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Impactful coaching moves: The best and worst decisions of Week 3
By Randy Capps
Published:
Week 2 was an exciting one in the SEC, and a few teams took some very large steps forward in league play.
While LSU and Ole Miss were seizing control of the SEC West, Florida and Georgia were making early strides in the East.
In those games, and the rest of the Week 3 slate, coaching moves had an impact on the outcomes. With that in mind, here are the best and worst coaching decisions from around the SEC from last week:
GOOD MOVE
Whatever Georgia’s Brian Schottenheimer said to his quarterback in the days leading up to Georgia’s 52-20 demolition of South Carolina should be bottled and sold all over the country.
Greyson Lambert shed the dreaded “game manager” label and completed 24 of his 25 pass attempts for 330 yards and three scores. He completed 20 in a row at one point, and set the record nationally for highest completion percentage at 96 percent (formerly held by Tennessee’s Tee Martin and West Virginia’s Geno Smith).
Lambert was unbelievable, but Schottenheimer deserves some credit for a game plan that put him in position to succeed. A lot of short, easy passes early helped Lambert gain confidence, and the Bulldogs scored on seven of their first eight possessions and never looked back.
BAD MOVE
Things went from bad to worse for Arkansas in Week 2, as it fell at home to Texas Tech, 35-24.
Defensive coordinator Robb Smith will be heading back to the whiteboard in search of answers after this game. The Red Raiders never punted, while piling up 171 yards on the ground and another 315 through the air. The Razorbacks didn’t have a sack, and only tallied three tackles for loss.
But that wasn’t the biggest story coming out of this game.
Andy Rooney once said that “always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.”
Bret Bielema should take heed. Apparently, over the summer, he had some harsh words for offenses like Texas Tech’s, and Red Raider coach Kliff Kingsbury hadn’t forgotten.
“(At) the Texas high school coaches convention this summer he sat up and said, ‘If you don’t play with a fullback we’ll kick your a—. If you throw it 70 times a game we’ll kick your a—.’ He just got his a— kicked twice in a row and probably will next week by A&M as well. That did feel good.”
It’s never a good idea to end up on the opposing team’s bulletin board.
GOOD MOVE
When Jim McElwain took over at Florida, he was expected to breathe life into an offense which had struggled in recent years. That might still happen, but it was defensive coordinator Geoff Collins’ defense that pushed the Gators to a 14-9 win at Kentucky last week.
Florida had six sacks — including two each from defensive linemen Jonathan Bullard and Alex McCalister — and 10 tackles for loss. That pressure affected Kentucky quarterback Patrick Towles, who completed just 8 of 24 pass attempts with a pair of interceptions.
On a night where the new-look offense wasn’t spectacular, the defense made sure it didn’t have to be.
BAD MOVE
OK, I know standout running back Russell Hansbrough didn’t play. But man, the Missouri offense was horrific in a 9-6 win over UConn.
Now, the Huskies are a little better than they’ve been in recent years, but to score nine points and rush for less than 100 yards against them? At home? Alarm bells should be ringing in Columbia.
Hansbrough’s absence is a big deal, but I was surprised that offensive coordinator Josh Henson and coach Gary Pinkel didn’t attack the perimeter more often with the speed of Ish Witter — or feature the bigger Chase Abbington if they were determined to run between the tackles.
Obviously, the play from quarterback Maty Mauk could have been better, but I’m just not sure the coaching staff had the right plan for this game. Maybe Connecticut will end up being a dramatically improved team with a better-than-expected defense.
But right now, it looks more like a bad day at the office for the Tiger offense.
Randy Capps is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers SEC football, South Carolina and Georgia.
