Georgia Bulldogs Football: Does Anyone Else Like This New Mark Richt?

I’m not sure what came over Mark Richt these last few years. It is as if he’d lost something somewhere. He became timid. He trusted his field goal kickers more than his offense. His team would take off entire quarters or halves at a time and lost too many football games because of it. 

It finally came to a head in last year’s bowl game against Central Florida when he didn’t go for it on fourth and short just feet from the goal line. I’m sure at the time Coach Richt didn’t really even think that much about it. 

It was early in the game and three points and the lead was better than the chance of missing a scoring opportunity. Unfortunately, it sent a signal to the team that he didn’t trust them to make the extra few inches that they needed. The team mailed it in from then on and stumbled into a loss to end a miserable season.

I can’t imagine this year’s version of Coach Richt not going for it on fourth and short, or fourth and long depending on the situation. See this year’s Florida game. It’s as if with his job on the line, he started coaching with passion again. 

We saw glimpses of passion—call it evil Richt—the last few years, but not with regularity and usually it was focused on the refs. There was something to the 2007 Georgia-Florida game and the celebration, but that probably cost him more than it gained him. Too often it was little more than ‘fake juice’ not real passion and ended badly for us.

This year’s version of Coach Richt is on fire. He is fully trusting in his offense and defense to stand up and take it to the other team. It is that trust that has bleed into the team morale, and they are feeding off of it. 

His defense, under second year defensive coordinator Todd Grantham is showing signs of greatness. They are playing like the Junkyard Dawgs of old.

The much maligned offensive coordinator, Mike Bobo, is showing improvements as well. Knowing that he’s going to have four shots at it when he needs it, he’s improved his game quite a bit.

This was very apparent if you watched the Auburn-Georgia game Saturday afternoon. The score 45-7 is something you’d expect to see against "Directional U,” not against last year’s National Championship team. Both sides played incredible football.

The question is what happens next year? Does timid Richt come back to town with a cooler seat and a possible contract extension? Does he take his presumed top 10 recruiting class and top 10 preseason ranking and sit back and hope that he can talent his way to a BCS game or does he stick to what made this year so great?  I for one hope we see more of what we saw this year.

We’ll have a tough test with Alabama, assuming they are still on the 2012 schedule, and hard games against a resurgent South Carolina and always challenging Florida. If we get past those tests, the rest of the schedule sets up nicely for us to make a real BCS run in 2012. All we need is a few more young pups to step up and this new Mark Richt to lead them onto the field.