How convenient – Todd Grantham gives us a yardstick with which to measure his defense’s progress this season.
… As a rule, Grantham said you should stop teams at least 80 percent of the time when it’s third-and-10 or more. He said the Bulldogs were in the 60s last season.
“That’s something we’re going to address and get better at,” Grantham said. “We were actually better on the intermediate third downs [third-and-3 to third-and-7] than we were on the longer ones.”
The Bulldogs also gave up 13.5 yards per completion a year ago, and Grantham said that needs to be closer to 9 yards.
I guess you know one thing I’ll be tracking weekly this fall.
Get The Picture 
Wow. Benchmarks and accountability at UGA. What’s next? Taking pics of what you are eating for dinner?
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I would think 80% would be a no-brainer goal for 3rd and 10 or more. If we were only performing at a 60% clip in this area, you could say that our defense was giving up at least 2 extra possessions for the offense per game by not getting off the field when we had offenses behind the chains. Additionally, that’s probably an additional 7 minutes in time of possession where the defense is on the field with a defensive line not recruited for the 3-4. In addition to below average conditioning, that’s probably why we were consistently wilting in the 4th quarter. I would like to see how many possessions in that 40% resulted in field goals rather than punts and TD’s rather than field goals.
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Love it … Sets a standard and says, ““That’s something we’re going to address and get better at,” … Notice he didn’t say anything like, “It’s a matter of execution. Coaches can only put the players in the right posistion to make plays but it is up to the player to make the play.”
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Who among us hasn’t groaned when we hear Whitmire intone, “Third down, long to go”? It seems quite simple to me. We drop 6 guys into zone coverage who are not particularly good at covering, nor do they seem to read the quarterback well. Couple with a lack of pass rush with 4 and you have the 60% figure.
Gotta get more creative coach. That and have a crazy good NT to open things up for the DL.
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At least the crystal clear honesty is refreshing. A lot of guys would throw out your generic coach-speak, but a guy who is willing to lay it out there in no uncertain terms is a nice change. Now if we can actually DO what he says we need to do.
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Great to have measurables, like his approach. Like penalties though, it can be more significant when you get stops than how many. Wish there were some sort of “crunch time” measurement to rival the offense’s Red Zone stat. I know all stops can be significant but there is always 2-3 times a game that seem especially critical (when you have the opponent pinned inside their 10, or when you have to get the ball back to have a chance to score at the end of the game, etc.) I realize that gets subjective, but we all know when those critical times are.
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The guys seemed to be lost at times on third down and long. It was like the weren’t really aggressive, but not in Willie’s soft zone either. You can’t be in no mans land out there, either set up a picket fence ten yards deep, or blitz, and not a half-hearted blitz, but an all out blitz. You can defend third and long either way, but not both ways.
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Zone blitz is a way to handle 3rd and long. UGA didn’t run it much in 2010, not sure why. It’s a great call in that situation and there a lot of nuances you can run off of it like Pittsburgh does. You have to get pressure on the QB, without giving up too much space between the DL & DB’s. Zone Blitz is Dick Lebeau’s ingenious solution.
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Or Diaz’s blitz pachage who is now at Texas.
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