Smart Is Confident In Bobo. What About The Fans?
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Looking ahead to this fall in Athens, the atmosphere leading up to kickoff stands to be tamer against Tennessee State and Western Kentucky compared to that of later in September when Oklahoma comes to town.
Sure, those early-season tailgates will have lots of elements of reuniting with old game-day friends. But as far as intensity of SEC games? It won’t be at that level.
That is of course if someone brings up two words – “Mike Bobo.”
Yes, that Mike Bobo. The former Georgia quarterback who is a lightning rod for disagreement. The same one that won the Frank Broyles Award and has directed one of the country’s top-performing offenses under two Georgia head coaches and was a finalists for that award last year, too. That’s not an award handed out as a courtesy.
But there’s the rub, as well. Yes, for the most part Mike Bobo’s offenses have been high-performing and good enough to get the job done.
Trouble is, the key reason for Georgia going about things like gangbusters in its back-to-back title run was what Todd Monken was able to do – having a generational player like Brock Bowers helped, obviously.
But almost ever since Bobo came aboard Georgia’s staff under Kirby Smart, you could hear the grumbling from a segment of Georgia’s fans that had anxiety of Bobo even being allowed in the football offices, let along a later elevation of offensive coordinator.
The play of Georgia’s offense in losses to last two years to Notre Dame and Alabama and being good enough but no great in other big moments has not helped that anxiety for one group of the fan base, with the other being of the mind that ‘if it’s ok by Kirby, it’s ok by me.‘
But if Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was looking to overwhelmingly reassure Georgia’s fans of how confident they should be in Bobo’s offense, Tuesday at SEC Media Days in Tampa was not a slam dunk when asked directly about Bobo by reporters at SEC Media Days.
“I look at things through facts and I look at things I see with my own two eyes. I was blessed to work for the greatest college football coach in the history of all of college football, and I don’t even think it’s arguable. I don’t think you can even debate it, but I learned from him that you evaluate things from inside out. And I do think that football intuition is one of my strengths. Knowing that, I know that we’ve got the right offensive coordinator. What you guys want to write and talk about is completely up to you. I look at the production he’s had, the success he’s had, the team success where he doesn’t worry about stats. He worries about winning football games, and the way he coaches our players day-to-day is unmatched in this country.”
Look, it’s fine and well to say that ‘we have the right offensive coordinator,’ and talk about production and success, but at the end of the day, the expectation in Athens is simple – not just win a lot of games, but win the ones that matter the most.
Last season, you saw Georgia slowly cut Alabama apart and take its will in the SEC Championship Game, but it was hardly flashy. Against Georgia Tech, moving the ball was a problem. The Sugar Bowl saw the Bulldogs unable to keep as torrid of a pace as Ole Miss.
Is Mike Bobo saddled with replacing an incredible OC in Monken? Yes. But at the end of the day, Georgia’s offense needs to be more than good enough, and time will tell if that’s enough to meet the standard in Athens, or if this offense will be just good enough.
Go Dawgs!
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