Sixty inches. Five yards. No matter how you measure it, the distance was oh, so close and yet a world away.
That’s
all that separated Georgia from playing for a national championship last
season as it fell to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game and after a
winter and spring of hand-wringing over what should or shouldn't have
happened in those closing seconds, the Bulldogs seem poised to make
another run at a crystal football.
And no player in that race may be more critical than wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell.
Tuesday,
Georgia got some good news regarding the wide receiver as it was announced
that he’s been cleared for offseason workouts after undergoing knee
surgery in April.
Senior Aaron Murray will enter the fall as one
of the top Heisman Trophy candidates, sitting an easily obtainable 19
touchdown passes from breaking Danny Wuerffel's career SEC record of
114. The so sweetly nicknamed "Gurshall," running backs Todd Gurley and
Keith Marshall, figure to build on their freshman breakouts. In all, the
Bulldogs bring back 10 starters from a unit that averaged 37.7 points
and 467.6 yards per game in 2012.
But there are questions to be
answered with this offense, most notably in the passing game, which
makes Mitchell stand as the X-factor.
Junior receiver Michael
Bennett caught 24 balls for 345 yards and four touchdowns in 2012, but
he’s coming off reconstructive knee surgery.
Then there’s junior
Chris Conley (20 receptions for 342 yards and six scores), who at
6-foot-5 has the size to be the team’s best red-zone threat. He torched
Nebraska in the Capital One Bowl with two catches, both for TDs in
totaling 136 yards, and was dominant in the spring. But he has yet to
show that level of play on a consistent basis.
The same goes for
tight end Arthur Lynch (24 catches for 431 yards and three TDs), who
picked up the pieces last year after Orson Charles left for the NFL.
It’s
the dynamic Mitchell that has seemed a star in the making since his
arrival from Valdosta High School in 2011, though the Bulldogs are going
to need him to live up to that promise instead of enticing us with
flashes of it. (See here, and here). Without the 71 catches and 1,500-plus yards the departed
Tavarres King and Marlon Brown supplied, Mitchell will enter the fall as
the No. 1 option for Murray in what figures to be a high-scoring
offense.
But the biggest thing in Mitchell’s favor doesn’t lie in who isn’t in Athens anymore, it’s simply that he’ll be playing wide
receiver full time for the first time in two years.
The rash of
suspensions to last year’s defense forced Mark Richt to move Mitchell,
Scout.com’s seventh-rated cornerback in the in 2010, to the defensive
backfield. He played four games there before switching back to receiver,
finishing with 40 receptions for 572 yards and four TDs and led the
Bulldogs with 16 kickoff returns for a 22.5-yard average.
In
fact, the offense hasn’t had a full season with Mitchell. He missed
three games as a freshman with a hamstring injury, but still had 45
catches for 655 yards and four scores, earning a spot on the Freshman
All-SEC team.
He practiced all spring at receiver
before tearing the meniscus in his right knee during a scrimmage and in
that time offered a glimpse of how Richt and offensive coordinator Mike
Bobo plan to use him, moving around from the short side of the field to
the weak side and slot positions to create mismatches. Think what USC
did with Biletnikoff Trophy winner Marqise Lee last year or West
Virginia with Tavon Austin.
More than anything, Murray has proven
himself to be an equal opportunity passer, hitting six different
receivers for 20-plus receptions last season, but he’s also the kind of
passer that is reliant on his safety blankets. In the last two years,
the drop-off between his favorite targets and everyone else has been 13
receptions, with that number rising to 25 as a freshman when he had A.J.
Green.
The opportunity is there for Mitchell, who has the
makeup and now the focus to be the weapon Georgia needs outside to keep
the pressure off Gurley and Marshall and the weapon he’s shown flashes
of becoming.
Can he earn a place along with Alabama's Amari
Cooper, Texas A&M's Mike Evans and Vanderbilt's Jordan Matthews as
the elite pass-catches in the SEC?
Whether or not Mitchell does
figures to be a determining factor in whether these Bulldogs advance to a
third straight SEC title game, or maybe even beyond it.
