Little bit of new blood on Valentine's Day for UGA defense

With just a few days to go before Valentine’s Day, it may be a good time to look and see what the heart of the 2011 Georgia Bulldog football team will be. The common thought would be the quarterback Aaron Murray, but I will throw a curveball at you and say that the heart of the 2011 team will be the new faces on defense.
As good as Murray was last year as a freshman and as good as Mark Richt is hoping Isaiah Crowell will be, the team will only improve on its win total if the defense actually stops people this year. Three fresh faces in particular will be crucial if the defense is to improve on what happened last season. And interestingly enough, I don’t have incoming freshman Ray Drew among my three.
The first new face that will help Georgia get better is John Jenkins. The defensive line has already gotten better with Jenkins just agreeing to come to Athens as defensive coordinator Todd Grantham can go ahead and PEN (not pencil, but pen. Sharpie even) in Jenkins to the Nose spot and slide DeAngelo Tyson out to defensive end. Tyson was overmatched on the inside and with Jenkins on campus, Justin Anderson can move back to offense. At 6’4, 340 pounds, Jenkins should be the ideal space-eater that Cody was for Alabama for Nick Saban’s two straight trips to the Georgia Dome. Suddenly with a giant at the Nose, the linebackers should be able to fly to the ball carrier, needing to shed just a fullback instead of a big offensive lineman and that will help out everybody in the Red & Black.
One of those linebackers is our next new face: Jarvis Jones. The former Carver-Columbus (GA) standout starred at USC before an injury ended his Trojan career. After redshirting last season, Jones is chomping at the bit to get going in Athens. One has to think Jones will slide right in at the outside linebacker spot left open by Justin Houston’s leaving for the NFL. Jones was all-world coming out of high school and his time in Los Angeles was certainly special while he was on the field. He appeared to be the next great USC linebacker before Pete Carroll left and Jones suffered the neck injury. Now he’ll have a chance to get after the quarterback while also being able to drop into coverage better than Houston ever did last year in the same spot.
Richard Samuel is the last new face and while he isn’t new to the team, he IS new to the defensive side of the ball. In high school at Cass (GA) Samuel was known as “The Animal” for his aggressiveness as a linebacker, but Samuel chose to play tailback his first two years in Athens. Now after a redshirt year, Bulldog Nation will hope The Animal is back and manning one of the ILB spots beside Christian Robinson, back after starting at ILB in 2010.
The defense will be helped by Ogletree and Boykin returning in the secondary, but these three new faces will certainly be the heart of the defense. If these guys can find their footing early, the defense will turn around and Georgia’s record will be on the correct side of .500.