Tuesday Tidbits: Week 6

A few pearls from Georgia's Tuesday news conferences...

-- As we reported yesterday, Caleb King does have a broken jaw. The break was a minor one, which is good news, however, he also suffered a concussion on the hit. He will not be allowed to practice until all signs from the concussion have cleared and Mark Richt said King was doubtful for this week -- though not completely out of the picture. The injury will not be season-ending, however, and there's a good chance King will be able to play by Week 7 against Vanderbilt.

-- With King likely out, Washaun Ealey will almost certainly see a big uptick in his playing time, but Richt said he still expected Richard Samuel to get the start this week.

-- Richt said the blocking issues with the line have been a little bit of a lot of things, but he specifically mentioned a need for the tight ends and fullbacks to handle their blocks better. Joe Cox added that the backs simply need to do a better job of hitting the holes when they open. While he said there have been a number of missed blocking assignments or instances of lineman not blocking long enough, the line overall hasn't done a terrible job.

-- Richt and several of the players discussed the excessive celebration penalty. Cox said he would have prefered not to have even heard about the league admitting the mistake, as it was simply just salt in the wound. Richt said he thinks it's time to change the rule because it "takes some of the joy out of the game." Tavarres King added that, beyond common sense things like spiking the football, the players really don't have any clear understanding of what constitutes excessive celebration because the rules are enforced so differently from game to game, team to team and player to player.

-- Richt was asked about changes to special teams in terms of time spent practicing them and personnel on the field. He said he beleives, between practice and meeting time, Georgia already spends more time on special teams than most other programs, and that because of the 20-hour rule, any increase in time would have to come from other areas. He also said that, while they are not necessarily averse to playing other players on the special teams unit, that those players would simply be coming in without any training on those units, so it wouldn't necessarily be a solution.

-- I talked to Rennie Curran about the improved defensive efforts the past two weeks, and he said the better performances have been preceded by significantly better practices. He said he's seen the defense take a much more intense approach against the scout teams in each of the past two weeks than they had earlier in the season.

-- Curran also spoke about Ealey's improvement in practice in recent weeks. He said Ealey seemed intimidated by Georgia's defenders earlier in the year when working with the scout team, but in the past few weeks, he's "stopped thinking about that and just started running." Curran said he's been quite impressed with how hard Ealey runs and how quick he is to hit the hole.