Moving on to this week, course still waiting to hear if those starters will be back this week. What I have read and know to be fact is the following-
Bacarri Rambo was in a car last summer with someone, and drugs were found. What I don't know is if Rambo failed a drug test, otherwise this would appear to be similar to the Branden Smith deal this year, where he was in a car with drugs but it was not his and he did not fail the drug test after the fact-and he played last week missing no games. Whatever the case, Rambo DID miss the Boise game last year, serving a one game suspension-you have to assume then he failed a drug test OR the UGA policy has changed this year which allowed Smith to play under the same circumstances. It is known that Rambo ate some brownies during spring break that contained marijuana, he then failed a drug test when he got back from spring break. At that point, his high school coach confirmed the story and said Rambo was appealing because he did not know the brownies had pot in them and he was upfront with coaches when he took his blood test about what happened. That being said, he would miss 4 games unless the appeal reduced the number of games. Again though, the question remains did Rambo fail the drug test LAST year, and if not, seems he would have a one game suspension and thus be back this week. At this point, I do NOT think there is any chance Rambo makes the trip and plays this week.
Alec Ogletree, he missed last week due to suspension, same as Rambo-Richt confirmed as much. Now, this is even a bigger mystery to me. Tree missed his very first college game in 2010 because he stole a bike helmet from another student. I am NOT aware of him sitting out any other games due to suspensions. He started last season against Boise but broke his foot early in that game. He came back against the Gators-now, is it possible he failed a test while he was injured and thus HAD to wait until the UF game to come back and they masked that suspension by the injury-possible yes. Otherwise, if Tree also ate the brownies and also failed the drug test, he should be sitting ONE game which was last week. Unless Richt/McGarity are holding his other suspension his freshman year against him-otherwise based on what I know and many others, he SHOULD be playing tomorrow against Missouri.
Sanders Commings, there are rumors swirling that he appealed his two game suspension and could be playing on Saturday. Rumors swirling that he has been working in Rambo's safety spot, but that could be because Rambo is out 4 weeks and thus Commings is getting ready to next week and then against Vandy as well. Commings suspension was over an assault charge involving a shoving match between he and his girlfriend. Witnesses at the scene said Sanders pushed her as basically self defense as the girlfriend was going crazy on him. Do I support a guy ever hitting a woman, ABSOLUTELY not but if a mad woman is beating on your, slapping on you, I don't think you have any choice but to try to restrain her in some way. I simply can't imagine though that Commings has any chance to play this week. His suspension was made public by Mark Richt, thus I simply can't see that being reduced especially since Commings situation involved him being arrested.
On the injury front, all the practice and work put in by Malcolm Mitchell this spring and summer to get ready to play both ways, in a walk through practice he lands on someones foot and sprains his ankle-hard to believe. Last Saturday he was in a walking boot with crutches, people thought the worst but these days, they tend to do that to make sure a kid can't move/walk on his ankle. Kids can and will be stupid, they have a slight sprain and think they are ok, they go do something stupid like celebrate a TD with a teammate, do a dance move, you name it and suddenly the slight sprain is more severe. From the sounds of it, Mitchell has been running at practice this week, Mark Richt is pretty optmistic. My thought, he tweaked his ankle and we were playing Buffalo, do not take any chances and boot him up just to make sure he does NOT move on that ankle. Mitchell will play tomorrow I feel sure.
John Theus hurt his ankle in the second half against Buffalo. He is a BIG man and when a guy that size hurts his ankle, there is cause for concern. But, it appears Theus has been testing his ankle this week at practice and again, I believe he will play. Watts Dantzler also hurt his ankle but again, I feel sure he will play as well if needed.
Let' face it, this is a big game for us in the SECe and next week we have another Buffalo type game. I fully expect that any injury player we have WILL play this week. I am not sure about the suspended players of course but I feel sure those kids with minor injuries are going to play.
Now, let's talk about
Our offense needs to help the D by playing ball control, smash mouth football with a nice balance of run/pass to keep them honest. I have read that this defense has played better against the traditional as one of their DL said, "old man" football formations. Well, that might be true but we have to keep our D rested and fresh because when they are on the field they are going to be busy. The best way to do that is with a power run game and I truly believe we might have found our power run game in the name of Todd Gurley. Sure it was one game but the kid has been doing it all preseason in scrimmages as well against our defenders. That stiff arm is a thing of beauty and the kid is rock solid/thick, always moving forward with his runs and also when he sees green grass, he can MOVE. One thing he has to get better at is pass protection as he whiffed on a block against Buffalo which led to a sack of Murray. Marshall looked like he tripped on his feet and that of the OL several times where if he kept his feet, he likely would have been gone. Malcome and Samuel likely are going to see fewer and fewer carries as this season goes along, that is just how talented I think these two backs are. Our offense I feel like needs to score points early, we need to put some pressure on Missouri, take the crowd down a notch and give our D a little confidence. This will mean Murray needs to be on in this game, not turning the ball over, not over throwing his passes, just playing smart football and leading our team the way a QB with his experience and talent should. For those that want to check out Missouri's depth chart, I did a copy/paste from the Rivals site. Of course the QB Franklin gets a lot of attention but the RB Lawrence 10 carries for 121 last week against SE Louisiana, PR Murphy who is second string RB returned two punts for TD's, one for 70 and the other for 72 yards. Missouri also had two defensive scores, a fumble recovery for TD and INT return for TD. The also have the top recruit in the nation from last years class, WR Dorial Green-Beckman who is 6-6 and 220, keep an eye on him. My prediction for this game is that UGA will come out and try to establish the run, might struggle to do so with Missouri's D but eventually the run game will set up some play action, Murray will have some success throwing the ball, which then will open up the run game as the game progresses. Missouri will spread the field and do what they do-I suspect we might struggle early with this spread but I think as the game wears on, our depth, size and speed on our D will be too much for Missouri. I think UGA wins this game 28-24, could be 35-24 range, but I don't see us winning this game by more than 10-12 points honestly. Missouri is at home, they have some talent and based on our struggles recently out of the game in big games, I think it foolish to expect any sort of blowout in this game. I hope the game is NOT close but I have strong feeling it will be tight for a good while come tomorrow night.
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Final note about my Grayson 8's, last week we struggled a bit against the Shiloh Generals. Shiloh is a BIG physical bunch, we knew that from playing them at 7, they also have some speed that helped neutralize our speed. Our D was stellar though, only 3 first downs the entire game against us, forced 4 fumbles, recoved 3 of them-my little guy made a strip playing at corner, but we didn't recove that one. We won the game 12-0, it was a nice win even if we didn't put the game away until we scored our second TD of the game in the 4th qtr-we scored our first TD on our first drive of the game, a win is a win and we move forward to this week when we take on South Gwinnett-the old stomping grounds of David Greene, also my wife once was a South Gwinnett 3rd grade cheerleader and graduated from South Gwinnett HS. So, we play the 0-3 Comets this week. This is a team that only has 14 players, they are not nearly as big as our last two opponents, but they do have some speed. IF we play to our ability, this game should be over early and final should be in the 25-32 to 0 score range. We need to play well this week, starting next week our schedule gets tougher so we need some confidence and I think we get it. I will say 28-0, in the GFL if you beat a team by more than 32 points, you must pay a fine, so even if we could score more, we will not. I hope all that read this blog have a great weekend, as usual Go Dogs and Rams!
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