA Sports Information released a statement saying that “Joe will be the starter Saturday.”

There’s enough blood in the water after a disappointing loss, and it’s easy to panic over the perception of a program in disarray that makes for good column and sports talk fodder. The coaches (and even the players to some degree) seem fine with chalking a lot of problems up to execution, but getting the coaches on the same page, even in analysis after the fact, has been a story that won’t go away.

It wasn’t just the first start in three years for Joe Cox or the debut of Branden Smith; it was also the first game in which Tony Ball served as Georgia’s receivers coach. Not much went well for the offense, but Ball in particular seemed to have a rough go of it. Georgia struggled to get production through the passing game, and leaving two promising receivers on the bench for the entire game didn’t help matters.

“Coach (Tony) Ball’s in the box and he didn’t have direct contact with us,” (Michael) Moore said of Georgia’s receivers coach. “He kind of didn’t realize that until the end of the game. … We didn’t know what the rotation was going to be and we ended up sticking with basically three guys.”

“He said the game was moving so fast and he was trying to find out what plays worked and what didn’t work, and he said he just forgot, it slipped his mind,” (Marlon) Brown said.

It should be pointed out that this isn’t Ball’s first rodeo as a receivers coach. He’s had the job at before at a major program (Virginia Tech). Position coaches at Georgia have a lot of freedom to set their rotations. It’s possible that Virginia Tech handled things differently when Ball was there. Still, it was an embarrassing oversight, and I don’t blame the players for bewilderment over the news that a position coach with only six scholarship players available forgot about two of them.

This isn’t just Ball’s failure though. Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo is sitting right next to Ball in the booth. With playcalling resting with Bobo and position coaches deciding on their own rotations, an experienced coach of offense like Mark Richt should be able to have a better big picture view of the offense and speak up when those in the booth get bogged down in the details.

I’m not the first to raise the communication issue, but it goes beyond getting a couple of freshmen on the field. Take another example from the game. Oklahoma State DB Perrish Cox, who was assigned to A.J. Green most of the day, was out of action for a series or two. Many fans noticed it, and the broadcast team did too. Georgia didn’t do much, if anything, to test that side of the field. It makes sense now – if Georgia’s coaches in the box didn’t have a good grip on their own personnel, how could they ever note the absence of a key defender and come up with a plan to test a possible weakness?

From player rotation to playcalling and even down to the approach to kickoffs, Richt delegates and yields to his assistants. That’s not necessarily a bad thing of course; you hope to hire a staff of professionals with the experience and skills to do their jobs, and the head coach cannot hope to micromanage every aspect of the program and game plan. I don’t mean to suggest that Richt is well down the Bobby Bowden path to oblivion. This is still his team though, and it does seem that some of the pieces are disjointed. We joke about Evil Richt and his various personalities…right now, the team could use a good kick from Assertive Richt.

• “Flying under the radar.”
• “Embracing the underdog role.”
• “The star of the team is the team.”
• Richt’s road record (always with an asterix for Jacksonville).
• Off-season discipline and distractions (which team looked as if it had just dealt with a week’s worth of distractions?).

When I hear people pat the defense on the back for a good job, it sounds like most are just relieved that it didn’t turn into a 2008-style meltdown. The defense did play well, and the stats back it up. At the same time, there’s this: Georgia was the only SEC team that didn’t force a turnover last week. If we’re going to bang on the offense for not making plays, we really can’t overlook that the defense did very little to change the momentum once it swung to the Cowboys.

For all of the offseason talk about how different things were going to be, Georgia’s flaws against Oklahoma State seemed all too familiar. After a season in which miscues by Georgia’s offense and special teams led to an average of nearly 10 points per game, Bulldog turnovers and poor coverage led to 17 of Oklahoma State’s 24 points.

Unfortunately the Bulldogs don’t seem to have the offense to overcome such charity. Joe Cox, flu or not, had a very inauspicious debut and helped a ragtag defense under a first year coordinator turn into the big story of the game.

Now the big question entering the SEC opener: do you chalk this up to the flu (if so, where was Gray?), or are there systemic problems with an offense that managed but a 53-yard field goal after its opening drive? For the leadership and poise that Cox was supposed to bring to the offense, he showed little of either.

You’ve read the previews and probably have a good idea what to watch for in terms of matchups and stars. An opener against a quality opponent like this can give you a pretty good read on your team in a hurry. That said, several of the things I’ll be watching for tie in to some of those offseason themes and should serve to let us know how different the team will be from the group that took the field against Georgia Southern over a year ago.

1) Leadership put to the test. If there’s been one overarching theme this offseason, it was leadership. From Cox to Owens to Curran, Georgia’s had no shortage of guys saying and doing the right things. If you like, you can hold up Georgia’s relatively clean offseason discipline record as evidence that all of the talk isn’t just so much bluster. Even Vince Dooley is impressed by the team’s apparent unity.

But of course the ultimate test of what’s changed will come on the field. How does unity and leadership hold up on the road under adversity? Does Joe Cox stay cool and in control after a sack or, God forbid, a turnover? Now that’s he’s facing the flu, will the team avoid being rattled?

This is still, going by the numbers, a team with a lot of young guys in key positions. The leading receiver, tailback, and the cornerback that will often line up opposite Dez Bryant are all true sophomores. The offensive line, with two juniors and three sophomores, look like grizzled veterans by comparison. Even Cox himself is getting his first start since 2006, and it’s a road start against a top 10 opponent.

2) Take away Bryant and Green. Who’s left? Dez Bryant and AJ Green will surely get plenty of attention from the other team’s defense. It’s doubtful that either will be completely shut down, but both teams are going to have to get production from elsewhere, and neither has the strongest of supporting casts. Oklahoma State doesn’t have many experienced returning receivers, and the loss of their starting tight end won’t help. Georgia has just six scholarship receivers, and that includes just one upperclassman. Georgia’s tight end position includes a starter with all of three receptions a year ago who will be backed up by two true freshmen.

3) Hidden yards and points. Georgia’s 2008 issues with penalties, kick coverage, and generating turnovers have received plenty of attention during the offseason. The Dawgs risked a scholarship on a kickoff specialist, and they’ve placed practice emphasis on reducing penalties and creating turnovers. Oklahoma State’s new defensive coordinator likewise is “preaching” a focus on turnovers.

In two games last night we saw sloppy fumbles, interceptions, botched kicks, and even a safety. Georgia’s 2007 win over Oklahoma State started with a short scoring drive following a muffed punt after the Cowboys’ opening drive. Points from these areas weren’t a Georgia point of pride last year; in fact, it amounted to about a touchdown per game advantage for Georgia’s opponents. The OSU offense is good enough without getting help from Georgia’s offense and special teams.

4) Return of the injured. A couple of Georgia’s perceived strengths this year depend on the recovery of key players. On the offensive line, both Sturdivant and Davis (and Vance) have had surgery. Ben Jones missed most of last week with an ankle injury. Then you have defensive lynchpin Jeff Owens whose 2008 injury shook up the defensive line. Defensive end Rod Battle was slowed by injury most of last season, and Reshad Jones was one of many who missed time this August with minor nuisance injuries. They’re all good to go, but any impact of lost practice time and conditioning will be apparent against a quality opponent. Still glad to get them all back, and the Dawgs have to feel fortunate to have had a preseason relatively uninterrupted by injuries. The absence of Kris Durham or Caleb King notwithstanding, it’s a far cry from last August when the team had a single healthy defensive end with which to practice. Perhaps most importantly, the offensive line has been able to work together as a unit for much of the summer and preseason. Remember – they might be experienced individually, but this starting offensive line combination has never taken the field together in a game.

5) The Russell Okung factor. A good left tackle can’t be overvalued (think back to Sturdivant and his injury), and Oklahoma State has perhaps the best in the nation. That’s one of the bigger differences from the game two seasons ago. The zone reads and speed options will rely on Okung to lead the way to the outside. He’ll also be the key to pass protection on a line that only gave up 16 sacks a year ago. Georgia should have the advantage inside, but how heavily can the Cowboys lean on their star tackle?

6) What’ve we got, exactly?

I’ll admit this has been one of the hardest Georgia teams to get a read on. On one hand you have some significant holes to fill. Much of the improvement is expected to come from a lot of the same players and coaches who couldn’t get it done last year. At the same time, there’s a confidence and cohesiveness about this team. As I said up top we’ll find out how that holds up in a real test, but you couldn’t ask for a better preseason in terms of discipline, health, and attitude. That confidence must be catching on, because I don’t get where this comes from:

In some respects, though, Georgia fans almost have to be waiting for the other shoe to drop — it seems more likely a question of which of the first five games the Dawgs will lose than whether they will fall.

It might be due to my own echo chamber, but I haven’t heard that sentiment from any Georgia fan, nor have I seen much analysis that concludes that a loss in the first five games is an inevitability. I grant that none of those five games is a clear-cut win, but Georgia has every reason at this point to be confident in their chances to compete in and win all of those games. Last year was full of shoes dropping; this year, not so much so far.

Does that mean a better team or a more satisfying season? Not necessarily. It’s entirely possible that the questions facing this team will be answered with a big, “NO”. As much as any opponent during this first month has an even-money shot at beating Georgia, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see this team undefeated heading in to October. Maybe it’s just a matter of being conditioned to sailing through September with relatively easier schedules. The cold reality of Sunday morning might require a major reevaluation, but for now it’s full steam ahead.

I saw this post on an economics site titled “Is the S.E.C. More or Less Scary Today?.” It took me a second to realize that they were discussing the government agency.

Thankfully the week’s biggest tempest in a teapot has ended with the correct outcome: there will be no pregame handshake between Georgia and Oklahoma State.

Shaking hands after the game is fine. Some teams even meet at midfield for a postgame prayer. Hand out orange slices, shout “2! 4! 6! 8!” all you like, and tip your cap to the other guy for a game well played. But leave the pregame mingling to the captains.

Joe Cox, not surprisingly, gets it:

“I don’t think it’s necessary. I think you prepare all week to play an opponent, you play, and then you show sportsmanship at the end of the game…The last thing you want to really do before a physical game like football is go shake hands with everybody.”

Mixing 150+ testosterone-dripping college students at the height of emotion and preparation before a violent game like football has never seemed like the best idea to me. But in the interest of fairness, we have this compelling logic from the NCAA’s Marta Lawrence:

Perhaps if there was a pregame handshake before last year’s game against Boise State, (Oregon QB Jeremiah) Masoli might not have suffered a concussion on a late hit in the heartbreaking 37-32 loss to the Broncos.

How can one argue with that?

…you’ll love how the Boise State stadium will look on Thursday night. As if the blue turf wasn’t enough. Kudos to them if they pull off anything closely resembling this.

All 12 SEC teams will be in action this weekend, and all 12 games will be televised in some form.  This is mostly a note-to-self, but someone else might find it useful.  Or we could all just bookmark this page.

Thursday:

 7:00:  South Carolina at N.C. State (ESPN-HD)

That’s right – the SEC and ACC are the opening acts for the west coast headliners.  South Carolina has enjoyed this opening Thursday slot several times lately, but it’s usually been some ugly football.  No matter…hook up the IV and let the football drip…drip…drip…

 10:15 PM:  Oregon @ Boise State (ESPN-HD)

Few teams have as much on the line this weekend as the Broncos.  The national title game is out of the picture regardless, but a win here could still be their gateway to another BCS bowl.

Saturday:

10:00 AM:  College Gameday (ESPN-HD)

Everything about the show is beyond parody now, but you’ll still watch it.  The crappy intro, cartoonish hosts, predictable storylines, crowd trying too hard, and of course the obligatory Tebow human interest story – it’ll all be there, but we’ll all be tuned in.  I can’t think of another major sport that has a single  this kind of hold on the sport’s collective conscious.   The Gameday intro, whether performed by Bubba Sparxxx, Kenny Chesney, or the Wiggles, is the shrill factory whistle letting us all know that it’s business time.  You’ll be too busy watching for milliseconds of your team’s highlights in the opening montage anyway. 

Noon:  Kentucky vs. Miami of Ohio (ESPNU-HD)

Not much reason to watch other than it’s the first SEC game of the day.

 12:21 PM:  Western Kentucky @ Tennessee (ESPN Regional / SEC Network – HD)

Two debuts here:  Kiffin’s debut against WKU is all well and good, but it’s also the first broadcast on the new ESPN Regional network that will be taking the place of the weekly Jefferson Pilot game.  Tune in to see how the broadcast survives with only one Dave.

 3:30 PM:  Georgia @ Oklahoma State (ABC-HD)

3:30 PM:  Jackson State @ Mississippi State (ESPNU-HD)

Um…OK.  If you’re at a bar with 700 TVs, you might ask to turn one to Dan Mullen’s debut in Starkville and peek at it between commercials.

 7:00 PM:  BYU vs. Oklahoma (ESPN-HD)

You can tune in to see if college punters can get as much elevation as their NFL counterparts, but the game itself features two teams looking for a bit of legitimacy.  An Oklahoma loss would do a lot of damage to their chances of producing consecutive BCS and Heisman finalists.  BYU has an outside shot at playing for the national title if they run the table, but none of that happens without a win here.

7:00 PM:  Charleston Southern @ Florida (FSS / Sun – HD)

If this game loses your interest after, say, the first minute, you can always stay on the lookout for the elusive I-formation.

7:00 PM:  Louisiana Tech @ Auburn (ESPNU-HD)

Two more debuts:  the Chizik experiment and ESPNU’s Saturday evening SEC game.  Make it a game:  will there be more Florida touchdowns or Auburn completed passes?

7:00 PM:  Missouri State @ Arkansas (PPV/Gameplan)

Realize that this is Arkansas’ only game until Georgia visits in a few weeks.

7:30 PM:  Western Carolina at Vanderbilt (CSS)

Don’t mistake this for a repeat of the high school game CSS shows on Friday evenings.

 8:00 PM:  Alabama vs. Virginia Tech (ABC-HD)

Bama launched their 2008 season with a win over an ACC team in Atlanta.  Their most recent trip to the Dome wasn’t as pleasant.

 10:30 PM:  LSU @ Washington (ESPN-HD)

Lookit!  SEC!  Travel!  West coast!  Distance!  Will they finally love us?  I know…I’ll probably be asleep by then too.

Sunday:

 3:30 PM:  Ole Miss @ Memphis (ESPN-HD)

The Snead Stampede gets going with a rivalry game.  It’s Sunday, the NFL won’t start for another week, so you’ll watch.

Monday:

4:00 PM:  Cincinnati @ Rutgers (ESPN-HD)

Rutgers seems to be as good of a choice to win the Big East as anyone.  Fortunately we’re past the point where that comes with national title hopes.  Still, they’re at a critical stage of building a program:  the first wave of program-changing talent has moved through.  Now do they regress back to historical results or can the next wave of players sustain and improve on what they have?

 8:00 PM:  Miami @ FSU (ESPN-HD)

I think “pity” is now the default frame of mind in which to watch this game.

As if this week’s off-the-field distractions weren’t enough for Oklahoma State, we learn this afternoon that starting MLB Orie Lemon, a senior, will miss the season with a torn ACL. Lemon was the team’s third-leading tackler in 2008, but it sounds as if he brought everything from pass breakups to blocked field goals to the table.

Georgia fans know too well how much of a kick in the stomach this can be to a player and his teammates, so we wish him all the best and the strength to make a complete recovery.

Here we are on the eve of the 2009 season and we just can’t let go of 2008 yet. We’ve looked at the hard numbers. We’ve looked at the hidden numbers. At this point it takes something out of the ordinary to take our focus off of the game just five days away and go back over the tired corpse of 2008, but Year2 over at Team Speed Kills has one last post about 2008 worth reading.

He takes on the statistic of scoring defense which blindly counts any opponent points against the defense, and he “corrects” the numbers by removing things like opponents’ defensive and special teams scores. (It’s like an ERA for football defense.) You can argue whether or not it’s appropriate to discount drives that start on the defense’s side of the field, but he does it. It’s stats-heavy stuff for sure, but taking apart a stat like scoring defense has implications for the entire team.

Read the whole post for context and how the adjustment applies to the rest of the SEC. The relevant bit for Georgia:

The Bulldogs gave up an average of 24.83 points per game as a team. However, their adjusted points per game allowed was 15.58, a full 9.25 points lower than its team average. That to me suggests that there is a grain of truth in the claim that Georgia might be better off without Matthew Stafford if Joe Cox throws a lot fewer picks. I’m not saying that’s 100% true, just that there’s at least one piece of evidence to back it up. In total, UGA’s defense gave up 20+ adjusted points five times. Against the top six SEC defenses, Georgia scored 21.40 a game and an adjusted 19.60 a game for a difference of 1.8 points per. That shows that for all that the Bulldogs gave up in the way of non-standard points, they were almost completely unable to get some back via big special teams and defensive plays themselves.

No one is excusing the defense from some pretty rancid play at times last year. They still “gave up 20+ adjusted points five times.” It’s also the defense’s job, as Coach Martinez has admitted several times, to respond when placed in a tough situation like having the opponent start a drive on your half of the field. That said, those numbers put a point value on what PWD likes to call “team meltdowns”. You see it all there – turnover margin, kickoff problems, the short field, and, yes, the defense…it all added up to nearly a 10 PPG swing, and it truly took a team effort.

There’s another side to the numbers. As Year2 notes, “(Georgia was) almost completely unable to get some (points) back via big special teams and defensive plays.” Aside from Prince Miller’s punt return against Alabama or the glorious interception returns at LSU, the Georgia defense and special teams were typically not able to create points or set up the offense. We went much of the season with the defensive line recording more interceptions than the secondary. It’s not enough for the offense to avoid turnovers or hope Joe Cox throws fewer interceptions. Generating points is a team effort also.

If you had to point to the defining moment of Florida’s 2008 championship season, I’d bet that most would say Tim Tebow’s promise. They have the monument to prove it after all. But Florida’s offensive stats weren’t a great deal better in 2008 than they were the year before. There was a slight shift in balance from passing to rushing, but that’s about it. Giveaways dropped from 15 to 13. To be sure, it was a high level of performance in both years. But what turned Florida from a 4-loss team to a national champion?

The defense improved across the board. 35 takeaways fueled a +22 turnover margin. Opponent trips into the red zone decreased by over 60%! Opponent points per game were cut nearly in half, and that’s before Year2’s adjustments. Back over to Year2 to put a point value on those defensive improvements. Combine Florida’s insane number of takeaways with great special teams play, and you get this:

Everyone knew that Florida’s opportunistic defense and special teams were good, but against the best defensive teams in the conference, they were worth an entire extra two touchdowns per game.

That’s right: last year Florida’s defense and special teams spotted Florida’s already-potent offense an additional 13 points against the SEC’s top defenses. Not to take away from the accomplishments and contributions of Tebow and his teammates on offense or the potency of the spread option, but what Florida’s defense and special teams were able to accomplish takes hidden yardage and points to the extreme.

Think life would be easier for Cox and company with anything approaching that level of contribution from the defense and special teams?

(The quote in the title comes from a Warren Buffet letter to shareholders.)

So within the past few days Oklahoma State has had to deal with a couple of personnel issues.

Senior starting defensive back Perrish Cox was arrested last week for driving with a suspended license. He won’t miss the opener (“We handle all of those things internally,” said coach Mike Gundy), but that’s not unusual for a simple moving violation. It’s not like he was caught with drugs or anything.

Now starting tight end Jamal Mosley has left the team. Mosely is the same player who was arrested for marijuana possession over the summer and also wasn’t suspended. Now Gundy doesn’t have a choice – it’s on to plan B at tight end.

Does Mosely’s departure really matter? He only tallied five receptions last year, but he was expected to step in for NFL-bound Brandon Pettigrew. It’s worth noting that in Oklahoma State’s 2007 game in Athens, the most productive OSU receiver was the tight end. Does it matter that the position now turns to a player who recorded a single reception (for four yards) to replace an NFL-quality tight end? Much (or nearly all) of the buildup to this game talks about Georgia’s challenge in defending Dez Bryant, but as good of a receiver as Bryant is, he’s still not going to be the target on every pass attempt. Chris Brown, in his overview of the OSU offense, cautioned that “with Big 12 defenses focused on Bryant, it will be up to the run game — and the other receivers, and the playcallers — to find ways to succeed without lobbing it up to No. 1.” Just five days before the opener those OSU playcallers are dealing with a shakeup at a position that they’ve leaned on for a good bit of production over the past couple of years.

From georgiadogs.com:

A limited number of tickets to four (4) football games will go on sale to the general public beginning Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. Tickets will be available for purchase online by clicking here.

Games available and ticket prices are:

Oklahoma State ($100)
Arkansas ($45)
Arizona State ($60)
Tennessee Tech ($45)

All Oklahoma State tickets ordered can be picked up at the Gate N-12 at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Oklahoma, starting at 1:00 p.m. (CT) on the day of the game. When picking up Oklahoma State tickets at Will-Call, please present a photo ID to claim your tickets.

All other single game tickets ordered will be mailed out the week of September 7-11.

For more ticket information, please contact the UGAA Ticket Office at 1-877-542-1231.

From Mark Richt’s comments about the heat in Jacksonville to the hot conditions that gripped the south-central US for much of this summer, the role of weather has been a very minor storyline during the offseason.

Fortunately the summer heat has broken on the plains, and Stillwater is currently enjoying a nice preview of fall. Temperatures are expected to remain in the 80s this week with a very reasonable 86 degrees and only a slight chance for a summertime storm forecast for Saturday. Forecasters are expecting that temperatures “will remain below (normal) late week and probably into the Labor Day weekend.”

Of course forecasts 5 days out can change dramatically, but the early read is that the weather should be just fine for the game and certainly nothing too extreme or out of Georgia’s comfort zone.