Georgia offensive line up for Joe Moore Award as semifinalist
The Joe Moore Award, given annually to the top offensive line unit in all of College Football, announced its group of semifinalists of Tuesday with the Georgia Bulldogs being included. Other semifinalists are: Air Force, Illinois, Michigan, Ole Miss, Oregon, Tennessee, UCLA and USC.
“There is a noticeable improvement in O-line play this season as compared to what we saw last year,” Cole Cubelic, lead sideline analyst for the SEC Network and the Chairman of the Joe Moore Award voting committee, said in a statement released by the Joe Moore Award. “It’s been a pleasure to watch the effort and resilience of these O-lines over the course of the season, especially since many of them have really risen to the challenge over the last couple of weeks.”
Through 10 games this season, Georgia has allowed just seven sacks on the season, fewest in the SEC. It’s also tied for third-least in the country. And while an offensive line’s ability to protect the quarterback isn’t the only indicator of their success, it sure is a good one.
Georgia’s also been able to run the ball pretty well all season long. The Bulldogs are averaging 192.5 yards per game on the ground with four showings over the 200-yard mark including a 292-yard day against Auburn. Georgia has 32 touchdowns on the ground, due in some part to an abnormally large amount of receivers being brought down inside the 5-yard-line, but the ability to punch it in shouldn’t be overlooked. Georgia’s 32 rushing touchdowns in tied for most in the country alongside fellow Joe Moore Award semifinalist Tennessee.
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Georgia’s offensive line is under the direction of Stacey Searels who joined the program over the offseason. Searels has previously coached as Georgia under Mark Richt from 2007 to 2010 while also spending time in his coaching career at Auburn, Appalachian State, Cincinnati, LSU, Texas, Virginia Tech, Miami and North Carolina. Searels inherited a room that was replacing a pair of starters selected in the 2022 NFL Draft and had ongoing position battles elsewhere. The Bulldogs have gone with the starting lineup of Broderick Jones, Xavier Truss, Sedrick Van Pran, Tate Ratledge and Warren McClendon when everybody’s been healthy, but Devin Willock, Amarius Mims and Warren Ericson have contributed too.
“I think they’re playing with more confidence,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said about the offensive line just last week. “They’re focused. There is a lot of depth there. They’ve played well, and I think they’ve played well through the year. I think the best is still ahead of them, and I think we can still get better with our communication and how we go about things. The physicality they play with has been good … I don’t know what the questions are directed at, because I feel like the Oregon game was one of their best games, the last game (Tennessee) was one of the best games. They’ve played really consistent to me. Missouri might be the one outlier, but we had some runs in Missouri that spit out and coughed up the ball and lost a little momentum, but outside of that, I think they played really well, so I think they continue to improve.”
Finalists for the award will be named on Tuesday, December 6th with the eventual winning being recognized during a surprise on the winning unit’s campus at a time to be determined by the school’s schedule.
