Week 1

Well, the season finally got here and the Dawgs took care of GA Southern as we expected. I've read/heard mixed reviews of the game. Some are positive and focus on our 38-0 lead; others are negative and focus on the fact that we gave up 21 points. I tend to lean toward a positive feeling from week one, but that's just me.

Tickets were few and far between for the game on Saturday; in my 20+ years of attending games I have never seen so few tickets available. I've also never not gotten into a game I went to Athens to see, 2 firsts I hope to never repeat. The fact that UGA was a pre-season #1, playing an in-state opponent, and the game not being shown on TV may have played a factor in the lack of tickets. I certainly hope those were the reasons, I fear that this may become a regular occurrence but I'll be positive and hope that is not the case.

Regardless, I was able to watch the replay of the game last night and I took a lot of positives away from the game. I think Matthew Stafford looked like a different man, almost every throw was perfect and his audibles and play calls at the line seemed to be flawless. Knowshon was Knowshon-he only had 10 touches but had over 100 total yards and 3 TDs. AJ Green looked like a young Randy Moss: tall, lean, athletic, and aggressive. Caleb King also had a good first showing, runs a lot like Knowshon-never a bad thing. On defense I thought we looked good as well. Obviously the loss of Jeff Owens is going to be a test but I thought the young rotation of players filled in nicely and got a lot of pressure inside on both running and passing plays. The 'dynamic duo' of Curran and Ellerbe looked like a force to be reckoned with-I can see CBS drumming up some stupid nickname for them at some point this season. The secondary also looked good-hard hitting safety play with good aggressive corners; I was particularly impressed w/ Jones and Evans.

Finally, I was very impressed w/ Blair Walsh. He seems to be confident and knocking down a 50+ yard field goal in his first game is a great sign for the future. I'm sure we'll need him to be clutch if we are to make a run at the SEC/National Title.

Looking forward, I think it is important to build off the performance of our offense and put up a big number against Central Michigan this week. I think it will be equally important to allow fewer points to build some confidence moving into the USC game in 2 weeks. All in all, I really couldn't be more pleased with our week one performance. Richt isn't going to run up the score on people; we got some good work in and let a lot of young guys play.

P.S.

I'm not mentioning the rankings, I know we dropped to #2-who cares.