Bulldogs Outgunned by Broncs: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Reality

The Georgia Bulldogs ran into a real gunslinger in Kellen Moore. Just as outlaws Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach engaged in a deadly competition to find buried Confederate gold in the famous spaghetti western classic, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), the Georgia Bulldogs and Boise State Broncos, bedecked in their flashy, custom Nike Pro Combat unis, began their pursuit of 2011 Bowl Championship Series gold in Atlanta's Georgia Dome on Saturday night.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the Broncos wound up seizing the lead role of Blondie ("The Good", Eastwood), getting the drop on the Dawgs and riding away with a smile and their share of gold in hand.

It remains to be seen whether Mark Richt's Bulldogs finished the night in the role of the bullet-less Tuco ("the Ugly", Wallach), horseless but alive with a chance to fight and, perhaps, profit on another day before season's end, or whether they ended up cast as the hapless Angel Eyes ("the Bad", Van Cleef), mortally wounded and falling dead into an open grave in the season's initial week.

For the Bulldogs, the wait to discover which role they actually played will be a brief one, perhaps no longer than this coming Saturday afternoon's date with Steve Spurrier and the South Carolina Gamecocks in Sanford Stadium.

While the Dogs limped away on the short end of the 35-21 outcome, some bright spots ("The Good") deserve highlighting. Clearly, Brandon Boykin's decision to return for his senior season proved a propitious one for the Bulldogs on this night, as well as for their hopes for the remainder of the emergent season.

Boykin's inaugural insertion into the offense in the first quarter and his subsequent 80-yard gallop, running to the right from the left slot then taking the hand off up and across the field to the end zone, staked the Dawgs to first blood and the early momentum and signaled, perhaps, a sign of some creative synergy geared towards utilizing the significant offensive talents of all of the skill personnel on the roster.

The receiving corps, saddled with the yoke of trying to fill AJ Green's sizable shoes, provided some glimmers of promise. Veteran tight end Orson Charles, as many had projected, led Georgia in receiving with six catches for 109 yards and a touchdown.

Highly touted junior Marlon Brown had a couple of catches and rocked an excellent extra effort run after the catch in which he shook the Bronco defenders who had him corralled to snatch a first down from the jaws of a punt.

"Dream team" receiver Malcolm Mitchell also sported a nice 18-yard pickup on a reverse hand off from much ballyhooed 5-star tailback Isaiah Crowell, who had 60 yards on 15 carries himself, tantalizing Dawg fans with glimpses of his plentiful talents on a couple of carries. Mitchell, looking a little like Green, later torched the Broncos on a deep route in the second half for his first touchdown as a Bulldog.

In the first quarter, the second edition of Todd Grantham's 3-4 defense, while fresh and still crunk from the tunnel run out, played like gangbusters, stuffing runs, pressuring Kellen Moore and breaking up potential receptions. 2009 Guy Award winner Drew Butler did his share to assist the defense by averaging just under 48 yards per punt.

Unfortunately, "the Bad" was bountiful too. First, there were the uniforms. The Bulldogs, dressed in red from shoulder to shins, looked like animate fire hydrants. While fire hydrants may certainly be handy for putting out blazes and such, it appeared on this night, at least, that all they were good for was their other popular use...you understand the optic.

Let's face it, except for the trotting out of the black jerseys against Auburn and Hawaii in 2007, the uniform gimmick gods have not been kind to the Bulldogs since.

The offensive line never really shook false start calls on the game's first two plays to produce any consistent results. If you subtract the runs on the edges by Boykin and Mitchell from the rushing totals, Bulldog backs managed but 72 yards on 22 carries (3.27 yards/carry), and this dearth forced the Dogs into many predictable passing situations in which Murray found himself pressured into hurried or bad throws, sacked, or forced to scramble from the pocket (seven rushes for -33 yards).

While perhaps the biggest group that the Dawgs have ever trotted out, this O-line seemed mismatched at times against their quicker and more experienced Bronco opponents. At tailback, Richard Samuel, while buff, appeared to be a serviceable substitute, though he puzzlingly got the starting nod over Crowell despite all the offseason talk of the rookie getting his first tote starting in the Dome.

The defensive front fared only little better. While they stuffed some run attempts up their gut periodically throughout the night, they were also gashed by some nice ones, as well. As the night wore on, the Dawgs' defensive front appeared gassed by the frenetic pace of the Boise State offense.

During much of the second half, Bulldog defensive subs were literally running straight off of the sideline into plays at the snap, adding to the confusion and ineffectiveness of the defense. The Bronco offensive line began to gain control and provided time for the pinpoint passing of Kellen Moore to pick apart the Dawgs, as the Bronco offense pecked its way irrepressibly down the field.

Their short passing game eventually began to open up the run, and the Bulldogs secondary seemed to struggle, as the game unfolded, trying to plug all the holes in their coverage. Fatigue and frustration set in, no one could find BSU's apparently phantasmic receivers and the secondary began to whiff on tackles that they made surely in the first quarter.

And finally, though their status is still uncertain at this point, injuries to key guys may really be bad. Alec Ogletree's foot injury (Update: Surgery; out 4-6 weeks)  further diluted a thin linebacker corps, and when Kenarious Gates was rolled up on by a fleeing Aaron Murray, the shallow depth and experience along the offensive line made an already fragile situation even more precarious. 

As for "The Ugly" realities, Georgia is clearly still very much a work in progress with many, many questions remaining to be answered. At this point, it is anyone's guess which direction this season will take. That is a reality.

It also a reality, however, that Boise State is no wannabe. This particular State squad, missing a couple of key players left at home due to eligibility questions and having lost its top two receivers from last year to graduation, may be even better than those of the past couple of seasons because Moore is even more experienced, it is less predictable to whom he will throw, and it is, as Auburn was in last year's championship season, a heavily senior-laden team, many of whom are fifth-year seniors.

You can't teach experience and maturity, and in that winning breeds winning, this very mature team knows how just how it's done. So despite the apparent negatives, the Bulldogs were bettered by no chumps Saturday night in the ATL.

Yet, another enigmatic reality and question remains. Did Boise State, man for man, position by position, pound for pound, really trot the more athletically talented team out onto the Georgia Dome turf Saturday night?

If Georgia's recruiting has indeed been the second best in the nation over the last decade, as some have suggested, then why do these two programs appear trending in polar directions? (For the record, according to Rivals, Boise State's average recruiting ranking between 2002-2010 is 76th.) Why the discrepancy in the products?

No, the Dawgs were not run off the field and back to Athens, tails between their legs. Yet, nevertheless, Saturday they appeared the second best team on it, the less crisp of the two, the less conditioned as the game concluded, perhaps even the less hungry for victory when the battle became thick.

Ironically, it was this week's opponent, the "Ole Ball Coach" Steve Spurrier himself, who raised this question, and not at all cryptically, when he said, “UGA recruits all those great players—something must happen to them once they get there…”. To unbiased observers, one wonders which team appeared the better coached on Saturday night.

The reality is that the Boise State game is but one game, and one game does not automatically a season characterize or an epitaph upon it write. By this time Saturday evening as the sun begins to set, however, we should have a much better sense of who this Georgia team is and the stuff of which they are made.

Will the bullets of Kellen Moore and the Broncos prove fatal resulting in these Dawgs rolling over (get it) over like ol' Angel Eyes into an early season grave? Or will the Bulldogs heed their senior captain Brandon Boykin's stirring post-game advice to put this game behind them and rise up to reach for their share of SEC East gold?

If so, then like Tuco, they will scream out to the backs of the departing Broncs, as they ride away and this game fades into the next week, "Hey Broncs! You know what you are? Just a dirty son of a ....," then scramble to their feet, find themselves a horse and get back into the chase.

One last ugly reality?...fair or not, Coach Mark Richt should perhaps invest in some "pyro"-proof pants, because that seat just got imminently hotter.