I just wanted to remind all of the people who are jumping on the “Let’s fire a coach” bandwagon that the Georgia football team is in a rebuilding year.

Don’t act too quickly and run off a valuable coach to the players, recruits and coaching staff.

What makes this a rebuilding year? Take a look at the numbers and you will quickly figure it out. We had the third youngest team in the Southeastern Conference and the third youngest defense.

Our average player was only a sophomore (2.91 years experience). The only teams with younger players were Arkansas (2.86) and South Carolina (2.8); defensively, only South Carolina and Mississippi State had more youth. Another couple of years in a defensive system will only yield better prepared athletes.

We also must examine the difference between last year’s team and this year’s. In the transition from UGA’s 2008 defense to this year’s, we lost five of our top 11 tacklers. That’s approximately half of our defensive play makers.

Offensively, we lost over 25 percent of our running game when tailback Knowshon Moreno left for the NFL and we lost over 26 percent of our pass attack with the graduation of receiver Mohamed Massaquoi. To make it more difficult for a big season, we lost our number one quarterback, Matthew Stafford -the first overall pick in April’s NFL draft, and his 3,459 passing yards.

All of that equates to one thought: we are in a rebuilding year and you cannot expect a 9-3, or 10-2 season in the SEC with young players who are a year behind in development.

While it is understandable to expect a better season, it is an uphill battle to actually make it a reality. Would I have liked a better season? Yeah no question about it. But you need to look at all of the facts before taking away a guy’s job and bringing in a new coach with a different system. You may jump the gun and regret introducing players to a new defensive system when they were just getting grasp of the current one.

This is a huge decision for UGA football and believe me, they are looking at all the numbers; more than what I have looked at.

I realize that you can put forth the argument that we had bad statistics on defense and that’s the only numbers you need to look at.

However, I guarantee coach Mark Richt and Athletic Director Damon Evans look at more than just the stats. They also take into account how well the coach is doing with the players he has been given.

Though we have players with great potential, they were very young going into this season. That is a fact. They have not fully transitioned into a top-tier SEC caliber defensive system. They still needed the extra year of experience to make it happen.

Think beyond just the stats on defense this year and look ahead to the future. Think about developing players into a system that takes more than two years to grasp fully (and every school in the SEC has a complicated system which takes years of experience to fit into).

Georgia is not the only perennial top 15 team struggling this season. Oklahoma is 7-5 this year, Michigan missed a bowl for the second straight year and Southern California, set records this season for defensive futility.

This is a big decision.

Don’t jump on a bandwagon full of people who are resorting to excuses for a tough season when we are used to being in the talk for the SEC East and more.

People who know the game of football won’t find many of the same on the “Let’s fire a coach” bandwagon.

- Lance Blocker is a junior from Roswell majoring in political science.