Mike Bobo entered this season with a 'point to prove.' How UGA's OC made good in his return
In the month of September, Mike Bobo was welcomed back for his second stint as Georgia football offensive coordinator with his top two tailbacks banged up, his best offensive lineman lost to a high ankle sprain and his top wide receiver out four games with a back injury.
A team looking to become the first to win three straight national titles since the mid-1930s called on wide receiver Dillon Bell and walk-on Cash Jones at running back and leaned on another walk-on, Mekhi Mews, to start the opener at wide receiver.
Flip the calendar now to mid-November with just two regular season games to go, all the pieces are falling into place.
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Wide receiver Ladd McConkey is saving his best for probably last.
Brock Bowers, the all-everything tight end, returned 26 days after TightRope ankle surgery, to resume what’s expected to be his final college season and scored a touchdown Saturday in a beatdown of Ole Miss.
Daijun Edwards and Kendall Milton are the 1-2 backfield punch needed and an already strong offensive line is bolstered with the return of right tackle Amarius Mims after missing six games.
A Bobo-called offense is clicking heading to Tennessee Saturday and two weeks before an SEC championship game tilt with Alabama.
Did we mention that Carson Beck, a first-year starting quarterback, is spinning it and in command?
If Bowers doesn’t go off and make a late run to get a Heisman Trophy invite, maybe Beck can do it.
“They’re potent,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “You’ve got a quarterback and you’ve got pass protectors and you've got weapons, first time that I thought Mike and his staff had, I wouldn’t say a full cupboard, but Brock was close. … It’s nice to see those guys out there together."
Georgia football offense remains potent under Mike Bobo
Smart quickly pivoted to the veteran coordinator Bobo, who spent last season as an offensive analyst, to replace Todd Monken in February.
A status report: Georgia’s offense under Bobo is averaging 40.6 points per game, sixth in the nation and second in the SEC. Exactly where the Bulldogs were after 10 games last season under Monken.
“He’s just gotten hotter and hotter with his playcalling,” offensive guard Tate Ratledge said.
The Bulldogs put up 611 total yards in a 52-17 romp over Ole Miss with 311 passing and 300 rushing.
“From my perspective, I felt Kirby made the right decision because Mike knew what was going on here as far as being around the day-to-day planning and has a background with Kirby having known him,” said former Georgia coach Jim Donnan, who lives in the area and keeps close tabs on the program. “Sometimes you bring in people that you don’t know, things don’t mesh.”
Bobo built rapport with players on the team by being around them all of last season. The offensive staff already had assistants Bobo worked with previously in Stacy Searels, Bryan McClendon and Todd Hartley.
“It panned out extremely well,” Donnan said.
Monken had an NFL background and treated players like he would pros, offensive guard Dylan Fairchild said.
When he left to go back to the NFL as offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens, Bobo delivered a message to players in his first team meeting as coordinator.
“He came in and really said he’s got a point to prove,” Fairchild said. “He’s got a mission that he wants to do that he wants to fulfill
Bobo left Georgia in 2014 as a hot commodity after coordinating some of the highest performing offenses in program history including in 2014 which still holds the school record for points per game at 41.3
The former Bulldog quarterback spent 14 seasons under Mark Richt, the last eight as coordinator.
Colorado State hired him as its head coach, but after five seasons he was out of a job and went back to the SEC where he coordinated offenses at South Carolina in 2020 and Auburn in 2021.
“They didn’t have many players at South Carolina. At Auburn, he did a good job with (Bo) Nix but the head coach was heavily involved,” Donnan said. “At Colorado State, he never could get the defense, but if you look at some of the guys he put in the pros, he’s always been a top echelon offensive coordinator in my mind and nothing different about the way he does things now.”
Bobo went to work in 2022 back at his alma mater for Smart, his good friend and former Georgia teammate. That season behind the scenes eased the transition.
“It took a little bit to get rolling and get some of the kinks worked out,” Bowers said, “but I feel like we kind of found an identity as an offense and got rolling.”
After a slow start that included trailing 14-3 at halftime against South Carolina, Georgia has averaged 42.6 points the last five games.
“All of those Georgia fans that were freaking out back in September about Mike Bobo, what they were doing offensively need to apologize because this dude has done a great job with this offense,” former Florida wide receiver Chris Doering, an SEC Network analyst said on “The Daily Crow.” “You’re talking about Dominic Lovett and Rara Thomas being a 3 and 4 option in the passing game. These guys are probably ones at other schools in the SEC and he does a great job with the creativity of the offense and the play-calling.”
Georgia leads the nation in third down efficiency at 55.6 percent.
The Bulldogs are sixth in the nation in scoring, passing offense (323.9) and completion percentage (323.9) and fifth in total offense (504.8).
That’s just under 5 yards less per game than the Bulldogs after 10 games last season.
“He’s got a really good grasp of his players and the way he can utilize his personnel groups,” said Donnan, who Bobo played for and worked under for two seasons on the support staff when he started his coaching career. “The way he focuses on taking advantage of other team’s weaknesses, he’s got a really good, disciplined team. They have very penalties, very few motion penalties and that’s a sign of good coaching, too. They don’t stop themselves a lot and have very few turnovers.”
Georgia’s touchdown percentage in the red zone is 64.9 (49th), down from 68.6 (30th) last season, according to cfbstats.com.
Donnan pointed to the Missouri game as an example that Bobo now has a defense that can be leaned on if needed so he could set up for a field goal on third down in the red zone rather than make a risky pass.
Bobo was a finalist for the Broyles Award in 2012. He’s among the more than 50 nominees this year for the award for nation’s top assistant. If Georgia’s offense keeps up its pace, he could be in the final group again just like Monken was last year.
Smart was asked this week what has stood out about what Bobo has done this season.
“His ability to adapt to the personnel we have,” he said. “He has a very rotating lineup. He has had this guy in and that guy out. He had two tight ends then he didn’t have two tight ends…. The ability to teach concepts and have plug-and-play players, his development of the quarterback, his leadership and messaging to the offense is critical because I am not over there all the time. He has to be the leader and voice of reason.”
Beck has thrown for more than 250 yards in every game this season and his hit 300 yards passing in five, but the run game is more of a factor lately.
After averaging 148.6 yards per game rushing in the first five games, Georgia has since averaged 213.2.
“If that downhill portion of that team begins to come on here in the last few weeks of the season, they’re not going to get beat in the postseason,” SEC Network analyst Cole Cubelic said on his “Cube Show” podcast. “You have a quarterback that can pick you apart, that makes great decisions… Nine different players caught a pass. Four players had plays of 40 or more yards this game. It’s different than LSU because they’re more dynamic in more places, but how do you defend it? What do you take away? Georgia might have to grind it out a little bit more than LSU, but it’s not like they lack explosive capability.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia football offense hitting its stride under Mike Bobo
