“What If” 10
The season is officially a month away. To tie us over, let’s go a little deeper on another what if scenario.
“What if AJ Green hadn’t been suspended for four games in 2010?”
In many ways, 2010 was the beginning of the end for Mark Richt as UGA head coach. He had come close with Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno in 2007 and was favored to win it all in 2008. Instead Nick Saban came into Sanford and ruined our world. 2009 was the Joe Cox year which bridged to the Aaron Murray year in 2010.
Aaron Murray was a redshirt freshman and beat out Zach Mettenberger who would wind up transferring to LSU after a year at junior college. AJ Green was in his third and what would be his final year at UGA. AJ was supposed to be Murray’s security blanket as the new kid got his feet wet. Instead, AJ got suspended for the first four games of the season. It wasn’t going to be an issue in the first game against Louisiana, but in the second game against South Carolina and lost, which began a four game slide.
AJ was back against Colorado, but at that point there wasn’t much to play for. Which is probably why they lost to Colorado. Suprisingly the team went on a little bit of a run winning three in a row and giving Urban Meyer’s last Florida team all it could handle (and I’d like to think the beginning of his heart issues). They lost to Auburn (like everyone did that year) and Nick Fairley tried to kill Aaron Murray. The season ended with a whimper losing the Liberty Bowl to UCF 10–6. AJ would declare for the draft and go fourth overall to the Cincinatti Bengals.
Now, I’m under no delusions Georgia was going to win it all with AJ Green playing all season. Auburn was in a class by themselves with the best player money could buy in Cam Newton. But having him in that Carolina game maybe makes it different. The Arkansas and Colorado games were close and maybe with the confidence of having AJ Green there, maybe Aaron Murray comes of age and helps turn those into victories.
However, the biggest difference would be statistical. One stat every talking head and clickbait artist likes to mention, is how Georgia hasn’t had a WR catch 1,000 yards since Terrence Edwards in 2002. In 2009, AJ Green had 848 yards receiving. AJ would only need 38 yards in each of those four games to break that mark. I think he could’ve handled that. With a very modest 50 yards per game, AJ finishes with 1,048 receiving yards and becomes the name people mention when they bring up the last 1K yard receiver at UGA.
Let’s hope that changes this year and we have at least three on our way to an undefeated national championship season.
