Is Hank Schrader Working at Butts-Mehre?

Though I generally view the focus on the off-field exploits of Georgia football players as a tired pursuit of sports radio hosts and Jeff Schultz, the suspensions for Bacarri Rambo and Alec Ogletree have caught my attention.  Georgia is now going to be missing at least four defensive starters for the SEC opener at Missouri, at least three because of apparent marijuana use.  The crusade by Georgia's football program against any drug use is going to have significant effects on the field.  The development has put me into rhetorical question mode:

Georgia's football program is in an interesting place right now. The Dawgs' head coach is a well-liked coach who is pretty clearly a B+ head man competing for titles against an A+ coach in the state to the west. The fan base is fiercely loyal and turns out for every game, but one has to wonder whether they will continue to make significant donations for the privilege to buy tickets to increasingly soft home schedules. How much do Georgia fans really want Mark Richt to play the role of Joe Friday when the conference is hyper-competitive? Do they really want to pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to see back-ups because the starters smoked pot on spring break?

The question that remained after I wrote that column was whether the current stance taken by the Georgia athletic department is the result of media attention paid to off-field issues.  Is Georgia overreacting to criticism from members of the media?  Or has this policy been in effect throughout the Richt era?  Is it just a function of the coach's personality and worldview?  I'm interested to hear from people who know more about the program than I do.

Al Borges and Jesse Pinkman

Take a gander at this post from Jonathan Wilson and tell me that you don't think of the odd mix of West Coast Offense guru Al Borges coaching Denard Robinson and other players recruited for the Spread 'n' Shred. Or better yet, just read this paragraph:

Again, given the make-up of the squad, you wonder why Gasperini was ever appointed. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with his 3-4-3 or his high-tempo style, but tactics do not exist in isolation; they must always be fitted to players, opposition and circumstances. There is no "best" system or formation; although there are styles of play that, thanks to other developments, become outmoded. It would be wrong to say that it makes no sense for a coach to have a preferred system, but there must always be a compromise between theory and resources.

Michigan's season (and probably next season, as well) will be determined by the compromise between theory and resources. Can Borges modify his offense to the talent? Can Denard learn to make reads in the passing game so he can do more than simply throw jump balls (what he did on Saturday night) or hit wide-open receivers (what he did last year)?

The analogy that keeps coming to mind is between Borges and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad.  For those of you who aren't watching the best show on TV, Jesse has always been Walter White's right-hand man in cooking a particularly potent, pure form of meth.  At the start of the show, Jesse was a f***-up, a former high school student of White's whom White got involved in his cooking operation because White needed contacts in the drug world to sell the product that he was producing.  As the characters have evolved, Jesse has become more important, to the point that Gus Fring, the kingpin for whom the pair now work and share an uneasy relationship, is going to respond to a demand from the Mexican cartel for instruction on cooking "the blue" by sending Jesse instead of Gus to Mexico.  When Jesse explains this development to "Mr. White," he makes the obvious point that he knows how to run the cooking process from start to finish, but he doesn't understand the chemistry involved like White does.  He has a superficial understanding, but he doesn't know how the parts of the process fit together and therefore, would struggle to answer questions about it.

Borges is in the same position.  He's pragmatic enough to realize that the best way to move the ball with the talent on-hand is to use some version of the run-based spread.*  He's obviously looked at tape from 2010 and sees the plays that worked for Michigan.  However, he is in the position of being an imitator.  He doesn't quite understand how the plays fit together, how one play acts as a constraint play by punishing a defense for a natural counter to another.  This isn't a criticism of Borges at all.  He's making the best of the circumstances, but despite gaining 457 yards and putting up 35 points against Notre Dame, he's still Jesse trying to explain how to cook blue meth.

* - After two games, it's pretty safe to say that my caterwauling about Hoke forcing a Manball approach on Spread talent was a waste of time.  This is most certainly not a situation where Hoke and Borges are trying to squeeze 4-2-3-1 talent into a 3-4-3.