Make or Break: Mike Bobo

by Chito Chibuye

Dawgs OTL Writer/ UGA Alumnus

The conversation around Mike Bobo as UGA’s Offensive Coordinator can feel more polarizing than the last three Presidential elections and has been going on since 2007 (when George Bush was in office). On one side of the fence you have the “everything-is-Bobo’s-fault” crowd, and on the other, every excuse imaginable why it’s not. Inmost cases, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. In this case the answer is somewhere between a draw on 3rd-and-long and UGA’s highest PPG in school history. Let’s look at history to just “Call a spade, a spade.”

At this point it’s well documented how the 2024 season for Georgia went. The Dawgs led the nation with a whopping 36 dropped passes and lost QB Carson Beck to injury for the rest of the season on a hail mary play right before halftime of the SEC championship game vs.Texas to boot. Gunner Stockon would go on to help UGA beat the Longhorns (for the 2nd time that year) in OT, but would lose to national championship runner-up Notre Dame a few weeks later.

Bobo is not the reason UGA didn’t reach its goals last year. Injuries happen, and that’s just a part of the game. When your wide receiver room has “hands like a snake” and your offensive line whiffs on blocks in critical moments during the season, good teams are going to beat you. What we are NOT ‘gonna do’ is act like we don’t have IMMENSE experience when it comes to Bobo-led offenses. Instead, simply ask yourself: Can UGA win a National Championship with Bobo as the OC?

I’ll never forget 2007 when UGA beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa on their first possession of OT behind an aggressive and unexpected playcall by Bobo and an absolute dime from Matthew Stafford to Mikey Henderson. I was in the stadium the following year when Saban and Kirby came to Athens and burned off our eyebrows by halftime, dropping 31 points while we managed an even more impressive zero points at intermission. My freshman year at UGA in 2010 the Dawgs went 6-7 on the year….. 6 and 7/!! AJ Green was suspended before players were getting paid! My classmates would probably agree that the only“standard” at Georgia that year was being the #1 party school in the nation (a legit stat, look it up). The only memorable things were the multiple snow days that shut down everything in Athens except for downtown.

A much better year, 2012, was when Aaron Murray and Todd Gurley led the Dawgs to the SEC championship game, only to lose because of poor clock management, and not throwing the ball to the endzone in time, and a Todd Grantham defense. Bobo does, however, get credit for having the school record for PPG in a season during 2014 where he orchestrated an offense that put up a blistering 41.7 points per contest. When I say it’s a mixed bag, I mean it.                                           All in all, as an OC or HC in almost two decades, Mike Bobo has won one SEC Championship (2024) for Georgia and didn’t win anything at Colorado State, period. Kirby Smart changed the expectations for this football program, plain and simple. If you want to say Bobo is trending in the right direction, fine. I’ll give you that, but how many excuses and how many missed opportunities is this fanbase and more importantly, Kirby Smart,willing to endure? Go back and watch the two-year clinic Todd Monken put on during our back-to-back title runs. Yes, before you say it, UGA had an unprecedented number of freak athletes on those rosters which are currently demoralizing competition NFL offenses and defenses. I’m referring to Bobo’s play-calling specifically. I also think it’s disingenuous not to give Bobo credit for his aptitude to recruit and develop QB’s which is a must in college FB in any era, but play-calling is about feel, matchup hunting, and breaking tendencies against defenses that study every concept you run. The X’s and O’s are far more complicated than the summation I’m about to give and I understand that.

To me the biggest difference between Monken and Bobo is how Monken would attack defenses vertically with the characteristics mentioned above while using horizontal movement to distract defenses. Youtube highlights of George Pickens, AD Mitchell, Ladd McConkey, and Brock Bowers catching deep passes while James Cook and Kenny Mcintosh embarrass linebackers on seam, angle, and wheel routes makes me happier than it should, honestly. Meanwhile, Bobo is out here running jet sweeps and throwing bubble routes (among other concepts behind or near the LOS) that are often predictable during a run, run- pass, 3-and-out, and rarely even pressure the first-down marker on critical drives.

During this year’s SEC media day when Georgia was in town, I actually heard one of the better arguments explaining Bobo’s success or lack thereof during his time at UGA. It came from former Georgia TE Ben Watson. He explained how different it can be for an OC to coach under an offensive mind (Mark Richt) vs. a defensive mind in Kirby. We know CKS wants his OC’s to win possession, play field position, and keep the defense fresh. Maybe this limits how aggressive Bobo can be, and Lord knows if Bobo had some of these defenses back in the day he would have more hardware in the trophy case. Somehow Monken got it done, but let’s not go backwards here. At the end of the day Bobo has yet to deliver, but an SEC crown is a great start in year two of his 2nd stint as OC. 

This year, 2025 will be another opportunity for Bobo to silence the critics (like me), he has a deep and talented offense that should outperform projections. In the coaching business any deficiencies of the offense/defense fall on the coordinators whether it is concepts, position coaches, player execution, or results. When the OC or the DC struggles, that falls on the head coach who hired them. Just ask Mark Richt. Bobo may have been the best man at Kirby Smart’s wedding, but that doesn’t mean Dawgnation should accept him as a pallbearer should there be a funeral.              

   Go Dawgs