Mike Bobo discusses Georgia's offense going forward

When Kirby Smart tabbed Mike Bobo as his new offensive coordinator the immediate question many asked was how much Georgia’s offense would change.

Oh, there will be some differences. After all, there’s no Stetson Bennett and no Darnell Washington, two players with unique skill sets who happened to play significant roles.

But otherwise, the way Bobo plans on attacking opposing defenses is close to the one run by former offensive coordinator Todd Monken.

"The main thing that didn't change was the terminology. You want to keep the terminology the same for the players,” Bobo said. “There'll be little nuances that change of how we do things and a lot of what's our identity going to be offensively. You might see some changes if our identity changes who we are offensively. We don't have a guy that can possibly extend plays as well - we have two of those guys who can, but Stetson had elite quickness and the ability to get yourself out of trouble.

"We don't have a 6-7, 280-pound tight end (Washington) so I think you'll see some different things there and I think it would have been a little bit different anyway no matter who is standing up here."

Although this year’s offensive identity may be different from the last two, that’s not at all to suggest the Bulldogs won’t be as effective.

Quite the contrary.

Despite the losses of Bennett and Washington, there’s plenty of talent remaining that should have the Bulldogs one of the more exciting offensive teams in the SEC.

Sure, there will be a new starting quarterback, but a deep receiving corps and the nation’s best tight end in Brock Bowers at his disposal, should lead to some high-scoring games.

“Each year you try to figure out your identity as an offense. Whether I was sitting there at coordinator or Coach Monken came back, you have to figure out what pieces of the puzzle fit to what things that we did well last year and figure out what changed,” Bobo said. “Darnell was such a big impact for us, not necessarily just blocking in-line but also being able to block on the perimeter, Stetson's ability to move - we've got to figure out the pieces that fit best for us offensively and that's part of what fall camp is about.”

Other things won’t change.

Running backs coach Dell McGee, offensive line coach Stacy Searels, tight ends coach Todd Hartley, and wide receivers coach Brian McClendon will hold weekly meetings to brainstorm ideas just as they did under Monken. While Bobo will have the final say, he plans on taking in input from everyone, including new offensive analysts Darrell Dickey and Brandon Streeter.

"Each guy had a responsibility presented to staff. He (Monken) allowed ownership within the staff. I had an area, coach (Todd) Hartley has an area, coach (Bryan) McClendon has an area, coach (Dell) McGee has an area, and those guys took ownership of that,” Bobo said. “Again, he didn’t use every idea that somebody presents but he gave the staff in that room ownership of the game plan. I thought that was unique and then again the shifting and motion of getting in some plays and advantages of those guys not being able to attack certain formations."

Currently, the focus is coaching up the players and finding out exactly who can do what.

So far, Bobo likes what he’s seen, especially as it relates to the competition for playing time.

“Day one in the first meeting we talk about competition to our players and building depth, but it's not competition necessarily going against the defense, it's competition between position groups,” Bobo said. “There's competition between the tight ends and the receivers. Are our tight ends going to step up and we're still going to be a lot of 12 or are we going to have to be more 11? Those are the things that you're figuring out through camp, and at the end of the day, you have to put the best guys on the field to give you the best chance to be successful, and then we want to build depth.”

Bobo and the Bulldogs have three more weeks to figure it out.

“If there's multiple people that can do multiple things that increases our volume as an offense with more things that we can do,” he said. “So we're still trying to figure that out at practice. We've got a good feel for it right now, but we've still got to go play on Saturday in a scrimmage and fine-tune things the next 8-9 days until the second scrimmage is over.”