Talk about an up and down year…

I’m trying to wrap my brain around The Sporting News‘ 2007 preseason prediction for Georgia and am having a helluva time making everything add up.

Let’s see… TSN predicts that Georgia will lose in upsets to Oklahoma State, Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech – but ranks the Dawgs 14th in the country and has them going to a New Year’s Day bowl game (Capital One) to face Penn State.

I’m not sure that computes.

First, I can’t imagine that the Capital One would take any team with four regular season losses, so I have to assume that TSN expects Georgia to win its remaining games to finish 9-3.

Except that would mean going 7-0 against the rest of the SEC.

Including Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Which would mean that Georgia would hold the tiebreaker against the three if any of them finished 7-1. And only one of them could, since all three would have losses to Georgia.

So doesn’t that add up to Georgia winning the SEC East and playing (but losing) in the SECCG? Would the Cap One take a 9-4 Georgia team?

And how would you feel if Georgia lost to Vandy for the second year in a row (it’s been 50 years since that happened) and Georgia Tech, but beat Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Auburn and Alabama in the same season? Has the latter ever been done before?

By the way, TSN ranks Florida #5. Weird.

What am I missing here?

Advertisement

Factoid of the day…

comes by way of David Ching’s blog:

…  in the last 10 seasons Auburn has had an incumbent senior returning to start at quarterback (which is what Brandon Cox will do), they’re 8-2 against Alabama and 10-0 against Georgia…

Of course, considering Cox’s last game against the Dawgs, he’s got nowhere to go but up.

Attacking the zone

Among other new pieces, ArtofTroy over at USC Trojan Football Analysis has an excellent article posted at his site about how offensive coordinators can go after various forms of zone defenses.

The most interesting part focuses on the role of the QB in getting an offense into the right play and then executing. See if this doesn’t make you think about how Stafford’s freshman season progressed:

Head Coach Rich Rodriquez of West Virginia made a similar point in a different way at a 2007 Nike Coaching clinic. Paraphrasing slightly he noted that all elite QB’s coming out of high school that he sees today can identify the main coverage schemes noted here (and others) and identify where to attack them immediately. Credit the high school coaches and QB camps around the U.S. for making this happen. No single defense in isolation can work any more. Against a good QB it quickly becomes a defensive liability. The defensive coordinators have to resort to mixing coverages and confusing the alignment of the LB’s and secondary at the line of scrimmage. Otherwise the advantage is all with the offense.

In order for a pass attack to succeed nowadays the issues is rarely one of “play calling” ability or strategy for most top flight teams like USC – it is one of execution and teaching the QB. The QB has the final responsibility of knowing when to stick with a call on the field or to check to a different play at the line of scrimmage. Also there are anywhere from one to five players that can go into pass patterns for the offense depending upon the alignment and play. The QB has to scan the field quickly, make the right read, and throw to the open player – i.e. take what the defense gives. Increasingly this means that football is a game of execution and less about simple play calling. [Emphasis added.] There is also the dichotomy in football of power and deception on any given play. The teams that have been winning for the past decade or more all are “balanced” offenses in that can both run the football and throw as well. Being able to do both in different situations has its distinct advantages for putting the defense into certain types of alignments as well as taking advantage of them as well.

Good stuff.

If you’re looking for a breakdown of what different zone coverages look like, Art’s got that covered here.

A heavyweight matchup

So ESPN will broadcast the Miami-FIU game on September 15.

Can anyone think of a reason why?  Or, more appropriately, two reasons why?

Maybe the Worldwide Leader can get Lamar Thomas back for the broadcast…