Missouri DT says Georgia plays 'old-man football'

#76
#76
To me it's not like Missouri or A&M can't compete in the SEC, I think it is clear they can. The problem isn't that they their 1st team can or can't compete against the 1st team of the SEC, it's how they do in weeks 7, 8 and 9 when they have played X amount of SEC teams the prior weeks and they are on their 3rd string guys at key positions.

It's going to take them years IMHO for them to get on the level they need to be on.

Can they beat a top SEC team? Yes. Are they going to be competing with the top SEC teams for a whole season? Probably not.
 
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#77
#77
Not really a fan of putting up his articles but:


GEORGIA'S OLD MAN FOOTBALL KNOCKS OUT MIZZOU'S OFFENSIVE PYROTECHNICS

Old man football beat new kid football on Saturday night in Missouri's SEC home opener against Georgia.

The atmosphere was electric, the Zou was rocking, heading into halftime, the Tigers had the lead on the number 7 team in the country. The Missouri Tigers perpetual trivia answers for questions about miracle teams that went on to win improbable national titles -- remember Colorado's fifth down win and Nebraska's miraculous kicked ball catch, both came against Mizzou -- were going head-to-head with one of the best teams in the SEC.

This was a new birth of program freedom, a national television audience, one of the SEC's top powers down eight midway through the third quarter with a raucous crowd chanting along and cannons exploding on the field as big play touchdowns piled up.

For the past ten months this is exactly what Missouri players, administrators, and fans had wanted to see. Their team going toe-to-toe with one of the SEC's bluebloods.

After months of Big 12 fans mocking the Tigers, jealous over their departure for Southern football, validation was near. Beat Georgia and come what may for the rest of the season, the Tigers had proved they could play with the best in the SEC. To hear all those Big 12 conference foes tell it the Tigers would be fortunate if their games against SEC luminaries ended with anything short of death or dismemberment.

The criticism was deafening, Mizzou was in for beating after beating, an old careworn homemaker in a conference full of beguiling debutantes.

But now after months of listening to the critics, here it was, a chance for an upset that would vault Mizzou into the top ranks of the SEC east race. After months of ridicule from their jilted Big 12 foes, the Tigers finally had their chance to make a statement, to enter the SEC on a nationally televised stage against a top ten team and prove that they had the mettle, the fortitude, the discipline to play against the best in the country. But then Missouri coach Gary Pinkel played young man football, faking a punt on 4th and 11 from his own 35. Georgia stopped the fake and kicked a field goal to go up seven. Pinkel rolled the dice on young man football and lost.

Then came old man football.

More specifically, Georgia's all-everything defensive end Jarvis Jones ripped the wheels off Mizzou's offensive sports car and punted them deep into the Missouri night.

First Jones picked off a pass and returned it to the Missouri one-yard line. What had been a tight one score ballgame was suddenly a two-score bulge.

Then Jones struck again, flattening James Franklin on a blitz and causing a fumble that the Bulldogs recovered at the Mizzou five.

Just like that the old man had knocked out the young challenger.

"You can't make mistakes like that, a one yard drive and a three yard drive, you can't do it," Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said of his team's late fourth quarter turnovers.

A sea of red-clad Bulldog fans began to chant, "Old man football," as the final seconds of Missouri's first SEC contest ticked off the clock. As soon as the game ended Georgia's players climbed into the crowd and joined their fans in the chant. Georgia, without four of its top defensive players, had come on the road into a crazy atmosphere and held the Tigers to just twenty total points.

Mizzou will have better days in the SEC -- and come Monday I'll write about why the Tigers are a great addition to the league -- but the second half of the fourth quarter was a disaster. For fifty-two minutes Mizzou showed it belonged in the SEC, over the final eight minutes the Tigers fell apart.

The SEC gave Mizzou and Texas A&M a chance to knock out a heavyweight with double home openers scheduled against Georgia and Florida.

Wins against either would prove that the Tigers and the Aggies were ready to compete at the top of the SEC. For a while it looked like both Mizzou and A&M would win -- each team led late into the game -- but the old men took every punch the new guys could muster and came back stronger.

Turns out the old men still know how to fight too.

In time so will Mizzou and Texas A&M.

But not yet.

Tonight belonged to the SEC veterans, the old men of the trenches.
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#78
#78
First off a picture that's had popped up of Sheldon Richardson apologizing (presumably) to Mark Richt following the game:

yp2vt.jpg
 
#79
#79
Second, after the game UGA players climbed into the Memorial Stadium stands, carrying wipe-away (play calling?) boards with the messages "Grown man football" and "Welcome to the SEC," to join the UGA fans in chanting "old man football" (among some other things) as the stadium cleared.

GMFB_AP.jpg


Bulldogs say ‘grown-man football’ won the day - KansasCity.com

Missouri quarterback James Franklin didn’t see Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones either time. But Jones never took his eyes off of Franklin.

Jones forced two turnovers in the fourth quarter that turned a once-promising Southeastern Conference debut by Missouri into a nightmarish 41-20 loss.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the Tigers’ deficit was seven. They were backed up near their goal line when Franklin’s pass over the middle was grabbed by Jones for the first interception of his college career. He returned it 22 yards to inside the 1.

“I actually thought that was a touchdown,” Jones said.

Freshman running back Todd Gurley powered it over on the next play.

On the next series, Jones chased down a scrambling Franklin and forced a fumble. The ball squirted to the 5, where linebacker Jordan Jenkins collected it, and again the Bulldogs punched it in.

At that point, Georgia fans at Memorial Stadium started chanting “old-man football,” in reference to the description of the Bulldogs’ style made by Missouri defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson earlier this week.

Richardson’s line apparently got plenty of play around the Georgia program.

“We tried not to focus on what’s said, or the trash talk,” Bulldogs quarterback Aaron Murray said. “But it did add a little incentive. I still don’t know what ‘old-man football’ is. We were saying all week, we play grown-man football.”

Jones, a preseason All-American, led a dominating second half performance by the Bulldogs.

In electric atmosphere at Memorial Stadium for Missouri’s first game as a Southeastern Conference member, the Tigers had things going their way early and saw an upset of the nation’s seventh-ranked team in the distance.

Missouri led early in the third quarter 17-9. But at that point, Georgia’s defense, despite the absence of starting safety Bacarri Rambo and linebacker Alec Olgetree, played like, well, an SEC defense and the Bulldogs outscored Mizzou 32-3 the rest of the way.

Ever since Mizzou was announced as an SEC member, the Tigers’ quick tempo, no-huddle spread offense taking on the size, speed and strength of top-line SEC defenses was the greatly anticipated matchup.

The Tigers’ tempo gave fits — for 2½ quarters. It wasn’t enough.

“We played till the end of the game,” Jones said. “The game is four quarters. Mizzou had some big plays, they threw their punches, but you have to play the whole game.”

Georgia’s defense did.

“This is SEC football,” Jones said. “You’ve got to come hard every week. That’s what we gave them.”
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“It definitely made us mad. But we just took it as something to give us a little fire under our butts, and we just outlasted them at the end.” — Georgia wide receiver Marlon Brown on Missouri’s “old man football” comment

“That got under our skin. But at the same time, we had to make it about us. Our team, our time. We just wanted to go out there and play.” — Georgia wide receiver Marlon Brown on “old man football” comment

“I have been doing this a long time and a coach never calls something that he thinks will not work. When they work, they are good calls and when they don’t they are bad calls and I will take responsibility.” — Missouri coach Gary Pinkel on the fake punt in the fourth quarter.

“A lot of people thought we were going to get upset. That’s what everybody at ESPN was saying. But the guys stayed confident, the coaches kept us pumped up and the Bulldog Nation came out and supported us. Missouri threw their punches, but you have to play the whole game.” — Georgia outside linebacker Jarvis Jones.
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#80
#80
#83
#83
LSU-SIU said:
To me it's not like Missouri or A&M can't compete in the SEC, I think it is clear they can. The problem isn't that they their 1st team can or can't compete against the 1st team of the SEC, it's how they do in weeks 7, 8 and 9 when they have played X amount of SEC teams the prior weeks and they are on their 3rd string guys at key positions.

It's going to take them years IMHO for them to get on the level they need to be on.

Can they beat a top SEC team? Yes. Are they going to be competing with the top SEC teams for a whole season? Probably not.
Click to expand...


They will never have to beat a top SEC team every week. Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Kentucky and a couple of other alternating teams will make sure that is always the case. They will most likely assume the same roles they had in the Big XII. They are also-rans. They aren't the worst, but I don't see them being the best any time soon either.
 
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