Legge's Thoughts: Mike Bobo Returns to the Georgia Bulldogs - Will This Work?

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ATHENS - This should work. Mike Bobo’s return to play calling and quarterback development for the Georgia Bulldogs should pay off for Kirby Smart’s program. 

There’s a lot of reasons why. But change can be tough, and make no mistake - this is a change. Todd Monken has been the best offensive coordinator in Georgia history. Bobo was once an offensive coordinator at Georgia if you had not heard. 

But Bobo never worked with the talent Monken has used over the last three years - particularly on the offensive line. That’s going to be the difference in the Bobo-led offense of the future… the players. 

Matthew Stafford, Aaron Murray, Todd Gurley, A.J. Green - the headliners were pretty good/special when Bobo was in charge about nine years ago. But the depth of the skill on the offensive side of the ball isn’t close to what it once was. Again, that is particularly the case on the offensive line. And the offensive line matters a lot. 

Consider that from the year Bobo took over for good as offensive coordinator (2007) until the year he left (2014) five UGA offensive linemen were drafted by NFL teams - Chester Adams (7th round), Cordy Glenn (2nd round), Ben Jones (4th round), Clint Bling (4th round) and John Theus (5th round). Theus was drafted a season after Bobo left, but you get the point. 

Eight years. Five offensive linemen. 

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Since Kirby started? Nine offensive lineman have been drafted - Isaiah Wynn (1st round), Lamont Gaillard (6th round), Andrew Thomas (1st round), Isaiah Wilson (1st round), Solomon Kindley (4th round), Ben Cleveland (3rd round), Trey Hill (6th round), Justin Shaffer (6th round) and Jamaree Salyer (6th round). 

Two more are set to go this spring with Warren McClendon and Broderick Jones. That’s 11 offensive linemen in basically the same time. You want to know why Georgia is scoring? Monken was outstanding - he was. None of this is a criticism of him. Why was Georgia scoring so much? It typically has better big men (on both sides of the ball) than the other team. 

And when you have that you can do a lot more. 

That brings me to the other, major difference from the time Bobo was last the offensive coordinator at Georgia… the defense. 

Do you know how many times Bobo was the offensive coordinator when Georgia’s defense held opponents under 20 points a game for a season? 

Once. The 2012 team that was loaded up with players like Jarvis Jones, Alec Ogletree, John Jenkins, Jordan Jenkins, Shawn Williams and Bacarri Rambo allowed 19.6 points a game. Georgia’s offense that season scored 37.8 points a game - 0.6 fewer than the national title-winning team in 2021.

Bobo’s offense never had much margin for error. The play Bobo critics, or haters if we are being honest, reference consistently is the play calling against South Carolina in 2014. Georgia got the ball at the South Carolina four-yard line and managed to not score. 

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Hutson Mason screwed that up from the start.

“Well, just give the ball to Todd Gurley…”

Yeah, Bobo gave the ball to Gurley on the next play. Just throw the ball out of bounds on first down, and you are looking at second and goal from the four rather than an intentional grounding call that all but wrecked your chance to score a touchdown. Then Marshall Morgan missed a 28-yard field goal to tie the game. What failure. It was hard to fathom. Just like it was hard to imagine that same unit screwing up a 22-yard FG attempt at Clemson the year before in a game the team lost by three. 

Those mistakes don’t seem to happen any more. When was the last “what in the hell is going on?” moment at Georgia? You tell me... 

Bigger picture, and back to the 2014 South Carolina loss, why is Bobo or anyone on the offense to blame when that side is putting up 35 points on the road in a conference game? 35 points. It is hard to score that much on the road. What about the defense giving up 38?

Was Monken a boy genius when Georgia was flopping around in Middle Earth scoring 26 points against Missouri? What if Maliki Starks doesn’t run down a would-be touchdown in the first half? Georgia from 2007-2014 loses that game. 

I’m old enough to remember Jeremy Pruitt being Georgia’s defensive coordinator. I am also old enough to remember his teams losing to Tech and Florida (twice) and giving up 30 or more seven times in two seasons. I don’t think I need to regurgitate Willie Martinez or Todd Grantham. 

But we are going to see. Can Bobo function with a defense that has given up 30 points or more 11 times since 2016. Two things have changed in Athens for sure since 2014 - the players and the defense. 

2023 and beyond will be a great litmus test on Bobo, but the leading indicators are that he knows what he’s doing. It is clear Kirby does.