Getting Over Fear and Loathing and Some Random Bye Week Thoughts

This was me at some point late Saturday night/early Sunday morning...





Sorry for the lay-off, been a bit busy this week. Plus, the whole bye week and all, not to mention the fact that we lost to Vandy. I did post some thoughts about that earlier this week that you can read here and here. Usually I'll do an additional analysis/recap after a game, but I've had enough Staring Into The Abyss for this week so I think I'll just skip it.

So, what's going on?

• It's looking like Gurley should be back for the Florida game. That's what you call great news. We just haven't been the same team without him. And according to Aaron Murray, Gurley is looking "beautiful as always." Sweet!
• Serious discussion from the SEC office about trying to do away with the 15-yd penalty if a targeting call is overturned. That would have to go through the national rules committee and wouldn't happen until next year, but still, at least there some conversation going on about how stupid and asinine this rule is. Personally, I tend to agree with the Senator that all of this targeting malarkey is about the NCAA pulling a CYA (cover your ass) to head off potential lawsuits like the NFL has had to deal with.
• For the "Fire Grantham" crowd, the stats show that the defense is continuing to improve. Just look at the box score of the Vandy game - 337 yards we gave up, and our total defense has improved to 58th in the country. They are improving, albeit somewhat slowly. And it looks like they are simplifying things a bit. That will help moving forward. Looking to spread some blame for the Vandy game? Well, it's pretty obvious, but how about our horrid special teams play and an offense that put up 221 yards of total offense and only 16 first downs. Pretty crappy, huh? That tends to happen when you go with a terrible game plan with terrible execution. The three turnovers obviously didn't help either.
• And I'm not trying to throw the offense under the bus, but man - we really stunk it up on Saturday. Yes, I know, the injuries. The big problem was that Bobo, who has really done really well the last 2 1/2 years with his play-calling, seemed to seriously regress on Saturday. And again, I get it, he was trying to be more conservative with so many of his weapons gone, but as I mentioned in Sunday's post, he just needs to go balls out no matter who he's got on the field. I'm pretty confident he's learned his lesson on that. I hope... 
• Following up on that, if we can at least have either Conley or Bennett (or preferably both) to compliment Woot as our possession guys, and if we can get Davis and Rumph completely up to speed as our downfield guys, then, if we do in fact have Gurley, then I think our offense is going to be good to go. 

Let's hope we get some guys healthy and continue to improve in all facets of the game.  Here's looking at you, Special Teams!