Georgia football: The offensive line needs to show some pride this week
Georgia football is coming off an ugly loss to Auburn in which the Bulldogs rushed for less than 50 yards. By far their worst performance on 2017.
For weeks, the Bulldog faithful were led to believe that this years offensive line was vastly superior to last years. In 2016, Nick Chubb struggled to reach 1,000 yards and Sony Michel couldn’t even touch that mark behind an offensive line that lacked the power needed for Jim Cheney’s offense.
But coming into last Saturday, that offensive line was performing very well. Georgia football was averaging over 200 rushing yards per game and quarterback Jake Fromm was able to stay on his feet.
The rebuild of the line appeared, like the rest of the team, to be improving ahead of schedule. Offensive line coach Sam Pittman received large amounts of praise for turning around the unit so quickly.
Then the Auburn game happened. Georgia’s run game was completely shut down and Fromm was constantly put on the ground. The offensive line that for 10 weeks looked like one of the best in college football, looked like a division-II unit for three hours on Saturday.
Was it just one bad game, or were these kids frauds pretending to be good and getting by against mediocre defenses? Does it matter? Fact is, for nine games they raised the expectations for themselves by beating opposing front-seven’s. And in one game, they failed to live up to those expectations.
Now’s the time to show some pride. Like I said, they beat opponents for nine straight games. The offensive line was dominant and they need to be proud of that. Their poor performance Saturday should anger them, but they should also put it behind them. It’s done.
Next: Georgia looking for redemption
They have to tell themselves that the offensive line that showed up in Auburn wasn’t them. That they’re better than that. The group needs to rally around everything they succeeded on this season and work build from that in this week’s final practices.
Simply put, they need to show some pride in themselves. They owe it to Chubb and Michel to help them have a senior season to remember. And they owe it to Fromm to help him stay confident as a true freshman.