Agreed. And i have no doubt Napier knows this better than anyone. If next year is not better than this year (barring wild success this year, which i think unlikely) then the program risks entering, if not a death spiral, a mediocrity spin where top recruits become ever harder to obtain or groom into top performers. Even in that worst case scenario I still think he gets this year and two more.
Perfectly correct take. It is just that Billy didn't just "stay the course", personnel-wise, and he has a history known as his second season of his process. What we are mainly seeing is easy-picking (read lazy) prognosticating. But it is all irrelevant. Pretty soon we will all know.
If Georgia was coming off a 6-7 record like us, prognosticators would be focusing closely on their QB situation too. You get the benefit of the doubt when you're the defending champs.
My biggest concern is our OL. If they gel and develop as a unit quickly we are going to be pretty darn good in my opinion. I don’t think Mertz, or Miller for that matter will be a liability. Our defense is going to be significantly better. But I realize it couldn’t be much worse than last year. If we had FSU’s schedule we would be in high cotton this year……..but we don’t.
Agree with that, too. We simply won’t know the effect of the changes he’s made until we are a couple of games deep. As long as the first quarter of the Utah game doesn’t look like the fifth quarter of the Oregon St game, then that will be a positive sign.
People consider Mertz proven, in a bad way. Our hope is he improves but the media is going to consider him a below average starter since he’s been one for 3 years. Given that everyone would take high upside inexperience over proven weakness.
Carson Beck is their starter, right? Last full time action he had was in HS during a senior season that was absolute dog (dawg?) water. Interestingly enough I don't think he fell much in the recruiting rankings after that, which I guess makes sense given the trends we've seen.
He fell pretty dramatically actually from the spring after his junior season (where he lit things up and his team won a state championship) to after his senior season (when they were terrible). Carson Beck, 2020 Pro Style Quarterback, Georgia
Another rag publication calling for our demise...the L.A. Times. College football picks: Predicting winners for every 2023 Power 5 game
Interesting -- I'm surprised they had the courage to drop him that much, but IMO he didn't play even like a Top 300 player his senior season (based on stats, I didn't watch film). He ended just 19 spots behind AR, who on top of having ridiculous physical attributes had a significantly better Sr. season. Also, my favorite part of this is how Beck jumped up from NR to 83rd nationally on 3/21/19. UGA commit date? 3/3/19. Maybe just a coincidence. (It actually might be a coincidence, I'm not sure the purported overranking of UGA players was going on yet.)
