Mike Bobo knows that Georgia needs to be better offensively in 2025. He knows that improvement starts with the rushing attack.
ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia won the SEC Championship in 2025. It beat the No. 1 team in the country, at the time, at their place in October. It also made the College Football Playoff. Still, it never had the vibe of looking like it should.
The Bulldogs lost more games in 2024 than it did in the previous three seasons combined. They were forced to come back and rise to the occasion in moments, getting by the skin of their teeth on multiple occasions. But if you had to put your finger on one thing, especially from the offensive standpoint, that never felt like Georgia football, it was the run game.
UGA averaged 4.06 yards per carry, tied for No. 11 in the SEC. It had some decent to good single-season stat lines against good teams, starting with over six yards per carry in the season-opening 31-3 blowout of Clemson. Georgia ran the ball quite well in the first half at Texas and then got after the Longhorns again in the SEC half of the SEC Championship game. It even turned in a strong showing against Auburn, the SEC’s No. 3 run defense in 2024.
With all of that said, it was the worst Georgia rushing attack under Kirby Smart by a pretty significant margin. It’s one of multiple things the Bulldog offense is emphasizing this preseason because the man calling the plays knows it has to be better.
“I think your identity, everything starts with the run game,” Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo told reporters on Wednesday. “At any level, you’ve got to be able to run the ball and stop the run. And that’s been an emphasis of ours since we got back from the Sugar Bowl. We started meeting as a staff and meeting with our players. How can we improve in that area? And I’m not just talking about numbers, I’m talking about being efficient. A run game is not going to just help you offensively, it’s going to help your quarterback. It’s going to help your defense, it’s going to help all areas. And hopefully our identity will be, we will be efficient in the run game and everything will run through that.”
In terms of the offenses Bobo has coached at Georgia, it’s the second worst ever. Only 2011 was worse at 3.9 yards per carry. That team, too, made it to the SEC Championship game but it was throttled by LSU despite leading at the half.
What’s more damning is how the lack of run game was so instrumental in the Bulldogs’ slow starts. Georgia averaged just 3.11 yards per carry in the first quarter in 2024, good for No. 124 nationally. The reasons why are many.
Despite having all three of its starting interior offensive linemen taken on day two of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Bulldog offensive line underperformed mightily. That group, however, was banged up for most of the season. Four of Georgia’s top seven offensive linemen missed at least two games. Seven of their top nine linemen were banged up at different points in the season with Dylan Fairchild, a third-round pick who played in every game, pushing through a ruptured calf muscle for half the year. Georgia was hoping that the unit would be a strength, but it was anything but.
There were also health issues at running back. Branson Robinson, who transferred at the end of the season, was coming off a significant knee injury in 2023 and wasn’t himself. He also went down with another knee injury in early October. Roderick Robinson didn’t see the field until November due to turf toe surgery. Feature tailback Trevor Etienne, who shined in the two wins over Texas, missed four games and was limited in two others due to a one-game suspension and fractured ribs.
In some ways, Georgia was snakebitten. In other ways, it simply didn’t play well enough, consistently enough, to get into any sort of rhythm. That statement is true for both the run game and the offense as a whole. A touchdown in the first quarter was rare. A three-and-out to start the game was much more common. Improvement in all areas, specifically the rushing attack and to start games, is the aim for 2025.
That’s been a big point of emphasis of ours,” Bobo said of starting faster. “There’s several of them, but starting fast is one of them. And you’d like to start fast every day. But sometimes starting fast does not necessarily mean you’re touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, or touchdown, field goal, touchdown. Sometimes starting fast is you get a couple first downs and you change the field position. When you go three-and-out to start games, that’s something we definitely got to improve on.”
Category: General Sports
