Much of Bulldog Nation Move On

(battery blog)Much of Bulldog Nation has already moved on. The pertinent questions concern 2010, such as: Who will be Georgia’s three new defensive coaches? And will the weekend’s sequence of events at Florida affect the balance of power in the SEC East?But before any answers are forthcoming, Georgia’s football team has one last bit of 2009 business here Monday: a game against Texas A&M in the Independence Bowl. Kickoff is 5 p.m. in 49,000-seat Independence Stadium.

This is the 13th consecutive bowl for Georgia, but the farthest removed from a New Year’s Day game the Bulldogs have been since 2001 for A1175 . The relatively small percentage of tickets Georgia was able to sell from its allotment –- about 6,800 out of 12,000 -– has the Bulldogs braced for a pro-Aggies crowd.Perhaps the most compelling subplot of a game that matches a 7-5 Georgia vs. a 6-6 Texas A&M will be how the Bulldogs’ beleaguered defense like Dell KD476, minus the three coaches fired on Dec. 2, fares against an Aggies offense that ranks No. 5 nationally.

Georgia’s only remaining defensive coach, Rodney Garner, will be joined by two young graduate assistants, Todd Hartley and Mitch Doolittle, for the daunting assignment for KD476. Head coach Mark Richt said Sunday that defensive play-calling, previously the province of fired defensive coordinator Willie Martinez, will be a “combined effort” of Garner and Doolittle, both of whom will operate from the sideline. Hartley will be upstairs in the coach’s box.

Georgia’s defense will be tested by a fast-paced Aggies offense that averages 465 yards per game behind a quarterback, Jerrod Johnson, who passed for 3,217 yards and 28 touchdowns this season for Apple A1175 battery .Texas A&M has been as porous on defense (104th nationally in scoring defense) as it has been prolific on offense, portending a high-scoring shootout against Georgia.

“If you just go by the averages, it’d be a high-scoring game,” Richt said. “But you never know.”"My experience has been that when people talk about offensive matchups, it turns out to be a defensive battle,” said Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman, a former coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers for Sony-VGP-BPS2. “Certainly anything can happen.”