Early on in The Jon Chuckery Show, Jon posed a question asking how far away is the University of Georgia football team away from a national championship? Ever since they were one play away from winning their first national title since 1980, before Tua Tagovailoa came in and stole it right from under their feet, the Bulldogs have seemed to regress.
Why is that you might ask?
They seemed to have recruited well, and they have had some of the highest-ranked recruiting classes the past couple of years. While all this is true, they have mishandled the most important position in not only college football, but in football in general: the quarterback position.
Even with the mishaps at the quarterback position, Jon doesn’t think Georgia is far off from being back in national title contention.
“Kirby took the first step in hiring Todd Monken to open up the offense,” Chuckery said, while also defending Kirby Smart for his decision to keep Jake Fromm as the starting quarterback during his time in Athens while Justin Fields waited in the wings and ultimately transferred to Ohio State.
“Jake Fromm led you to a national championship game and had you a play away from a national title, and as of right now Justin Fields hasn’t done anything more than Jake Fromm,” Chuckery said. However, Jon does say that “Kirby has to learn how to take his hands off of the offense. I know Kirby wants to run an Alabama offense, and that will work against Kentucky, but against your Clemson’s and Ohio State’s you have to be more creative.”
Chuckery continues his criticism of Smart by saying “he focused too much on building that defense.”
Lastly, Jon closes out his thoughts by saying they didn’t have a good Plan B and backup plan behind Jamie Newman.
“Yes Jamie Newman was supposed to be the answer, but what if he got injured, got COVID, or didn’t play well," asked Chuckery. "And yes I know you haven’t had any luck with the wide receivers, but that’s why you have to keep recruiting.”
What it boils down to is that Georgia hopefully has learned its lesson from this year, and maybe highly-scouted five-star commit quarterback Brock Vandagriff will come in next year and solve all of UGA’s quarterback problems for a while. But if the Bulldogs have that mindset, they could have the same fate as this year.
If Kirby starts bringing in more five-star offensive players, let’s Todd Monken do his job, and adapts like Nick Saban had to, then we could see the University of Georgia football program bring home another national title very soon.
