ATHENS — As Mike Bobo walked away from the podium, he let out a laugh.
A reporter wished the Georgia offensive coordinator a merry Christmas, as that is likely the next time Bobo would have to speak to reporters and discuss the Georgia offense publicly.
On Wednesday, Bobo answered questions about his offense entering the critical 2025 season.
Time will tell if the questions he might face in December will be less sharp or critical, given how things unfolded during the 2024 season.
The first question Bobo answered on Wednesday came in regards to slow starts on the offensive side of the ball, a constant complaint regarding last year’s offense.
“Anytime you start a football game, you want to start fast,” Bobo said. “We always talk about starting fast at the beginning of each half and the ending the half well. You go through it, and a lot of it was execution issues, and then sometimes, to be quite frank, it was a little bit being conservative in those situations. And then the other side of it, the teams we played were pretty good on defense and stopped us early in games.
“But that’s been a big point of emphasis of ours.”
Bobo next addressed a question about the offensive line, but he largely deferred to the players in that unit as to what could be improved. One of those players will be Bobo’s son, as Drew Bobo is set to be the team’s starting center.
The Georgia offensive coordinator faced three questions about quarterback Gunner Stockton, who will take over on a more full-time basis in 2025 after stepping in for an injured Carson Beck.
Bobo praised Stockton’s approach from both a preparedness and aggressiveness standpoint.
“He’s a little bit of a gunslinger and working on sometimes everything doesn’t have to be a howitzer, learning how to layer the ball,” Bobo said. “He made a throw yesterday that we pointed out to some things that we had done and trying to just improve on little things every day. What can I improve on?”
Bobo knows he can’t put everything on Stockton’s shoulders, the way it seemed it was for Beck at times last season.
As Kirby Smart reiterated last week, improving the running game will go a long way in quieting the many critics of Bobo.
“I think your identity, everything starts with the run game,” Bobo said. “At any level, you’ve got to be able to run the ball and stop the run. And that’s been an emphasis of ours since we got back from the Sugar Bowl. We started meeting as a staff and meeting with our players.How can we improve in that area?And I’m not just talking about numbers, I’m talking about being efficient.
“A run game is not going to just help you offensively, it’s going to help your quarterback. It’s going to help your defense, it’s going to help all areas.And hopefully our identity will be, we will be efficient in the run game and everything will run through that.”
Bobo gave credit to Nate Frazier for how he’s approached this offseason. He wants to see the sophomore running back not try and always hit the home run, but instead be content to sometimes grind out a double or single.
Frazier was far from the only offensive playmaker to earn praise from Bobo on Wednesday. The strongest comments came in regard to Colbie Young, a player Georgia sorely missed during the final nine games of the season following an October arrest.
Bobo knows the offense has to be better this season. He, better than anyone, understands the demands of the offensive coordinator at Georgia specifically. He’s served in the role for the last two head coaches in Smart and Mark Richt.
For both coaches, he’s built an offense that averaged over 40 points per game. But he’s yet to lead an offense to a national championship, as he was at Auburn in 2021 and served as an offensive analyst at Georgia in 2022 when Todd Monken was the offensive coordinator.
The final question of Bobo’s news conference was about himself. There was a report by former Georgia quarterback Buck Beule in January that Bobo would be stepping down from his role due to health concerns.
That proved to be false, as Bobo is still in charge of the Georgia offense. His current contract runs through 2026 and pays him more than $1.5 million.
He added he feels great, while acknowledging he dealt with a nerve issue in his foot when he was the head coach at Colorado State.
He’s excited about this upcoming season and what the potential for this Georgia team can be.
Even if the Georgia fan base doesn’t share that same mentality.
“I’m probably as excited as I’ve ever been, not to try to prove something,” Bobo said. “I’m excited that college football’s changed a little bit. You’re coming. You’ve got a new team. You’ve got a lot of new guys and we’ve got a lot of young guys. We’re a young football team. And there’s a lot of eager guys that are hungry and hungry to learn and hungry to be here and excited to be here. And that gets you fired up as a coach.”
