Tap the Brakes on Stafford and Georgia

Georgia has the talent to win the national title - at least I think they do - but there are too many factors working against them. Tough schedule. Distractions. Questions.

Every assessment of Georgia talks about their schedule and the SEC. Consecutive early road trips to S. Carolina and Arizona State. Baton Rouge. The Cocktail Party against Superman and a Florida team that will be looking for revenge. At Auburn. Georgia can beat them all but they won't.

Georgia has not handled things well since thumping Hawaii in the Sugar. Off-the-field trouble is becoming the norm in college football but the number of UGA players involving in such activity Georgia is alarming. How many players are suspended for the opener? Georgia will still beat Georgia Southern but off-the-field trouble can linger. (ask Texas) It's becoming increasing tougher to shoulder the burden of being No. 1 or even No. 2. Check the number of 1-2 teams that lost to unranked teams last year. Georgia has been hyped since the end of last season.

The final issue is that the so-called experts are allowing their view of what Matthew Stafford might do at an NFL combine in Feb '09 or '10 overshadow the need for him to polish his current game. He has all the tools but the track record is just not that impressive. I don't put much stock in Stafford's freshman stats - only to set the comparison to the sophomore year where there should be significant improvement. The results are mixed.

Stafford's TD to INT ratio improved from 7/13 in his freshman year to 19/10 during the sophomore campaign. However, his completion percentage (CP) only improved from 53% to 56%. Many times soph QBs will improve their numbers as the season goes along. However, that is not the case with Stafford. In fact, his highest CP was 75% in the opener against Oklahoma State. The second highest (and only remaining CP over 70%) was two weeks later against W. Carolina. On three occasions during the season, Stafford's CP was under 50% and those were actually spread out - one in each third of the season. Another interesting find was Stafford had only one game with a CP of 60%+ during the months of October and November. The CP trend line was declining the entire month of November.

I have nothing against either Georgia or Stafford but the the pre-season No. 1 gets the closest look and ESPN personalities can't stop raving about this guy and his shot at perhaps a Heisman Trophy. The opportunity is there as with any QB on a national title contender but his track record just doesn't compare with other QBs across the country - at least not yet and now he won't have his starting LT for all of 2008 to protect his blindside.