TRIPP CHANDLER AND THE BOO BIRDS

Here is what I had to say last year when Mohamed Massaquoi was booed. Here is what I have to say now to the fans who boo our players...

There is never a good excuse for booing our players no matter how disappointed you may be in their performance. They are amateurs between 18-22 years old. Booing their play does not alert the coaches or the players that someone screwed up. Guess what, dumbasses, the coaches and players already know that! They are the ones who have put in weeks and weeks of intense blood, sweat and tears into preparing for the games that we so much enjoy. They are the ones hurt most when a player screws up. They don't need us to draw their attention to it! Do you think that your boos will inspire the offending player to try harder for your approval? F#@& NO it won't. It will only serve to alienate the player from all of us fans - including the majority of us who have the sense and decency to not boo our players. The player wants to make the play much more than we want him to make the play. The players love fan support, when they receive it, but when the fans act like stark-raving a-holes, all of the players (not just the player who screwed up) are turned off by the fans. It is just plain stupid and entirely counterproductive to boo our players. It helps nothing and harms much that is important to emotionally mature fans. We do not want your infantile booing to harm our reputation as a supportive fan base that has purchased every ticket sold for Georgia games held in Sanford Stadium for many many years running. We don't want your idiotic displays of fair-weatherness to influence the recruits who are in Sanford Stadium for every game. We need recruits to WANT to come to Athens and to WANT to play in front of 92,000 supportive fans who have enough sense to hold their freaking tongues when a young man fails to make a play that none of the 92,000 are actually capable of making to begin with! Our coaches know what they are doing - at least moreso than any coaching staff we have had in a long long time - so why don't you let them do their jobs and decide who gets on the field or not based on their judgment which is ALWAYS going to be more informed than yours. Here is an inside tip for you, the coaches are going to make their decisions without your input anyway, so why not spare us all the embarassment in the future and try to pick a guy up instead of kicking him when he is down. As Mike Gundy would say, "I'm done. This makes me want to puke."

Now, about Tripp Chandler... I have just watched the replay on CSS. I watched Tripp as much as possible to see how he was blocking. I hope that you all will pay attention to this part of his game. He is an amazing blocker. He locks up with his man and drives him for 3, 4, 5 seconds while TB or KM sprint past and into space. Much of the time, his man ends up on the ground and out of the play. It is an easy conclusion to draw that Tripp's blocking is more important to ur success than his pass catching.

Speaking of his pass catching, while he has had 4 (by my count) drops this year that are indefensible, several other would have been circus catches. To wit, the pass on our first possession was broken up by the defender whose hand got between Tripps arm and ribcage and the ball was stripped out. It looked like the defender arrived early and could have been flagged. Neil Williamson, Matt Stewart and Buck Belue all had the same comment. Sure, he could have held on and it would have been a spectacular play, but it was not a case of terrible hands on that play. The second "drop" was indefensible and Tripp damn well knew it the second he hit the ground and looked utterly lifeless. Nice job booing in that instance, a-holes. It really helped. In the Alabama game, one of the "drops" was thrown well behind him, high and hard. Nearly impossible to catch. The "drop" against South Carolina in the seam around the 7 yard line was thrown to high and dangerously hard. It was catchable, but it was not well-thrown. By dangerously hard, I mean that the only danger on the throw would come on an overthrow because the safety was deep. There was no defender underneath, so Staff should have put more touch on the ball and I'll bet you he knows it.

I am disappointed that Tripp has made some drops, but we will need him down the stretch so I hope that his woes are behind him. He responded with two nice catches after being resoundingly booed. So hopefully, he has overcome the kick in the balls from our shittiest fans and can focus on helping the team win in Knoxville.

Come on people, support our kids. They are working hard to provide us vicarious thrills. Give them your best, not your worst.

GO DAWGS!