If practice makes perfect, what does a lack of practice make? Whatever it is, we might have seen it during the 2008 Georgia football season, a season that the Bulldogs started off as the consensus No. 1 team in the country and were expected to be at worst on a short list of teams vying for a BCS bowl. Instead, Georgia ended its season against Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl.
For all of the areas where Georgia came up short this season, the most important one may have been on the practice field. “When you scrimmage and tackle people to the ground there’s risk of getting more people hurt, but there’s also risk of losing a little bit of your stinger, a little bit of fundamental tackling ability,” said head coach Mark Richt. “I think I hurt our team by not [having them tackle in practice].
Richt, however, changed that approach for the bowl practices and had his team tackling and hitting full-on. “We treated it like fall camp,” said Georgia defensive coordinator Willie Martinez about the bowl preparations. “Because we had so many injuries in [fall] camp we were always worried about the season, who were we going to have left […], but we rolled the dice [for the bowl game].”
Georgia’s physicality helped it get the 24-12 win over the Spartans and the defense registered six sacks and held Michigan State’s Javon Ringer to 47 yards on 20 carries. This was in sharp contrast to the Georgia team that did not play a full four quarters and did not seem battle-tested and ready to fight at times during the season. In the Bulldogs’ first half against Alabama and second halves against Florida and Georgia Tech, they were outscored a combined 129-21. Those results were a product of more than just X’s and O’s and talent. Some in the media suggested Georgia was missing something after those defeats.
The Bulldog defense was publicly chided for its perceived lack of toughness. “We just felt like we got disrespected. They kind of called us out in the media, I’m not going to call any names,” defensive tackle Corvey Irvin said about some apparent quotes that got under Georgia’s skin. “We just felt like we had something to prove. We hadn’t been respected all year. People were saying all year they can just run it down our throat.”
Georgia, to its credit, examined its approach and changed it up despite the 18 season-ending injuries that were suffered by the end of the season. “We [wanted] to get back to some of the things we didn’t do well this season, in particular to play a physical brand of defense and even practice with a more physical nature,” Richt said. “It’s not their fault that I decided to pull off on some of the scrimmages, some of the tackling drills. Because of the injuries early on, I just decided that the injuries were too great.”
“I feel like we learned a lot about ourselves, just coming down here throughout this whole entire week,” said linebacker Rennie Curran about the bowl trip. “The way that we practiced, the way that we prepared, we were very physical in practice and it made a difference in this game.”
Also, Curran says the team’s return to a more hard-nosed approach is not only helping on the field, but off of it as well. “We just learned the importance of just being focused, the importance of everybody being on the same page, everybody doing the right thing on and off the field,” Curran said. “At times we lost focus, especially off the field. It really kind of affected us.”
Next season Georgia opens at Oklahoma State, a team that finished 9-4 and should come into the year with a fairly respectable ranking. The Bulldogs will likely not be anyone’s pick to win the national championship because of the possible departures of quarterback Matthew Stafford and tailback Knowshon Moreno. But if they continue what they started in preparation for Michigan State, they may be more equipped where it counts—in mentality and preparation.
“You see what happens when you play 60 minutes and stay focused,” Martinez said.
“I think we played a lot better defense because we practiced it,” Richt added. “We’ve got to continue to do it.”
Richt is right. With or without Stafford and Moreno, Georgia’s defense and team will only be tough if they practice tough. As the 2008 Bulldogs showed, talent can only take a team so far.
Butler can be reached at jbutler@scoreatl.com.
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