Richt's record at developing QBs completely surpasses what Dabo will likely ever do.
I have to wonder WTF is wrong with people where they have to keep grinding on Richt.
You are nuts if you believe that.
In fifteen years, Richt produced David Greene, D.J. Shockley, Matt Stafford, Aaron Murray and a bunch of guys who weren't very good.
Issue part 1: Greene and Shockley weren't Richt recruits.
Issue part 2: Since Richt has relied on his on recruiting for the QB position, he has had more misses (Bauta, Lambert, Mason, Joe Tereshinski, Joe Cox) than hits. In other words, take away one guy who played 3 years and another guy who was a 4 year starter (and in both cases guys Stafford and Murray were thrown in too early because no one else was good enough) and you had real problems at that position.
Issue 3: Dabo Swinney has only been head coach since 2008. In that time he has had a QB that has already accomplished more than David Greene did in that Boyd won 1 conference title (like Greene), played in two major bowl games (Greene played in 1) and won 1 against an elite team (the Ohio State team that won a national title the next season where Greene's Sugar Bowl was against a 9-5 FSU team playing a third string QB - and during the game actually started playing their WR at QB).
Swinney's current QB, Watson, likely won't be the #1 overall pick like Matt Stafford because he is a 6'1" (maybe he will be 6'2" by then) dual threat guy, but in winning the ACC, leading an undefeated regular season and getting the team into the playoff he has already done more for his program than Stafford ever did. (And more than Murray, Greene, Shockley etc. ever did).
Swinney's first QB, Kyle Parker, led Clemson to a 9-4 and then a 6-7 season in his freshmen and sophomore years. Then he lost the job to Tajh Boyd, left to play baseball and is now a reserve left fielder for the Colorado Rockies. That is, er, equivalent to anything that a UGA QB other than Stafford, Shockley and Greene accomplished under Richt (either winning the SEC or playing in a BCS bowl; Parker did neither and the same goes for the Murray/Cox/Tereshinksi/Lambert/Mason contingent).
Another thing: after hiring Chad Morris and replacing Morris with his pair of co-coordinators (who have actually put in a better system than Morris, as Clemson now has a 1000 yard rusher in Wayne Gallman where under Morris Clemson would live and die by the pass Big 12 style) Clemson has a real offensive system that they use to recruit and develop QBs and the players around them. And it only took Dabo 3-4 years to figure that out and put it in. By contrast, Richt never developed a consistent system or identity on offense in the 15 years he was at UGA.
For the future? In this recruiting class, Clemson has Zerrick Cooper, who is not a 5 star guy like Watson but he is a good dual threat QB and he is from Georgia. In the last recruiting class, Clemson bagged Kelly Bryant, who also is not rated as high as Watson, but is taller (6'4"), a dual threat guy from South Carolina and was the #11 QB in the country. See the pattern? Clemson recruits dual threat QBs from South Carolina and north Georgia; guys who they can extensively scout IN PERSON by sending members of their coaching staff to their games because they are only recruiting QBs that live within a few hours of the South Carolina campus. Not guys like Faton Bauta, Christian LeMay, Logan Gray, Joe Cox and Hutson Mason who wind up at UGA with high recruiting rankings but noodle arms, overrated speed and/or an inability to pick up the offense.
Add it all up and UGA only produced 3 QBs who really ever did anything special under Richt; 2 of those guys Richt didn't recruit. With Boyd and Watson (two guys that Swinney DID recruit; the former of whom actually won the job over a guy that the previous head coach ahd recruited!) in place, Swinney has already secured 2 conference titles, won a major bowl game and gotten into the national championship playoff (and under the BCS, the title game would be between Clemson and Alabama by the way. Even under the old system, the game would have been between Clemson and Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, with Oklahoma playing Notre Dame in the Orange and Stanford and Michigan State in the Rose hoping for an Alabama "upset" to give them a shot at a shared title. Ah, those were the days ...). So basically, Swinney's 3 QBs have already done more than UGA's 6 under Richt, and anything extra that either his current QB or any of his subsequent QBs accomplish will merely widen the gap.
