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Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

Zeier tells fans to maintain faith in Richt, Bulldogs

Eric Zeier spent a football career meeting challenges and beating them.

He was told his was too short, too slow and didn’t have a strong enough arm to be any kind of quarterback, yet he still owns scores of passing records in the SEC and at Georgia and became an NFL draft pick.

Zeier had another challenge Monday night as the Bulldogs’ radio analyst, and that was to speak to a crowd that included a high number of Georgia fans and keep preaching the Georgia gospel.

“When you have the number of turnovers we’ve had without getting any takeaways, when you have the number of penalties we’ve had, when you go to Tennessee and really get soundly beaten across the board and the same thing with Florida, it raises some questions,” Zeier said before speaking to the Macon Touchdown Club. “I’ll tell you what. We need to see some improvement because the talk right now is as high-pitch as I’ve ever heard it.”

Zeier, who finished at Georgia in 1994, is in his second full season in the booth for the Bulldogs during a season where they are at .500 or less after eight games for the first time since a 3-5 start in Jim Donnan’s first season in 1996.

“I think what’s surprising a little bit is in a year when you lost Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno and a lot of other guys that were good (that) the criticism is as loud as it is,” Zeier said. “All of a sudden you lose to Florida, you get beat by Tennessee — which looks to be on the (upswing) — and the reality of that starts to set in and the venom starts to flow a little bit.

“It’s just the way it’s happened that’s creating a lot of the criticism.”

Zeier said not to write off Mark Richt, and he disagreed with criticism of the head coach’s demeanor. After all, Zeier played for Tony Dungy at Tampa Bay.

“All of the same things were said,” Zeier said. “He didn’t show enough emotion, wasn’t passionate enough, too nice of a guy. But look what Tony Dungy has done.

“Those first five or six years, (Richt) put the program back to where it was in the top 10 in the country. This year is a down year, but for him to run around and get in people’s face isn’t the right way to do it.”

Zeier did try to lighten things up at the start at the expense of the team that vanquished Georgia on Saturday, Florida. He recalled being in the booth in Jacksonville, where the seating is 50-50 for Georgia and Florida.

“We had to look down onto the most God-awful blue and orange sea of people you’ve ever seen,” Zeier said. “The beautiful people in the red and black were on the other side of the stadium.”

As for the black helmets, mockingly referred to the past few days as belonging to Grambling State: “I didn’t even realize it until about a quarter and a half into the game because I was distracted by all the jean shorts and mullets, again, with all the Florida fans right in front of us.”

Even a 24-point loss doesn’t limit the smack talk in the rivalry.

Zeier said he’s interested to see how Georgia reacts to adversity nobody on the staff or team has faced since they arrived in Athens. It was similar to what he addressed during his career.

“Will we allow challenges to become our excuses?” he said. “Will we start making those excuses to start justifying our position? Will this Georgia team do just that?

“Georgia players right now are hearing it every single day: ‘you can’t win, because you don’t have Knowshon, you don’t have Matthew Stafford, what can you do? You’re not running the right schemes.’

“It’s an attitude that will beat you every single time, when you start making excuses to justify your position.”

He said fans shouldn’t write the season off and that he’s intrigued to see what the Bulldogs are made of, starting this week against Tennessee Tech. He has expectations.

“Will they get out of their comfort zone? Will they not make excuses for where they are now?” he said. “Through challenge, through adversity comes unbelievable opportunity. There will be one player or a group of players that emerge from the challenges they’re going through right now and set the stage for years to come.”