I thought I’d take a peek at how our old stat friend, yards per play, has the SEC shaping up. Teams are listed in order of net yards per play (stats via cfbstats.com, of course):
TEAM O YPP D YPP NET YPP Alabama 6.34 3.3 3.04 Georgia 7.98 5.04 2.94 LSU 6.42 3.59 2.83 Texas A&M 6.92 4.56 2.36 S. Carolina 6.33 4.38 1.95 Florida 6.2 4.37 1.83 MSU 6.19 5 1.19 Vanderbilt 6.07 4.91 1.16 Ole Miss 6.11 5.15 0.96 Tennessee 6.4 5.85 0.55 Missouri 5.02 4.84 0.18 Kentucky 5.12 5.37 -0.25 Auburn 5 5.38 -0.38 Arkansas 5.91 6.35 -0.44
The number that jumps out is Georgia’s offensive ypp figure of 7.98. When you’re averaging eight yards every time you snap the ball, that can cover up a lot of deficiencies elsewhere. (As shown by the Dawgs’ decidedly mediocre defensive ypp number.)
Overall, though, what you see is a fairly consistent correlation between the net numbers and the perceived strength of the teams. It’s not an exact match, of course – Vandy’s number is inflated by that game against Presbyterian and TAMU’s feasted on some awful defenses.
Get The Picture 
That D YPP will surely bite us in the arse at some point.
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Love seeing Auburn at the bottom there. You have to feel sorry for Arkansas.
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Bobo suxxxxxxxxxxxx, fire him now! Wait what?
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The LSU and Bama defenses are looking pretty impressive.
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What gives on the defense? Is it really attributable to the suspensions? I’m terrified about what Lattimore is going to look like after Neal looked like an All-SEC back vs us.
I guess my other thought is that the turnovers made it so that UT wasn’t able to play catch-up like we’d hoped, so whatever gameplan we had might have been abandoned.
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I don’t know what to make of all these numbers….except that until next Saturday, none of the top teams have played anybody of equal stature.
Given the relative strength of the competition, Georgia should have, it seems to me, better defensive numbers.
I think the only thing you could say for sure about these numbers is that Nick Saban don’t have time for any of this playing down to the opposition shit.
I would love to think Tennessee is better than, say Misery or Vandy, but we sho did help them look good.
Personally, this weekend, I am picking the Gators, but Us and the Cocks? A true tossup.
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With you on the Gators. They’ll give LSU all they want and then some.
As for the Dawgs vs Cocks, I don’t want to send you into a full blown anxiety attack on Monday, but I do believe we’re WWL’s College Gameday destination. I’m heading to the Doctor’s office for some Klonopin.
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Awww shit….I don’t have the stones to look, but my sense is we have never won under those conditions.
Oh great, the Parking Lot from Hell and Lee Corso…I feel faint.
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I don’t have the stones to look either, but I know it’s bad…very bad.
The black helicopter/conspiracy theory portion of my frontal lobe is telling me the WWL picked Columbia just to stick it to us.
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Maybe we could get Mr. Cojones to look that up, since he…..
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What is this “stones” reference and addressing me as “Mr”? You jack up my paranoia one more time and I’m gonna lay some Mex-judo on your asses.
Now, the game: Grantham, having looked ahead as he did in the games preceeding our first SEC games, is ready to turn the switch back on the D. Latimo will end up with less than a hundred, but assisted by other RBs , SC will end up with 200 on the ground. Shaw will get his share of completed throws, but less mileage on each. That opens it up for WOOM! (which stands for Wide Open Offensive Murray or, if things go wrong, an elephant fart). The D will tee off on Shaw the entire second half, no matter the score, and we will rattle his cage mightily or there will be all hell to pay.
My job is to give the scenario, not the score. What do you think I am, some damn guru?
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🙂
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Well, golly gee, gonads are sometimes mentioned when talking about prognosticators.
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Georgia is 1-0 against SCarolina when Gameday is in Columbia.
(Seen elsewhere; not researched.)
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That is true. Won at SCAR back in 04. If I counted right, we’re 3-9 at GameDay games. We’ve only won in Columbia (1 win) and Tuscaloosa (2 wins).
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Then let’s lose this game so they won’t go to Jax.
(Am I the only follower of this blog who works during the day? Where do all you guys go at night? I don’t have access to an unfettered ‘puter during the daytime ).
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The defense has to get better, both in the sense that they have to for us to win the east and that it just isn’t possible to explain that much regression to the loss of one Boykin. I have to hope that we’re just seeing the disruption of the suspensions and we’ll be back to form soon (please, please by saturday).
Either way, best value for money on our staff this year has to be Bobo – check out the NATIONAL ypp rankings.
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Is this what it felt like to be an Auburn fan in 2010? Average/mediocre defensive output, but an offense that can, and has to, outscore everybody to win? If so, I can see how the whole Cam Newton scandal made it that much more of a heart attack waiting to happen for their fans.
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I’m “all in” on Murray and Gurshall.
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The D needs to be more aggressive. We’re playing too much ‘bend-but-don’t-break’ and not attacking enough. Even against ut, when the pressure was turned up we got turnovers.
We abandoned the long pass against ut, and the intermediate passes turned out to be our long pass plays. This was a turn back to our old vanilla offenses. Our O numbers are still great. In what might be the understatement of the year, I believe almost all of that is attributable to Gurshall.
When the O is on the field for a long time (running vanilla plays) we are less effective than when we are very aggressive. When the D is on the field for a long time (running the bend-but-don’t-break) they use up clock but tend to give up points. The big problem is, whenever we take our foot off the gas on either side of the ball, we will have problems – as neither O nor D is good at eating clock. This team is the posterchild of a quick strike, high scoring approach. I know CMR wants to be a gentleman and not run up scores, but when he takes the foot off the gas it exposes our deficiencies.
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W Cobb Dawg
I think that Grantham was determined to not let Bray burn us deep. The surprise was how well the Tenn Oline blocked our pass rush. The second surprise was how well Bray played when we blitzed (up until the last few possessions). That left our D unable to blitz, and also unable to sell out on stopping the run ; thus leaving us looking like Willie’s bend but don’t break strategy.
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In short, the successfully executed that “balanced offense” that Bobo has been frustrating us by talking about constantly. It really puts the defense in a situation. Tenn’s downfall in the game was, of course, their own defense / our offense (depending on how you look at it) putting 51 points up.
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UT’s pass blocking is among the best in the country. They have only given up 2 sacks all year.
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The poor defensive showing, and stats, are not just a TN thang, we have been soft all year. Yeah, I get some missing pieces but this defense was supposed to be our rock and we returned a lot of experience, even in the backup spots. Not sure how many of them are going to turn pro early based on what scouts are seeing thus far.
Now here is the bonus: the defense has been so disappointing that we may very well see a breakout game from them on Saturday. They had been getting a pass for the lackadaisical play against all but Vandy due to the missing players, playing it vanilla, weak offenses, etc., but that all exploded on them Saturday when they had everyone back, a key conference opponent, and a one dimensional offense that we made look two dimensional. I don’t know what we have under the hood based on what I have seen but I still think players that were pretty damned solid in 2011 can be at least that good in 2012 and if they are, they will show up on Saturday in the first big test. That is the optimistic view. I haven’t given up on them, but they aren’t even a Top 30 defense based on what I have seen and they need to pull their share of the load starting Saturday. Until I actually see it on the field, I am joining Scorp in the worry room.
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While I agree with your above post, remember UT had Akron the week before. And they struggled. They placed all of their eggs into the UGA basket and sold out for this one game. UT went for broke and busted. They will not play that we’ll again this season.
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I’m expecting them to give bama a game.
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UT?….give Bama a game….yeah, they will probably play all four quarters, beyond that….I don’t know man….I think Bama is still pulling away at the end.
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Said all along they would be desperate and leave it on the field against us to avoid 0-2 in conference. Will be interesting to see if they get back off the deck and play MSU and Bama that hard to save their season. They seem to be drawing confidence from th eloss for some reason. That game was real close to being a 5 TD blowout, and would have been except for our generosity. SOD needs to beat the other Bulldogs on the road in the worst way. Barbara may have to clean out the basement if he loses those two.
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Mac, I agree with you, but differ when you call it optimism. Optimism would be to blow their ass out of SC. And we are fully capable of it.
Tenn upgraded and played damn well. Their line was outstanding, not our D that poor. Having a game that looks mediocre for the D is exactly what we needed before SC for these guys to brace up for the big game. Our D is human, not broken.
Somebody pick Scorp up and get him on the fainting couch. He should worry under less austere conditions.
And, oh yeah, Smoke’em if you Got’em!
GO DAWGS!
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The optimism wasn’t on the team differential, it was on whether we really have that same level D we enjoyed last year. If it is, I can also make a case for 3 TD win. I can tell you my pessimistic view is we could lose a close one. My gut tells me we win by 10.
I actually do think we have another “gear” on that defense and they will respond big on this game and have success in containing SC’s offense. My enthusiasm is tempered by my fear that our young OL, which has looked pretty good so far, will have problems with the best DL group they have faced, and that will restrict our offense enough to keep us from the blowout you see. Wide range, I know, but Saturday is going to show us soooo much about four of the SEC’s best and nothing we have seen yet allows anyone to be thatconfident that they have the answer. I think UGA and UF win these two games but there would be nothing surprising if both go the other way. Damn these early season schedules.
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They have not played D below my expectations. I love each player’s ability and their team effort, but have blogged since last year about our D and took Grantham seriously when he took D responsibility for the MSU, LSU and SC losses. I brought it up often when defending Bobo. I’ve tried to keep a level thinking field about our team and have encouraged others to do as much, but I respect Grantham that much more for his quotes. He never went down one whit in my opinion of him and the D he is still building. But the overhype of any part of this team will tear your guts out.
We should always consider what each brings to the table in order to declare this a team. Both O and D are doing their part to ensure some Ws for fans who must count them in order to appreciate who these guys are.
Just don’t get me started on STs. The coaches and players have had long enough on that one. I will be sitting in close judgement from now on. My last heart stress test was good, but I don’t have to attempt fate by watching this gut-wrenching-excuse-for-a-clusterfuck STs. I want the coaches to get the mind games straightened out forever, beginning now.
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See….expectations….that’s what always gets relationships, including the one with yer football team, in trouble.
If yer expectations are that we will play hard, fast and make as few mistakes as is humanly possible, I agree….whether even that is good enough to win….well, that’s something to worry about.
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Richt and Bobo should still be more aggressive in the 4th Q.
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