"Who would you rank as the coaches most important to UGA's success?"
A DawgsCentral user posting under the name PiousMonken posed that question to me in the spring of 2023, and I quickly realized that a good answer would require quite a bit of consideration.
When thinking about the question, I kept coming back to an old football cliche, "It's not the X's and the O's, but the Jimmys and the Joes that make the difference." I found myself considering the players who suit up on Saturdays. Good gameplans and great play calls are key to the success of any college football program, but they are usually only as good as the personnel executing them. With that in mind, I decided to broaden the scope of the rankings beyond members of the coaching staff.
It sparked a series of longform articles called 23 For 2023. The premise was simple- Profile the 23 people who were most important to Georgia’s success on the gridiron in 2023. To create such a list, one must make value judgments on what on and off-field assets are most important to a modern college football program.
It focused on players and coaches within the UGA program. Collectively, the series served as a giant preview for the season ahead. It became a favorite of subscribers, and it forced me to ask questions that I hadn’t before.
This year, I am bringing the list back once again. Naturally, it will be called 24 for 2024.
With his former mentor now manning a microphone on ESPN, Kirby Smart is college football’s most accomplished coach. In 2024, Smart will have to navigate significant staff turnover and seismic changes within the sport itself. Georgia came up short of a third straight national championship in 2023, but winning it all this season would give the Bulldogs three titles in four years. That achievement would cement the program as a modern dynasty.
Whether or not Georgia can reach that lofty pedestal, and how they go about trying to do it, will be largely influenced by the roles these 24 individuals play.
Today we continue the rankings with #4 Mike Bobo and #3 Carson Beck. Let’s get after it…
Previous Entries
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#16 - Trevor Etienne + #15 - Josh Crawford
#14 - Daniel Harris + #13 - Donte Williams
#12 - Earnest Greene + #11 Stacy Searels
#10 - Malaki Starks + #9 -Travaris Robinson
#8 - Mykel Williams + #7 - Tray Scott
#6 Colbie Young + #5 James Coley
24 For 2024 - #4 Mike Bobo + #3 Carson Beck
Perhaps Kirby Smart always knew this moment would come…
When Mike Bobo arrived back in Athens in January of 2022 he did so to little fanfare. He had left Georgia in 2014 after being on staff for Mark Richt’s entire tenure, and had always been a lightning rod for opinions from certain segments of the fanbase. His value to the program became clear when we finally saw what UGA’s program looked like without him in 2015. Richt was let go after a year of dysfunction and chaos with Brian Schottenheimer coordinating the offense.
After 5 years running his own program at Colorado State, Bobo was let go from a coaching job for the first time in his life. The OC job at South Carolina was supposed to be a fresh start, but Covid-19 shutdown the sport and Will Muschamp was fired midway through his only season in Columbia. With the Gamecocks, Bobo coordinated an offense that was missing the type of personnel one needs to win big in the SEC.
A former Broyles Award finalist, Bobo was soon offered a job on another SEC staff. This time he went to The Plains to coordinate Bryan Harsin’s first offense at Auburn. He did some nice things with Bo Nix, coaching him into better decision making and helping him bump up his completion percentage and yards per attempt numbers. Unfortunately for Bobo, he had again taken over an offense that lacked playmakers. Demetris Robertson transferred from UGA to Auburn that offseason after being unable to break into the rotation in a meaningful way in Athens. He immediately became AU’s most explosive receiving threat. Once again, Bobo had landed at a program that was led by a coach on a downslide. Harsin’s presence in the head job had fractured Auburn’s internal dynamics. The experiment was doomed from the start, and Bobo was let go following a 6-7 season that would have felt a whole lot different if Auburn had been able to pull off the upset in a 24-22 loss to Alabama in quadruple overtime.
After two consecutive seasons on lame duck staffs, Bobo wanted stability. When his former teammate called and offered him a chance to come home to Athens, Mike said yes. Many believe that wasn’t the first time Kirby had offered to bring Bobo onto his staff. It was the first time that Mike had been willing to return to Athens. So, what changed? On numerous occasions, sources have told DawgsCentral that Bobo was hesitant to return to Athens while former AD Greg McGarity was still in charge of the athletic department.
When Kirby Smart arrived at Georgia he had a vision of what the program could become if it was provided the proper resources and investment. Smart demanded that certain promises be made before he took the job. Few understood how imperative Smart's wish list was better than Mike Bobo. He lived through the consequences of UGA's tight budgeting for 14 years. Bobo and his boss, then head coach Mark Richt, were forced to battle against facility deficits on the recruiting trail. Some rivals in the region were building palatial weight rooms adjacent to locker rooms that resembled lounges. Others were expanding and renovating football offices. Those projects at other schools were a representation of their commitment to being as good at football as possible, but Georgia didn’t even have an indoor facility to practice in when the weather was bad in Athens.
The penny pinching under McGarity was so severe that Richt paid money out of his own salary to his assistants. Bobo knew what Georgia could become if it ever became fully invested in football. The whole experience left a bad taste in his mouth, and that was made worse by the way Mark Richt’s termination was handled by McGarity. I asked a source about the chances of Bobo returning to Athens when his tenure at CSU ended in 2019. I was told in no uncertain terms that Bobo wouldn’t come back to UGA as long as Greg McGarity was still roaming the halls of the athletic offices.
McGarity retired at the end of 2020. Then mama called.
Coming home
Kirby Smart brought Georgia to glory in 2021. He did it with a walk-on quarterback who was protected by a fantastic offensive line and complimented by a generational defense. His roster was the result of years of great recruiting finally coming to fruition. Over four decades had passed since Herschel and Vince had stood in the middle of a mob of Georgia fans on the floor of the Louisiana Superdome on January 1, 1981.
That titleless streak almost ended at 31 years instead. If you're a Dawgs fan over the age of 20 then you remember December 1, 2012. That’s when Georgia and Alabama played for the national title in the greatest SEC Championship ever. Either team would have pulverized Notre Dame in the BCS Championship, but a tipped pass on the final play led to Bama getting the honors instead of the Bulldogs. Mike Bobo was in the booth that day calling plays. He was in the booth for so many big moments for so long at UGA. Knowing what we now know about the machine that Kirby Smart has built, and the investment that is required on every level to maintain it, you can’t help but feel like it’s a bit miraculous that UGA was able to get as close as it did in 2012. It is a bit of a miracle that Georgia sustained 10 wins a year for so long under Richt.
I would argue they never would have been there without Mike Bobo. People forget that he was one of the best recruiters in the SEC during his first stint in Athens. Here’s a quick list of names for you...
Five-Stars
- Trenton Thompson
- Matthew Stafford
- Ray Drew
- Sony Michel
- Richard Samuel
- Aaron Murray
- Josh Harvey-Clemons
- Terry Godwin
- Marlon Brown
- Nick Chubb
Four-Stars
- Caleb King
- Malcolm Mitchell
- Mohammed Massaquoi
- Jay Rome
- Aron White
- Malkom Parrish
- Zach Mettenberger
- Rennie Curran
- Shawn Williams
- Bacarri Rambo
Yup, Mike Bobo helped land all those guys. He was the primary recruiter on almost all of them, and the secondary recruiter on a few. The man went and landed big time recruits year after year despite the lack of facilities and everything else. Without some of the talent he brought into the program, Kirby Smart’s tenure may have never gotten fully off of the ground.
Bobo and Smart had some legendary recruiting battles when Kirby was at Alabama. The old college buddies would go to war for some of the best prospects in the Southeast on an annual basis in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Sometimes those battles would get heated, but once Signing Day had come and gone the two would get together on the golf course and put work on the shelf. They remained friends through it all.
It’s hard to say if Kirby knew that Bobo would be needed to call plays down the road when he offered him the opportunity to come be an analyst for $100,000 a year at the end of the 2021 season. At the very least, I can promise you that he didn’t want to have to recruit against Bobo if he landed somewhere else.
When Mike got back to Athens he started by sitting in on all sorts of meetings. He quietly observed for a while, but soon he and OC Todd Monken built a rapport. Monken once joked that Kirby asked him about hiring Bobo as an analyst to make it seem like it was his own idea, but in reality he always knew it wasn’t his choice to make.
Bobo’s ideas held weight with Monken and he used them in his gameplans. Most importantly, they worked.
Monken said this about Bobo at The Broyles Award ceremony in December of 2022. “The first two touchdowns passes we threw the other day (against LSU), those were Mike Bobo’s ideas, those weren’t mine.”
Monken treated his staff like a rock band. It was a great collaboration, and while Todd was the composer and lead singer, Bobo’s instrument became the loudest in the ensemble as 2022 wore on. The jailbreak screen that Georgia ran to Kenny McIntosh for a touchdown against TCU? Vintage Bobo.
The QB coach and the forgotten man
Bobo has always been a quarterback guy. When he arrived, Stetson Bennett had already won a national title. He was the project that Buster Faulkner and Monken started and saw to fruition together. Bobo had developed Matt Stafford and Aaron Murray into stars in the SEC, so it would be a waste of his talents to not have him working on the position in some way.
Maybe Mike always knew what was coming when Monken would eventually leave, but he took an interest in a talented veteran named Carson Beck. For most of his career, Beck had been a reckless player. He wanted to throw deep shots down the boundary. He could look good doing it at times, but at other moments he forced balls into double coverage. He was inaccurate underneath and over the middle. The hero throws were never a problem for his big arm and long frame, but those aren’t the throws that an offense is made up of. You have to be able to live off of the little chunks to win games at the top of the SEC.
At the time, sources believed that some on Georgia’s offensive staff had essentially given up on the idea of Beck ever putting it together. His inconsistencies in the short/intermediate passing game felt like more of a trait than a habit. Bobo saw something in the Jacksonville native that he felt like he could work with, and he started drilling Beck on the types of throws that he would eventually make look routine. In late game action throughout the 2022 season, Beck started to show the staff that the light had come on. He had the ability to get through reads quickly, which is something many college QB's never accomplish. Then he started to look off defenders and make smart decisions with the ball. It was less about the throws he made in mop up duty in 2022 than the throws he didn't try to attempt. He didn't force the ball into tight windows. He also showed that he could deliver accurate balls to the first and second levels of the defense. It’s possible that Beck’s career never would have gotten off the ground if Bobo hadn’t arrived. Now we know that he was priming his future starter for what was to come.
Bobo and Beck, evolving together
When Bobo was hired as OC, some in Bulldog Nation let out a collective groan. They lamented over past calls in games from a decade earlier, or feared that Georgia was moving backwards instead of forwards.
In reality, Bobo’s offensive philosophies changed greatly since the I-Formation days of old. There was no Chubb or Michel on the 2023 Georgia team. He didn't have a Gurley or a Marshall either. Todd Monken was hired to modernize the Georgia offense. Mike Bobo was hired to keep it that way. The mandate he was given centered around continuity. In many ways, Mike Bobo has been asked to run the Georgia Offense that Monken installed over his three years in Athens.
Early on in the 2023 season, Bobo did that a little too well. Through 3 games, 10 of Bobo’s 11 most used concepts were in Monken’s 11 most used concepts in 2022. Georgia struggled to run the ball out of the tight formations and 12 Personnel (2 TE) sets that it had thrived in with Darnell Washington at tight-end back in 2022.
Bobo took his unproven quarterback and he used his early season games to get him comfortable with the short/intermediate passes that had once plagued him. Banged up at RB, the Bulldogs ran lots of screens as an extension of the running game. Against South Carolina, Beck protected the football, but became too locked in on those short routes over the middle. Bobo’s schemes were getting receivers open downfield, but Beck wasn’t seeing them. Against UAB, he started to look more patient and trusting of his offensive line. He began letting things develop.
Georgia went to Auburn for its first major test of the season. Georgia's opening script was vintage Monken, but the personnel wasn’t the same. The running backs were getting stuffed far too often and the interior of the OL looked out of sync against an Auburn defense that was loading the box and playing aggressively. The Bulldogs’ offense had been very efficient to that point in the season, and it was again that day, but it is hard to move the football to the end-zone 4 yards at a time. Georgia needed to do something else to take control of the game. It needed to find some explosive plays through the air.
Bobo needed his inexperienced quarterback to trust his line, trust himself, and wait for things to develop on the back side against Cover 2. Above all, he needed Beck to utilize the best player on the field. Beck targeted Bowers 12 times for 8 receptions and 157 yards plus the game winning touchdown. When it was all said and done, Beck had gone 16/20 for 236 yards in the 2nd half of his first ever road start. He was 6/7 passing on 3rd downs in the third and fourth quarters. The average distance needed for a 1st down on those plays was 8.1 YDS, and Beck averaged 13.4 YDS per attempt on the 7 third down throws. Five of the completions went for first downs that kept the drive alive. The game had fallen onto Beck's shoulders, and Beck had delivered.
That was the moment that Carson Beck grew up, but it was also the moment where Bobo scrapped what wasn’t working and put his own stamp onto the Georgia offense. The foundation of the system was still rooted in what Todd Monken laid, but with his quarterback now proven, Bobo opened things all the way up when the Dawgs returned home against Kentucky.
Against the Wildcats, Georgia started the night getting Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint and Rara Thomas involved. Beck had a season-high 16 attempts outside the numbers. He also had 10 attempts of over 20 yards downfield. 7 of those throws were on target. The results were dazzling. After a few drives, Beck was 11/11 for 146 yards and 2 TD’s.
Mike Bobo realized something important. 2023 Georgia was not a run-first football team. 2023 Georgia was a team whose quarterback needed to throw it 30-36 times a game. He also realized that the best way for this offensive line to run the ball was going to vary week to week. Against Auburn and South Carolina, the Bulldogs ran for just 4.2 YPC on 27 attempts. Against UK, a 50/50 Gap Scheme to Zone Scheme combo resulted in Georgia’s best rushing game of the season. Bobo got the ball outside the tackles early and made UK’s defense chase the Dawgs side-to-side before hitting the Cats with more inside runs as the game went along. At Vanderbilt, the Dawgs ran Inside Zone Read 16 times for a gaudy 206 yards with a 68.75% Success Rate.
Bobo worked with the rest of Georgia's offensive staff to get the Bulldogs' run game going, using different gameplans that were designed around what would work that week instead of being overly reliant on one type of run scheme or philosophy. The best coordinators are the ones who don’t allow themselves to be overly committed to their first idea if given evidence that it’s not working properly. Bobo became someone who constantly took in new information and tried to use it to improve his offense.
Bobo realized that the Bulldogs weren't built to run into stacked boxes, and so he used his quarterback to force defenders out of the box. Beck shined by doing so, and Georgia's run game got stronger as the year wore on. Georgia came out of the bye week and let Beck open things up. He threw for 315 yards versus the Gators and his throws were timed so perfectly at some junctures that the receiver would be entering his break as the ball was released.
Georgia survived a good Missouri team by being able to stay efficient and bust both big runs and big passes that created scoring plays. Against Ole Miss, UGA got a 300+ yard passing performance out of Beck and a 300+ yard rushing performance out of the offense. They leaned on their zone scheme more in wins over Mizzou and Ole Miss, but they incorporated more gap scheme into the gameplans against Tennessee and Georgia Tech. Bobo found a rhythm for his backs and Kendall Milton closed the year on a tear thanks to Bobo putting him into play designs that he was comfortable in. Milton went for 156 yards and 2 TD's in the regular season finale against Georgia Tech.
Falling short
Georgia's bid for a third straight title was derailed in its SEC Championship loss against Alabama. A lot went wrong for the Bulldogs that day, but specifically, UGA struggled to deal with the injury to Amarius Mims and failed to get separation on passing plays.
Georgia started the game out running tempo, and slicing through Alabama's defense. When Mims was injured, the offense got conservative. The Dawgs tried to man ball the Tide and run into heavy fronts. They went through the rest of the first half that way, and only became aggressive again once they got down in the second half. It made sense that UGA wanted to be cautious. Xavier Truss replaced Mims and struggled to protect Beck against Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell. Beck's top two targets, Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, were badly hobbled. The Dawgs were also without Rara Thomas.
Bowers and McConkey struggled to separate from Tide defenders while playing hurt. With Thomas out, UGA lacked a WR who could go and win jump balls with regularity. In the run game, the Dawgs never found their footing after the opening drive. Georgia ran for just 3.2 yards per an attempt on 29 carries for a total of 92 yards.
Looking forwards, it's hard to know what lesson Bobo and Beck should take from the loss that rendered a perfect regular season meaningless in the eyes of the CFP committee. The answer might involve not playing safe. The ball was taken out of Beck's hands for a lot of that second quarter. Georgia had the better QB, it should have wanted more possessions in the game. It's impossible to know if playing healthy players instead of the severely limited versions of Bowers and McConkey would have changed anything, but there were times where Dominic Lovett was running wide open if Beck had gotten to his second or third read. Perhaps his growth will involve turning down tight throws for bigger openings in 2024.
The truth is that the scenario was extremely unique, and it's unlikely the Dawgs will find themselves in it again. Bobo took tons of heat after the loss, but conversations with sources this offseason have made me wonder if the decision to slow things down and run the ball more on third downs was more of a staff decision.
Many have called Bobo a downgrade over Monken, but Georgia's statistical output in 2023 was essentially right in line with the 2022 team in all but one area.
The only place where UGA saw a significant drop off was in its red zone scoring percentage. That fell almost 9% from 2022 to 2023. The 2023 UGA team converted TD's more often once it got inside the opponent's 40 than 2022 UGA did, but the 2023 Dawgs didn't have the same ruthless efficiency inside the 20 that the 2022 Bulldogs had.
2023 UGA started the year struggling inside the opponent's 20, but they got better as the season went along. The 2022 team scored 81 times in 83 red zone trips. 2023 UGA scored just 74 times in 81 red zone trips.
Looking forwards
What Bobo achieved last year is impressive when you consider the injuries to Bowers and McConkey and the fact he was breaking in a new quarterback. He also started the year with Daijun Edwards and Kendall Milton both either severely limited or hurt. The Bulldogs moved Dillon Bell to RB to get by, and Bell will be a starter at wideout for them in 2024.
The red zone conversion issue should be helped by the addition of 6'5" Miami transfer Colbie Young. He should be the guy who the Dawgs can go to when everyone else is covered. Dominic Lovett should be explosive out of the slot, and Bell should rotate between the X and Z positions. Speedy senior Arian Smith will join those three in the first group. Behind them is a mixture of speed, youth and players who can help the Dawgs in more specialized roles. Who emerges and gains Beck's trust will be one of the biggest storylines to monitor early in UGA's 2024 campaign.
Oscar Delp should give UGA a really solid presence at TE. His blocking will be dependable in the run game and he will take advantage of spaces left in the middle of the field and out in the flat. Lawson Luckie and Benjamin Yurosek are x-factors who could add some real explosiveness and versatility to Bobo's scheme. We know Yurosek can block and make big receptions from his time at Stanford. If he can do it in the SEC, watch out. Georgia will be able to live in two and three TE sets and punish opponents for going either too heavy or too light with their defensive personnel.
Sources close to the team are also confident that this year's RB room will be the best UGA has had in a few years. Former #1 overall RB recruit Branson Robinson returns and will be joined by former Florida star Trevor Etienne. They'll be backed up by Nate Frazier and Cash Jones early in the year, and they should be joined by Roderick Robinson late in the regular season.
The offensive line is filled with experience and talent. Earnest Greene will be in the conversation for best tackle in the SEC. Jared Wilson replaces Sedrick Van Pran at Center and may have an even higher ceiling than the former three-year starter. UGA will have 7-8 linemen it feels comfortable playing, and should rotate them frequently.
The field general
Of course in the middle of it all is Beck, the blue-chip QB recruit who waited. When last season started, Beck was the only remaining top 20 ranked QB from the Class of 2020 who hadn't either started a game or transferred.
He was once labeled as a bit aloof. He was seen as inconsistent. In the end, he became much more than anyone ever thought he might be. In fact, Beck's field vision is already the best I've ever seen from a Georgia quarterback. The numbers back that up too. Beck's average time to throw on pass attempts last season was 2.22 seconds. That was the fastest of any Power 5 conference starter with at least 300 dropbacks in 2023. Good things happened when he got the ball out quick. He threw it in under 2.5 seconds on 56.7% of his dropbacks, and was 208/259 passing (80.3% completion) for 2,127 YDS (8.2 YPA) with 17 TD/1 INT on those plays. Nobody in college football is processing things faster than Carson Beck. Last season was the first time he had started a football game in four years. How much more can he improve?
His 302 completions in 2023 were the second most by a UGA quarterback in a single season, and he would've easily eclipsed Stetson Bennett's record of 310 (2022) if he had played a full game in the Orange Bowl or a fifteenth contest like Bennett did. Beck also already owns the second most single season passing yards in UGA history, throwing for 3,941 last year. He is already the most accurate QB in UGA history, completing 72.42% of his passes last year.
Beck accomplished all of that last season despite UGA's staff later admitting that they really didn't know what they had when the season started. This time around, there will be no wondering if Beck knows how to protect the football. His 24 TD and 6 INT's in 2023 were impressive, but his adjusted completion percentage of 80.6% was downright gaudy. If not for 18 drops by UGA pass catchers last season, Beck may have approached accuracy numbers that would've been historically significant on a national level.
One area where Beck could grow is in the deep passing game. He struggled with underthrows and overthrows at times on deep shots and never fully got on the same page with his wideouts on certain vertical routes. Another offseason to synch up with them could spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the rest of the S-E-C.
If Beck and Georgia show that they can connect on just 1-2 true deep balls a game, then this offense could hit rarified air. We know Beck can work the seams, but late in 2023 we saw him start to get comfortable on longer throws outside the numbers. If that continues then opposing safeties will be forced to sit deep and protect against Arian Smith, Anthony Evans, Dom Lovett, Colbie Young, Dillon Bell or whoever else UGA turns into a deep threat.
That would mean more green grass for RB's hitting the second level, and more space between the LB's and safeties for Beck to throw into. For all of its success in 2023, UGA's longest pass play was 56 yards. If the Dawgs can start hitting some shots in-stride with speedy threats like Lovett, Smith and Evans then everything else they do suddenly gets easier.
Beck already has a chance to be the first QB taken in the 2025 NFL Draft, but putting those types of downfield throws on tape would stamp him as an absolute total package. It could also give Bobo another QB drafted tops in his class, a full 16 years after Matthew Stafford was taken first overall by the Lions in 2009. It would be a fantastic achievement for an OC/QB duo who waited and developed when some questioned there futures.
Before any of that there is the business of the 2024 season. Beck has told people he came back to Georgia to complete the unfinished business of winning a national title. Bobo also knows that nothing less than a title will allow him to reach a 100% approval rating among the Georgia fanbase.
They'll start the journey in Atlanta on Saturday. They will look to return back there on January 20th with the ultimate prize on the line.
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