As a group, Georgia fans are veterans at this point of existential crises over Mark Richt’s future as head coach, and of navigating the competing factions that come with them. On the heels of an 0-2 start, though, there’s no disagreement on the basic premise: The program is spiraling in the wrong direction, and have been for a long time.

Since opening atop the preseason polls in 2008, the Bulldogs have progressively fallen out of the top 10, then out of the polls altogether, then below .500 for the first time in 15 years. They’ve lost nine of their last ten against ranked opponents. At this rate, they’re going to be bowl-less for the holidays this winter, at which point the time for debate will be long passed.

Still, the other half of the equation is more elusive: How in the world did they get here? Richt is still the same guy who delivered two SEC championships and five top-10 finishes in six years from 2002-07. Recruiting is still good. (The latest recruiting class, arguably the most hyped of Richt’s tenure, is the fifth in six years ranked among Rivals’ top 10 incoming classes nationally.) The NFL remains very interested. (At least four Bulldogs have gone in the draft every single year since 2001, including six from the 2010 team earlier this year.) If it’s not talent, then what?

Are we really going to be forced to start talking about things like “leadership”?

… It was the team leadership through the last few years that most concerned Kelin Johnson, the defensive captain and vocal leader of the 2007 squad.

“One of the hardest things is walking around this city and to be around these players and to see some of them taking things for granted, some of the guys who are just happy to put the ‘G’ on or to wear a Georgia football shirt downtown to pick up women,” Johnson said. “They want to put a ‘G’ on so people will recognize them. So what? The ‘G’ doesn’t make you. As soon as these players realize the ‘G’ doesn’t make the person, the person makes the ‘G,’ that’s how they know Georgia’s so much better than everybody else.”

Well, maybe. One this side of the business, though, intangibles like “leadership” fall squarely into the category of Known Unknowns: They’re impossible to assess, and may not matter nearly as much as everyone says they do. Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunately, that also goes for the best guess by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Chip Towers, who ties the beginning of the Bulldogs’ decline to Richt’s decision to give up play-calling day-to-day oversight of the offense circa 2007 — not because of the effect it had on the offense, but because of the effect it had on Richt, whatever that is:

Think about that for a minute. For 11 years before Richt came to Georgia, he was quarterbacks coach and/or offensive coordinator at Florida State, which happened to finish in the Top 5 nationally every one of those years. For the majority of that time, he was game-planning and play-calling for the Seminoles. Then he comes to Georgia in December of 2000 and, after… calling the national championship game with FSU, he hits the recruiting trail for the Bulldogs and assumes the same offensive responsibilities at UGA in addition to being head coach.

That goes on through the 2006 season, when he finally entrusts the Xs and Os to somebody else. It was an exhausting run, I’m sure.

But again, more than not calling all the offensive shots, this represented a profound change in how Richt went about his business, both on a weekly and daily basis all the way down to game management. That must have had some sort of effect on the way things have gone.

What that effect is, Towers can’t say. As he says, though, the offense itself hasn’t suffered at all in Richt’s absence — in fact, scoring, total offense and pass efficiency averages from 2008-10 were slightly better than the averages in the salad days, and are already on a similar pace through the first two games this year. Saturday’s 436-yard, 42-point outburst against South Carolina was UGA’s sixth 40-point effort in its last eight games.

Which is brings us to the old standby: The defense. Back in the days when no one could imagine the words “Mark Richt” and “hot seat” appearing in the same sentence, the go-to scapegoat was defensive coordinator Willie Martinez, who was promoted in 2005 to oversee a unit that had finished in the top 15 nationally in both scoring and total defense three years in a row under predecessor Brian Van Gorder. In Martinez’s first three years, the D finished in the top 20 on both counts all three years. Surprise: Those six seasons produced five outright or shared division titles, five top-10 finishes and two SEC championships.

And in the three seasons hence? With virtually identical numbers from the offense, the Bulldogs have slid into the bottom half of the SEC statistically and have given up at least 35 points 13 times in a little over three years. That trend hasn’t reversed itself under Martinez’s replacement, Todd Grantham, whose second is off to an even worse start than his first. At the moment, there is no one on the defense who resembles a star or a consistent impact player.

The good news for the moment is that the Bulldogs get an easy addition to the win column this weekend — we’ll go ahead that Coastal Carolina is no upset threat, because it’s all over but the torch-and-pitchfork raid on Richt’s house if it is — ahead of a make-or-break stretch against Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Tennessee. Those three games will decide whether Richt still has a chance to lift himself out of the fire against rivals Florida, Auburn and Georgia Tech down the stretch, and after Saturday, it’s a pretty strong bet the offense is up for the job.

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Matt Hinton is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Renewing the annual templates of spring.

I can hear the protests of Florida and Texas fans already, and maybe a cough or two from LSU. But the fact is, when it comes to experienced, incumbent quarterbacks who appear completely untenable to continue in starting role, they’ve got nothing on UCLA. In fact, the Bruins have spent pretty much the entirety of Rick Neuheisel’s tenure as head coach redefining untenable QB play at a major program. Neuheisel’s first starter, Kevin Craft, set the school record for interceptions in 2008 and had already been relegated to lame duck status by the time coaches handed the reins to redshirt freshman Kevin Prince the following spring. But Prince, too, has spent the last two years in various states of injury and ineffectiveness, twice yielding last year to the equally injured and ineffective Richard Brehaut.

Between them, Prince and Brehaut have attempted 721 passes in 23 starts over two years. But scanning the seven candidates in the Orange County Register’s spring quarterback preview, it seems the real question when the Bruins hit the field isn’t going to be “Why should we bench our veteran QBs for incoming freshman Brett Hundley?” but why not?

The most obvious reason why not: Prince and Brehaut are severely damaged goods after presiding over arguably the most spectacular offensive collapse in UCLA history. The Bruins finished dead last in the Pac-10 in total offense and very nearly last in the entire country in pass efficiency, beating out only Vanderbilt and Buffalo; only the triple-option attacks from the service academies and Georgia Tech passed for fewer yards. The two primary passers combined to serve up 12 interceptions to just nine touchdowns, and failed to lead a single victory when not subsidized by at least 200 yards from a relatively mediocre running game. Beyond them, it was even worse: With Prince (knee), Brehaut (concussion) and third-stringer Nick Crissman (shoulder) all on the bench at Washington on Nov. 18, backups Clayton Tunney and Darius Bell completed twice as many passes to Husky defenders (two) as they did to their own receivers (one) in 11 attempts in the fourth quarter, one of which was returned for a touchdown that iced another nationally televised catastrophe for the Bruin offense.

All that in a year that was supposed to yield at least another modest step toward breaking out of a decade of mediocrity in the shadow of the fading crosstown giant, USC, with the Trojans’ old quarterback guru, Norm Chow, pulling the strings. Honestly, with the veterans starting over under a new offensive coordinator — and one of them (Prince) sitting out the spring to continue rehab — can the new kid really be worse?

Another reason: Hundley is worth the investment. He enrolled in January as the undisputed headliner of an otherwise unremarkable recruiting class, one of the top 100 overall prospects in the entire 2011 class according to Rivals, and the second-best “all-purpose” quarterback, and looking the part at 6-4, 210 pounds. And another: Neuheisel, staring down the chopping block himself after offering up both of his coordinators over the winter, can’t afford to bring anyone along slowly. In 2008, it made sense to ride out the season with Craft rather than blow Prince’s redshirt on a low-stakes transition season that wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. Now that that investment has (apparently) gone bust, he has to hit paydirt — or at least come close enough to convince fans and administrators that paydirt is around the next corner — right now. Hundley seems to be unanimously regarded as the best talent at the position, and if he’s not curling himself into a fetal position in the pocket, he has to get his shot.

If he doesn’t, though, it may be for the same reason. With two years spent on developing Brehaut and three on Prince, Neuheisel has to hope one of them is on the verge of a return on investment as a junior. The head coach is personally taking over the title of quarterbacks coach from Chow, and the new offensive coordinator (Eric Johnson, in from the San Francisco 49ers) can breathe a little fresh air into a meeting room that had to be stale with the stench of Vicodin and failure by last Halloween. If Hundley represents the highest ceiling in terms of potential, Prince and Brehaut may finally be at the points in their career where they offer a significantly higher floor.

The real question, then, is which of the two newcomers makes his presence more immediately felt. If it’s Hundley, Neuheisel can conceivably write off another mediocre record as “growing pains” as long as his new star-in-waiting still looks the part in December. If it’s Johnson, the onus will be squarely on making one of the older guys look like a viable Pac-10 quarterback at last in his pro-style system. If it happens to be both, they’ll go into the fall ready to sink or swim together. But just treading water isn’t an option.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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