You may recall a recurring feature here at GTP, the Dawg Stat Watch. It’s a series of metrics I track throughout the season until it’s clear that Georgia isn’t heading to Atlanta. What all these stats have in common is that they’re standards the Dawgs have met in every season under Richt that led to an appearance in the SECCG. So I’m starting the tracking this week.
Last year’s results have led to one slight adjustment in defensive scoring, but other than that, the song remains the same. Here’s goes nothing (all stats via cfbstats.com, natch):
- Hold opponents under 18 points per game. As a team, Georgia is yielding 21 ppg.
- Finish at least +8 in turnover margin. Georgia’s turnover margin is -1.
- Average better than 380 yards per game on offense. Georgia’s offense is averaging 517.7 ypg.
- Finish in the top five in total defensive yardage. Georgia’s defense ranks eighth in total defense.
- Finish in the top three in first downs. Georgia is sixth in first downs.
- Finish no worse than third in passing yardage. Georgia is third in passing yardage.
- Finish no worse than third in sacks. Georgia is tenth in sacks.
Two out of seven is nothing to write home about, but it’s certainly early. We’ll see how things progress.
Get The Picture 
The stats look good for a start especially the two O stats that surpass last year stds. Looks like this is a Bobo year, “fiery” Grantham or not.
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Agreed on the O. The D is another story considering the competition thus far. Hopefully that can be chalked up to lack of focus and limited prep due to the cupcakes. I’m still going to worry, just in case Scorpio isn’t worrying enough for everyone.
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The problem I have is that this same excuse has been used for the last 5 games. When do we realize that the D isn’t near as perfect as people make it out to be? I enjoy the hell out of them and Grantham, I just don’t see why folks can’t be just as critical-minded for what isn’t working on D as they are towards the O. You don’t have to run them down, just don’t get your hopes so high that when you finally realize it ain’t perfect, don’t fall off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. It was bad enough going through Richt and Bobo with the unproven speculations liberally drawing conclusions using stats. We don’t have to repeat the hair pulling with Grantham.
By the way, could I hear it from those folks who thought I was off base in the last year about Richt and then Bobo? They have both proven me correct in my assessment of their coaching. Maybe those glasses weren’t so rose tinted after all. Hell, I wasn’t even toking up before typing. This year you naysayers can just lean back, smoke’em if you got’em and enjoy the season.
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You need to lower that “Sacks” statistic. Let’s say fifth in Sacks.
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These aren’t goals I set. They’re the marks Georgia has actually hit every year it’s gone to Atlanta.
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Oh…you are dealing with a Lady who is new to your Blog.
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Welcome aboard. Settle in and set the good Senator’s site as your homepage- IMO, there’s no need to go anywhere else.
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Thank you…I have never had so much fun! Looking forward to all the insight you guys provide.
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Insight?….gulp.
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Yes, you guys are enlightening. I do not necessarily agree with all that you say, however it is fun to watch you rave on.
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Roger the “rave on”….we sho do resemble that remark. 🙂
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Where did you find the smiley face? It’s your week with the dejected face. There ain’t no worry on smiley.
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B-)
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“Looking forward to all the insight you guys provide.”
So are we.
/zing!
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/zing! ?
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Just a goodway of expressing that he got us all with one shot.
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Oh…I see.
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Well that wasn’t what I expected at all. I guess those flat periods of play were longer than I thought.
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If they are fortunate enough to make it back to ATL, they may do it with a weaker defensive performance than in the past. We still have one more game with two essential starters suspended and even when they come back (presumably) for UT, they might be as rusty as Commings looked against FAU. Not to mention Jarvis is still gimpy. It might be a little bend, don’t break instead of dominance for a couple more weeks, enough to skew the stats even if they do rebound on D later in the season.
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I forget, are the rankings in the SEC or Nationally?
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SEC.
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You forgot lead the SEC east in SEC wins. I thought it was a relevant stat but for some reason my gamecock buddies disagreed.
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Nice job of cooling off my optimism, Senator. I’ll be more sober in my expectations for now.
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Are these verse SEC or National?
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As you were, Just saw your comment above.
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And we have a vet of the services on here with the “As you were” quote. Thought you were a coach as well. See how we get ideas?
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Glad to see the return of the stat watch. I was wondering when we’d get updated on the metrics. Defensive scoring may still get below that bar, and if it weren’t for garbage time scores in the cupcake games, we’d be below it. But I guess last year we didn’t allow garbage time scores. Turnover margin concerns me. Does UGA only have 2 INT’s right now, and both by linebackers?
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Garbage-time scoring is in there, both for and against us. Stats are nice to try to get a good picture, but you really can’t put problem-location stock in any of them. How you stack up in stats vs others is rife with conclusion error since you don’t know if someone runs up the score vs those who don’t. It just separates the greedy from the not-so-greedy; i.e., The visor getting a pass td with 45 secs remaining in the UAB game after it was won. Classless shit, but a bright coach knowing how stats affect the pollsters who don’t watch the game.
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Thank you Mr. Senator for helping folks understand why I worry about Vandy….yeah, we are 3-0, but what does that really mean? If I may, it means we better damn sure worry about Vandy.
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Oh Lord, oh Lord, Oh Lord….Vandy leads the conference in pass defense…man hat choice is gonna be big, really big, this week.
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Back in the day…when the AJC actually covered college football, they ran a stat box at the bottom of the main game story, and in that box was the number of players who actually played in the game (Bama always played like 147 players)….has that become hard to get?
I think that stat is very interesting, but not easily available any more for some reason.
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Drill down into georgiadogs.com under “Stats” header and you can see pretty much everything you need on each game.
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I have seen 112 players played by Bammer….back about 1960-something before the scholarship limitations…..I see what you did there Cojo…WP does not recognize some of the Android faces…bummer. :’X
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Damn, I almost misunderstood for a moment, and thought you wrote that Bama had 147 players that were paid in a game.
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Nope. Plaid in a game. It’s just a different spelling.
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Agree it’s early. It’s hard to interpret these stats since they are cupcake-weighted. In our one true game the difference was Jarvis Jones. Makes me nervous but I am seeing the potential. I hope it comes together soon (and we don’t run out of O-linemen).
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I would be curious to see if scoring is up across the board this year (it seems like everybody is scoring more points) so that metric may or may not be as skewed as we think.
We need to create more turnovers, any team that is on the + side significantly almost can’t help but win games due to short fields.
I anticipate when we get our entire compliment of defensive players out there things will tighten up on the yardage and points front.
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The “good” news about our turnovers so far though is that they have been “garbage time” turnovers for the most part.
Mitchell’s fumble against Buffalo (a game whose outcome was not in doubt, though not actually garbage time on the scoreboard), and 3 of our 4 turnovers last week against Buffalo came after the Dawgs were way up. Of course, there’s plenty of season left, but with 4 turnovers so far coming at a “lucky” time (that has no outcome on the game), it is quite possible we could fail to meet the +8 turnover margin number but still win the East. (If so, I wouldn’t want to change the metric, fwiw.)
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