Offseason of change leaves Georgetown with a number of questions

Just a few months ago, Georgetown fans were applauding the team for the best season ever on the football field.

The Bulldogs won nine games, besting the previous single-season record spanning every other season since Winyah and Howard high schools combined to form it in 1982. And when paired with the eight wins from 2014, Georgetown had topped its best two-year stretch in school history by two full victories.

There was a second-place region finish and then two playoff wins. Maybe it wasn’t enough.

“Some of the games we lost last year, we weren’t supposed to lose. We beat ourselves,” linebacker Sheldon Billings said. “But things don’t always go as expected.”

How quickly those expectations have changed.

The longtime Bulldogs faithful were tested with 20 losing seasons between 1982 and 2009, the year before Bradley Adams arrived on campus and started a rise never been seen at the school. And despite Adams’ departure for Union County in the spring, the confidence has continued under first-year coach Ken Cribb. After developing Hemingway into one of the state’s best small programs and then serving as the defensive coordinator for one season at Georgetown, Cribb is now in charge of keeping the momentum rolling.

“We’ve got some good kids over here,” Cribb said. “They work hard, and they want to win.”

But?

“We lost a lot of talent from that team,” he continued.

Maybe just as noticeable than the coaching change is the departure of quarterback Jarvis Brown, arguably a top-five player ever at Georgetown. Cribb compared Brown’s run with Adams to that of his with Jabril Solomon at Hemingway, saying those two standouts could make a coach look very smart in a hurry by allowing them to do what they do best.

Losing Brown, though, also puts Cribb’s defense-first approach to the game on the front-burner. And that’s where the Bulldogs’ may truly earn their keep this year.

On defense, the Bulldogs lost their top three tacklers from a year ago, as well as top-flight defensive back Cavonte Gamble, but a slew of Bulldogs will be back after impressive seasons. That includes linebackers Sheldon Billings (79 tackles, 8.5 sacks) and Shammond Holmes (65, six) and defensive lineman Zaire Baron (74, 11).

Those three seniors immediately become the nucleus of a unit trying to replicate last year’s production, specifically the 21 points per game the defense allowed against a strong schedule.

Cribb will make the unit his own by mixing up coverages and fronts, attempting to get the most out of his players during his first year running the show.

“We expect a lot of things out of Zaire and our [defensive line],” Cribb said. “Sheldon’s had a really good summer. Our secondary has gotten a lot better; it has come along. We’re definitely going to lean on our defense to keep us in games, and hopefully win some games for us.”

After all, that’s the new norm at Georgetown.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 8:46 PM with the headline "Offseason of change leaves Georgetown with a number of questions."