ATHENS — Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo knows that every year is different in Athens.
Last year, he was able to lean on Zachariah Branch as the focal point of the offense.
With Branch now an Atlanta Falcon, Georgia’s offense will have to look different.
But this time around, Bobo has an experienced quarterback to work with in Gunner Stockton, along with a talented rushing offense.
Bobo knows he’ll have to find a number of answers for what opposing defenses throw at him.
The Georgia offensive coordinator took questions for over 15 minutes on Wednesday to share his thoughts on the outlook of the Georgia offense for this season.
Below is a full transcript of his remarks.
Mike Bobo shares stern message with Georgia quarterbacks
On the keys to making this offense more explosive this year…
“It comes down to a lot of things. Identifying playmakers that make plays. We call it competitive excellence. When the opportunity presents itself to make a play, make those plays. A lot of times you can’t script those in camp. You’re installing, offense is installing, defense is installing, but opportunities are going to come your way. When that opportunity comes, you make that play for the offense to be explosive. But a lot of things go into that, not just playmakers. We’ve got to protect. We’ve got to see things better at the quarterback position. I think all of that has been improving since the spring the older we’re becoming at that position. Then being more aggressive at times to push the ball down the field. We had a young, first-year starter last year at quarterback, and we wanted to protect him some with a run game and some easy outlets to Zach Branch. I think the more he matures, the more we’ll be able to evolve as an offense.”
On adding Tre Shields as a late addition...
“Tre, from right up the road, Coach Thacker, Andrew Thacker, has a relationship with those coaches and actually found out about him and sent us some film. We evaluated the film, myself, Coach Coley, and Coach Smart, and decided to give him an opportunity. We’re glad he’s here. He’s a hard-working young man. He’s young. He didn’t get to go through the spring, so he’s still learning. I’m glad he’s a Bulldog.
On the chances of playing another quarterback other than Gunner this season...
“Those opportunities are happening right now. The way we treat, practices for us are like games. We have two big scrimmages in our stadium, and we feel like when we scrimmage, we’re going against one of the best defenses in the country in our defense, and they get a chance on a daily basis to practice against those. So those guys are being evaluated right now, and all are doing a good job. They’ve given multiple opportunities, but those two scrimmages will be big for those young quarterbacks this year.”
On replacing Zachariah Branch’s production...
“It’s a good question. We lost a lot of production. A lot of that production was Zachariah Branch. We lost a lot of experience last year with some skill players, the four receivers and the tight end. That’s what we’re in the midst of doing right now, trying to find out who we are, the best way for us to move the ball offensively, to control the game, to be explosive. We’re in a competition for that. It’s not just necessarily the receiver position. It’s not just the tight end position. It’s trying to figure out a balance of what we do best as an offense, what our quarterbacks do best as an offense, and where we’re going to tailor who and how we’re going to try to get touches to those people. I think every year, offensively, you’re a little bit different. I think everybody in this room knows we want to run the ball here. You’ve got to be able to run the ball, and you’ve got to be able to stop the run. That method of winning football games is never going to change here at the University of Georgia under Coach Smart. But as an offense, besides running the ball, how are we going to be explosive? Who’s going to get those touches? That’s our job as coaches to figure that out.”
On what he’s seen from some of the up and comers at receiver...
“Like I mentioned, we lost a lot of guys in the receiver room. Everybody talks about Zach and the 80-something catches, but you lose Dillon Bell, Noah Thomas, Colbie Young, a lot of experience. We’ve got talented guys at the University of Georgia, but they’re young. But they’ve got opportunity. Those touches have to go somewhere. They’re doing a good job of competing. I really don’t want to single out one guy. We’ve finished six practices. We’ve got a day where it’s just meetings today, but we have two more before a big scrimmage. Not that the scrimmages are the end-all, be-all. It’s a collective work, but we’re working toward that scrimmage for those guys to go out and make them in more game-like situations. But those guys have done a good job of competing, and I like that there’s good competition in that room.”
On Gunner Stockton taking more chances down the field and how he’s doing knowing when to do that...
“Well, I think it’s experience. I think it’s having confidence in what you see, and throwing on time tells you a lot as a quarterback. But you can’t be so risk averse you’re afraid to push the ball down the field. Now, knock on wood, a really good thing about Gunner is that he didn’t turn the football over a lot, which is huge. When you push the ball downfield and you’re a little more aggressive, sometimes turnovers happen. So there’s that fine line.
“Through spring practice and these six practices, we’ve talked about pushing the ball downfield, being aggressive, and you learn what you can and can’t do. Right before I came in here, we were watching NFL scrambles of guys making plays, scrambling the pocket, keeping their eyes downfield. And Josh Allen makes this unbelievable throw. And my quote in there to those guys was, ‘Don’t overestimate your ability. You’re not Josh Allen. You can’t make that throw.’ So you gotta know what you can and can’t do.
“And there are chances for explosives on broken plays. Gunner had a lot of those last year on broken plays where he scrambled and made plays. But sometimes he didn’t give enough space between him and the defender and took some wicked shots. And a lot of that’s on Gunner. I told him that: ‘A lot of that’s on you.’ That’s who he is to some extent. He’s gonna, to the last minute, hold onto that ball to try to make a play. And we’ve been working on trying to extend plays and be a little safer in and out of the pocket.
“And he’s done a good job of that. And it’s something we’re working on hard with him. Day in and day out, we’re getting examples of that. We’ve tried to create more scrambles in practice, and then I’ve tried to call more plays where we can push the ball downfield. Now, sometimes we call that play, and they play a coverage, and the right play is to check it down to the back. And we gotta do that too as a quarterback.”
On what he’s seen of Stockton having more confidence going into Year 2 as the starter...
“Well, I mean, in one experience. The more a guy plays, the more guys get repetition, the more confident he’s gonna feel in that position. The thing I love about Gunner, we all know his toughness. We see that toughness, but this guy never thinks he’s arrived. He’s always willing to listen. He’s always willing to take coaching, whether it’s in a field room or sometimes it’s hard coaching on the field. He’s not sensitive. He wants to do what’s best for the team, and what’s best for the team. It might be him improving in some ways, and he’s worked hard on the areas that we, Coach Streeter and myself, have asked him to work on, and he’s continued to work on.
“It’s never a why? Why we do this? It’s how can I help the team be better? And he knows that he needs to [play better] — we all need to play better and coach better on certain situations, and there’s always room for improvement. And he’s always constantly, every day, striving to improve as a player.”
On if he plans on keeping the mustache after fall camp...
“Mine doesn’t look as good as yours, okay? No, actually, the quarterbacks were doing it, and right — I think it was the last weekend before camp, my other son, Jake, said, ‘Hey, we’re growing a mustache for camp.’ And I hadn’t shaved cuz we’re on vacation, so I left the mustache. But after camp, I think I’m shaving it. They said I’m soft if I was gonna shave it before I came in here today, so I didn’t shave it. I thought about it.”
On getting more out of the tight ends...
“More out of the tight ends, okay? That kinda goes back to trying to figure out what our identity is this year. And we lost a lot of experience in that receiver room. We’ve got a little bit more experience coming back in the tight end room. You’re constantly in the competition to see if you’re in more 11 personnel, more 12 personnel, what best fits us each game going in.
“But we have more experience there. We’ve got guys that have played some football in Lawson Luckie. Reddell got a little action last year. The two young freshmen played a little bit last year. So I feel good about that room because we’ve got some depth and we have good competition. And when you have depth and good competition, those guys usually find their way on the field.”
On featuring different skill sets...
“I think a little bit of both. I think you look at what you’ve got coming back and you self-scout yourself. And then you do studies of other teams and how they’ve used personnel and personnel groupings and that stuff that we did in the offseason. Different ways to use tight ends out of different personnel groupings. Different ways to get guys touches. You do all kind of studies. And then things kind of evolve through fall camp. Who emerges? Is there a young guy that emerges? These guys are a little bit better than you thought. We’re more explosive in this personnel group. So it’s an evolving thing that as a coach, you’re trying to find the right mixture of who to put on the field and when. And try to help your team get first downs and be explosive. But I do think us at Georgia, we have a big volume of offense. We do a lot of things offensively and we don’t carry all those things in one game. But our volume allows us to be multiple from game to game and how we want to attack somebody. And when you have multiple positions, whether it’s tight end receivers or backs, and you’ve got good depth at all those, it allows you to do more things.”
On if Georgia needs a go-to guy...
“I mean, I think there’s a lot of different ways to move the ball, Seth. There’s a lot of different ways to be explosive. But I think anytime you’ve got a guy that the guys are constantly worried about on the defensive side, I think it allows you to do more things off of that. But over the years, our offense here, since I’ve been here or previous, it’s always the thing, it runs through the quarterback sometimes. And if they’re good at distributing, the defense has to defend everybody. You might have that one guy that they put a little more attention to, but the quarterback does the right thing. You’ve got players at all these positions that you talked about, you gotta trust them to go make that, go make plays. And I think when you can do things, do a lot of different things well, I think you’ve got a chance to be real successful. Now last year, as I said earlier, we had a first year quarterback. And a lot of what we did was to protect him and allow him to get confidence at the run game, which is always gonna help a quarterback, security blanket and Zach Branch and some of these screens and throws off of run game RPOs helped him gain confidence. And whereas he gained confidence, I thought he started to play better the later we got in the season.”
On how the 2025 wide receivers are coming along...
“But those are all the guys that were true freshmen last year that you mentioned, the class of Thomas, Talyn, Tyler, Blackshear, and Wiley. And these guys are talented guys, and they’re out there right now competing for a position to get in the rotation and get opportunities. And it goes back to what I said, one of the first or second questions, we’re looking for guys that when opportunity comes, they have that competitive excellence that they can make that play. And it’s not just sitting down in the field, it might be turning into a hitch into an explosive play. And then we’ve signed some guys this year. So there’s not really one guy that I wanna single out that, like Seth said, who’s that guy? I mean, that’s gonna happen over time, what we play football and scrimmage and who’s gonna emerge. But there’s gonna be a lot of opportunities for those guys, for one of those guys to be one of those guys that are gonna get the ball thrown to them on multiple occasions.”
On the ability to communicate with quarterbacks...
“Yeah, it allows you to, sometimes, first question, the earpiece. There were little reminders with Gunner before I might say the play, the situation and what we’re thinking here. We’re not, sometimes we operate fast and are able to talk to him while he’s at the line like some of that. But we’re a no-huddle, but we’re not a fast no-huddle, so sometimes it gets below 15. So my talks to him have to be a little bit before I give the play. But when we are going faster, he’s at the line, I’m able to talk to him a little bit. But these guys prepare very well. Sometimes you don’t wanna confuse them, but you wanna give them little reminders.”
On the usage of Ipads on the sideline...
“As far as the iPads, I think when you look at those, you get immediate feedback after every drive how the teams are playing. You formationally down a distance, so you’re able to make adjustments or do a little bit something different, a lot quicker than in years past. A lot of times it might be, hey, I have to wait till halftime, we gotta draw it up, we gotta talk about it. Now you’re able to see it and you’re able to communicate it, either from the sideline to the booth or the booth to the sideline. And then you’re seeing more and more teams. You got the teams that go fast and talk to the guy. Then you got the teams, you see more teams huddling. I think Indiana, they might have huddled every play. They’re breaking that huddle in less than 15 seconds, so that defensive coach can’t talk to their guy on the field about the formation of what we wanna run here. So you’re seeing kind of two different sides, and we kinda wanna be multiple and do it all.”
