Georgia football fans witnessed one of the most crushing defeats in program history against Tennessee last week. Would things have been any different with Mark Richt still there?
This is going to turn a few heads and draw the ire of more than one Georgia fan, but stay with me on this one if you can.
Maybe…just maybe…Mark Richt deserved one more year at the helm in Athens. Perhaps Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity pulled the trigger just a hair too soon.
Yes, I know all the arguments about why Richt was relieved of his duties. Georgia couldn’t win against ranked teams in big games. They hadn’t won an SEC title in over a decade. The double-digit number of wins each year seemed to be shallow. Undisciplined play and poor special teams.
Georgia Bulldogs
All true, and undisputed (although none of it has really changed).
But it seemed in 2015 that Richt had things moving back in the right direction, and he was doing it with essentially no quarterback, injuries to his best players and a slew of freshmen talent.
After five games in 2016, new head coach Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs sit at 3-2, with the back-to-back losses to Ole Miss and Tennessee ranking among the most embarrassing and then most deflating losses in program history.
Again, the reasoning behind this record has its merits. It’s a new coaching staff, a freshman quarterback, a depleted linebacker corps. And if you’re a Georgia fan, perhaps those things make you sleep better at night.
But maybe they shouldn’t.
Not to throw Kirby Smart under the moving bus, but why did it have to be this way?
In 2015, Jim McElwain inherited a group of hissing, meandering Sleestaks at Florida, and in his first season they managed to win the SEC East. In 2012, Houston Nutt tossed the keys to a flaming car wreck over to Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss, and he had them in a bowl game that first season.
Richt himself walked into an awful situation in Miami this year, with little to hold up as a light in the program besides quarterback Brad Kaaya. Yet here the Hurricanes sit at 4-0, completely in control of their ACC destiny.
So why, with all the 4 and 5-star talent and an already winning program, must the Bulldogs regress under Kirby Smart? This isn’t Illinois or Syracuse or Maryland, where a new coach can be lauded a hero just by bringing a program above .500, this is Georgia.
Again, the question begs was Mark Richt dismissed too soon?
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Freshman quarterback Jacob Eason (who is doing a marvelous job, by the way) was Mark Richt’s golden boy. Eason was going to be the missing link to get Georgia over the hump again. It could be that Richt deserved at least one season coaching his prize recruit.
Richt had everything in place except his quarterback. He had the proven talent at running back. He had blossoming receivers in Isaiah McKenzie and Terry Godwin. Former defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt had this Georgia defense fixed. Not just fixed, but dominating most weeks. Now they more resemble the undisciplined ill-prepared Todd Grantham defenses.
It just makes you wonder the “what if” possibilities for Georgia this year.
Perhaps the Bulldogs are still beaten by a fired up and emotional Ole Miss, but it’s doubtful Jeremy Pruitt’s defense gives up 31 points in the first half to the Rebels.
Maybe the game against Tennessee still comes down to a last-second Hail Mary pass. Then again, maybe Richt has coached his young quarterback not to stand like a statue in the end zone with a pass rush bearing down on him.
You can’t un-write history, so there’s no way of really knowing. But for Georgia fans who were expecting this team to at least hold serve, if not improve under Kirby Smart, the pangs of regret may have already started.
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Did Mark Richt deserve at least one more year to prove himself? Much like the question of the Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.