It's Worse than We Thought

I swear I didn't set out this week to bash Willie, but since Richt obviously isn't going to acknowledge the problem, I'm going to drop some more number on the blogosphere. This year's defense is worse than the Kevin Ramsey Project(KRP). No, seriously. Below are the scoring defenses in SEC games + Tech since I started following UGA football as an 11 year old in '92:

Year	Avg.	Median
1992	14.89	11.00
1993	24.22	28.00
1994	29.22	29.00
1995	24.11	23.00
1996	26.00	24.00
1997	19.89	15.00
1998	19.67	21.00
1999	28.33	30.00
2000	21.22	21.00
2001	20.00	20.00
2002	15.60	17.00
2003	15.30	15.00
2004	16.89	17.00
2005	15.80	14.50
2006	20.00	21.00
2007	20.89	17.00
2008	28.71	38.00

As you can see, this year's D is even worse than the KRP of 1999. How this is possible is beyond me. The median is even scarier, if that's your preferred measure of central tendency. Because this year's sample size is at least two games smaller than the other seasons, the median should come down more in line with the average as Florida's 49 points is right now a bit of an outlier. Regardless, this defense is bad. How bad you ask? As bad as Ramsey's. As bad as some of the mid-90's Goff disasters. And no question the worst of the Richt era.

For Richt to defend CWM on his job this year is delusional to the point of being scary to me. Special teams, offensive turnovers, and short fields unquestionably contribute to the scoring defense number and if Richt wants to acknowledge that as part of the issue, I have no problem with that. It most certainly is. But he can't bury his head and act like there hasn't been a huge shift in how our defense plays both in terms of production and attitude since BVG left.

On a side note, if anyone ever asks you when you think Georgia's current problems with Florida started, kindly direct them to October 31, 1992. The 1992 was Goff's best team and Spurrier's worst team, yet UF managed to win 26-24. That was their third straight in the series, but more importantly, it was the proof of what Spurrier had been preaching to his team for 3 years about having to believe they were going to beat Georgia no matter what. Zeier, Hearst, Hastings, and a defense that gave up 15 points/game (which is actually even better than it looks as they gave up 34 to UT when they fumbled like 1000 times) couldn't beat Spurrier. Up to that point in the series, it had always been UF that had its more talented teams beat because they played tight and Georgia KNEW they were going to win no matter what. That one game was HUGE for the psychology of the series and certainly caused a change in attitude both in UF's program and their fan's attitude when it came to the WLOCP.