Georgia football: Top 10 offensive players of the Ray Goff era (1989-95)
1. Eric Zeier
Throughout the Vince Dooley era georgia was a run first, run second and maybe a pass third team. They always relied on running backs like Walker, Worley, McLee, Poulos, etc. While their were quarterbacks that occasionally stood out like Ray Goff, James Jackson and Buck Belue, Georgia was known for running backs.
But as we’ve seen on this count down, that began to change when Goff became head coach. Despite Georgia being running back U, this list has been dominated by five wide receivers and a tight end.
It was truly a new era for Georgia’s offense but no one shows off that quite like Eric Zeier. Prior to Zeier becoming the starting quarterback as a freshman in 1991, no Georgia quarterback had ever passed more than 262 times in a season. The last quarterback to attempt over 200 passes every year of his career was Zeke Bratkowski from 1951-to-1953.
Only five times in school history before 1991 did Georgia ever have a quarterback attempt over 200 passes. So when Zeier attempted over 200 passes in all four seasons as a starter and over 400 in his last two years, times had changed in Athens.
Zeier didn’t break school passing records, he shattered them. Just look at the school record book, while many of his records have since been broken by David Greene and Aaron Murray, Zeier still holds many. And at the time he broke them, their usually wasn’t a close second. But if their was a close second, it was usually him.
Of the list of pass attempts in a game Zeier has the record for 65. He’s also fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth on that list. He attempted 425 passes as a junior in 1993 and 433 as a senior, those are both second and third all time behind David Greene’s 2003 season. And in his career, he attempted 1,402 passes, the previous record was Bratkowski’s 734.
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Zeier has six of the top 10 games for passing yards in school history. In 1993, he passed for 544 yards against Southern Mississippi, that is still an SEC record. His school record of 3,525 passing yards in 1993 stood until Murray broke it with 3,893 in 2012. Zeier’s 3,396 yards in 1994 was second place until Matthew Stafford’s 2008 season.
Zeier almost tripled the school record for career passing yards with 11,153. Bratkowski was the previous record holder with 4,836 yards.
We could continue but I think you get the idea. College football in general was changing at that time. In the 1980’s, teams were still running the ball a majority of the time, you just didn’t see many pass-first offenses. But the ones you did see were often the best on the nation. Everyone was trying to adapt, but to do so, teams needed to have a great quarterback.
Adapting to the new style was easy for Ray Goff and Georgia football because of Eric Zeier. Anyone else could have still broke the records, but not with Zeier’s efficiency.
In the past, more often than not you’d see quarterbacks throw more interceptions than touchdowns. Bratkowski once threw eight interceptions in a game, he threw 29 in 1951 on 248 attempts and 23 in 1953 on 224 passes. Bratkowski threw 68 interceptions in his career.
Zeier only threw 37 in 1,402 attempts for comparison. That’s a percentage of 2.64, good enough for second in school history and one of the best in the SEC record books.
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The early 1990’s and the Ray Goff era as a whole ushered in a new era for Georgia on offense and allowed the Bulldogs to catch up with many programs around the nation. The Bulldog Nation couldn’t have asked for a better quarterback for those four seasons.