Is It Time for Georgia to Admit Brian Schottenheimer Was a Bad Hire?

Take away a unit's best player, and the entire group is bound have some sort of drop-off.

But the Georgia Bulldogs may have set themselves up for offensive disaster before Nick Chubb's devastating knee injury against the Tennessee Volunteers.

The Bulldogs were a complete mess Saturday in a 26-3 loss to rival Florida in Jacksonville. They didn't score a touchdown and posted fewer than 300 yards for the second consecutive game.

Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press

Faton Bauta, who received the start at quarterback despite not recording a single pass attempt in Georgia's seven games, completed less than half of his passes and had four interceptions.

Since obliterating an awful South Carolina defense, Georgia's offense has regressed heavily against SEC competition. It moved the ball and scored 31 points in a loss against Tennessee, sure, but even that performance had some major red flags.

Opponent	Points	Yards	Yards per Play	3rd Down %
Alabama	10	299	4.33	17.65
Tennessee	31	444	7.16	28.57
Missouri	9	298	3.87	47.37
Florida	3	223	3.98	16.67

Now, after Georgia's worst offensive performance of 2015—one that somehow came off a bye week—head coach Mark Richt has to face the facts in a season that is going off the rails.

It's past time to reconsider the decision to hire offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.

Richt's offseason move to replace Mike Bobo, who took a head coaching job at Colorado State, with Schottenheimer received some skepticism when it happened—specifically from Bleacher Report's Barrett Sallee.

"Brian Schottenheimer was abysmal in the NFL," Sallee said all the way back in January. "Now granted, he hasn't had much quarterback play to work with at the NFL level, but it's not like Georgia has a proven quarterback, either." 

Those words rang true all the way in October during Saturday's Florida game, as Bauta took over for the inconsistent Greyson Lambert in the starting lineup.

Things didn't go well for the first-time starter—and some of Schottenheimer's decision-making didn't help, either.

Bauta, who was a dual-threat quarterback in high school, had almost as many rushing yards as passing yards in his limited work as a Georgia quarterback.

But Bauta only recorded two runs Saturday, and a sack gave him three official carries for just nine yards. As Morgan Moriarty of Cox Media Group and UPROXX put it on Twitter, the game plan from Schottenheimer was quite confusing:

The Georgia running game, which had been a deciding factor in several of the most recent matchups with Florida, seemed to take a back seat Saturday. The Bulldogs attempted more passes than runs in every single quarter, with Sony Michel only getting 13 touches.

Quarter	Run Calls	Pass Calls
1st	3	5
2nd	8	12
3rd	5	9
4th	5	9

A pass-first mentality is fine when a team is down by multiple scores in the second half, sure, but the Bulldogs came out firing with a brand-new quarterback from the first quarter.

Schottenheimer's play-calling went under the microscope early in the fourth quarter, when Georgia had its longest sustained drive of the game. 

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

After a couple of completions and a roughing-the-passer call got Georgia into Florida territory, Michel broke a seven-yard run to set up a 3rd-and-short situation. Three plays later, he put the Bulldogs at the 3-yard line with a 10-yard run.

But facing 1st-and-goal three yards away from a touchdown, Georgia called back-to-back pass plays—an incompletion and an interception. The Bulldogs would miss out on scoring again.

As the level of competition has stepped up for Georgia, the offense has gotten worse.

Chubb's injury took one of the nation's best playmakers away from Schottenheimer, but it wasn't like his offenses were necessarily lighting it up with him. Eighty-three of Georgia's 299 yards against Alabama came on just one big run from the star sophomore.

And it's not like Georgia hasn't been in this situation before. Even with injuries to star running backs such as Keith Marshall and Todd Gurley, Bobo was still able to put together effective offenses.

Schottenheimer has a former 5-star in Michel to replace Chubb and an experienced offensive line to work with him. That still hasn't prevented a catastrophic drop-off for the offense.

Georgia's quarterback situation didn't look promising this offseason after the departure of Hutson Mason, and even though Lambert had a few bright spots earlier in the season, it's even more bleak under Schottenheimer.

As his NFL resume shows, Schottenheimer wasn't the ideal hire to solve Georgia's problems at the position. 

Georgia's first-year offensive coordinator has somehow taken a bad situation with inconsistent quarterbacking and an injured Chubb and made it even worse.

For the sake of his own future at Georgia, it might be time for Richt to put an end to the Schottenheimer experiment.

Game statistics courtesy of StatBroadcast. Unless otherwise noted, other statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Star ratings courtesy of 247Sports.

Justin Ferguson is a college football writer at Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JFergusonBR.