Mike Bobo helping Georgia offense as 'sounding board' for Todd Monken

Georgia added former Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator Mike Bobo to the staff this offseason, pairing him with a group of offensive assistants that have coordinating experience. Obviously Todd Monken is in charge on that side of the ball, but Bobo, a former offensive coordinator at Georgia, South Carolina and Auburn as well as a head coaching stint at Colorado State, along with the likes of offensive quality control staffer Buster Faulkner (former Arkansas State, Middle Tennessee State, Murray State and Southern Miss offensive coordinator), and wide receivers coach Bryan McClendon (former South Carolina offensive coordinator) help Monken make decisions.

“Well first of all he is an unbelievable sounding board, like any other experienced coach that we bring in,” Monken said of Bobo on Thursday. “Whether it was last year, defensively with Will Muschamp or with us Buster Faulkner, anybody you bring in is a sounding board. You ask them, ‘What have you done? Are we doing everything in our power to be successful?’ During walk-throughs, I asked him today – we’re working on pressures and how we are going to adjust to them. I walked right over to him and said okay, ‘What are we missing? Is there anything that you guys did that was different? Is there any way of how you walked through in the past? Are we utilizing every opportunity to be successful?’ He’s been great, just like with Buster or anybody that has done it as long as he’s done it.”

“In some ways, I’m sure he’s enjoying being back here, but there are other ways where it’s like maybe I wouldn’t do it that way,” he continued. “But he’s been awesome. He’s been awesome as a sounding board and I want to continue that in what we do offensively. We had a little bit of a shorter off-season with guys coming in, so we haven’t had as much time to really dive into certain aspects of it. Everybody that you have in your organization has to have value. Well, where is their value? Where is their unique value? Is it recruiting, player development, or offensive game planning? Whatever that is, if they don’t have an elite trait that adds to it, they have to go. Somewhere in that, they have to have some reason why they are in our building. He adds tremendous value in terms of being a sounding board for us.”

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart spoke about the addition of Mike Bobo back in the spring.

“There is a lot of value in the experiences he’s had,” Smart said. “He’s been a head coach. He’s been an offensive coordinator in our conference. He knows our conference. The five hour radius we recruit in, he’s extremely versed. He has a ton of relationship value. As far as his role, that’ll play out as we go along.”

Mike Bobo played quarterback for the Bulldogs from 1993 to 1997, completing 199 of 306 passes in his senior year for 2,751 yards and 19 touchdowns. After his playing days were done, Bobo came on as a graduate assistant under coach Jim Donnan before moving up in the coaching rankings to a quarterbacks coaching job at Jacksonville State. One year later, it was back to Athens under newly hired Mark Richt in that same role.

Bobo was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2007 and worked with the likes of Matthew Stafford and Aaron Murray. A finalist for the Broyles Award in 2012, Bobo’s Georgia offense averaged 37.8 points per game. In his final season, the 2014 Bulldogs’ offense finished as the highest scoring unit in program history, putting up 41.3 points per game.

Bobo left Georgia for his first head coaching job at Colorado State in 2015 where he served as the point person for five seasons. He went 7-6 each of his first three seasons, falling in the Arizona, Famous Idaho Potato and New Mexico bowls respectively. Things went downhill from there though, finishing 3-9 and 4-8 in 2018 and 2019 which led to Bobo and Colorado State mutually parting ways.

Since leaving Colorado State, Bobo worked under now-Georgia defensive assistant Will Muschamp as the offensive coordinator at South Carolina in 2020 before joining the new staff under Bryan Harsin at Auburn. Muschamp was fired during the 2020 season and Bobo took over as the interim head coach. He was retained for the 2021 season by Shane Beamer, also a former Georgia assistant, but decided to go to Auburn instead. Bobo was relieved of his duties with the Tigers after just one year on the job.