Everything you wanted to know about no-back formation stats, but were afraid to ask.

Bill Connelly takes an exhaustive look at how the empty-backfield set did last season.  And I do mean exhaustive.

Here’s what Bill has to say about Georgia:  “… teams like … Georgia (2%)… neither made frequent use of the no-back, nor fared amazingly well against it (at least compared to its other results).”  In fact on defense for Georgia, there’s a pretty big spread between defensive ypp on all plays versus ypp on no-back sets.

Todd Grantham wants to stop all that running.

Some of you may be surprised to hear that Todd Grantham took time out from his busy career plotting to answer a few questions from Chris Low about his day job.  The good thing is that he seems to have a handle on what needs to get better this season.

What the Bulldogs didn’t do as well was stop the run, and it cost them against Alabama in the 32-28 SEC championship game loss. The Crimson Tide rolled up 350 rushing yards and manhandled the Bulldogs in the second half.

The takeway from that game for Grantham was pretty simple.

Georgia needs to play more players up front and tackle better from the inside linebacker positions.

“We did some good things in that game,” Grantham said. “We blocked a field goal and ran it back for a touchdown. We were really good on third down, and got a turnover in the red zone. The thing we didn’t do was stop the run in the second half.

“We’ve got to play more players up front and keep them fresh, and from the inside linebacker position, we’ve got to learn to tackle backs like (Eddie Lacy). Those are two things we’ve got to do better.”

He’s got plenty of options, even if many of them are young.

One thing Grantham’s right about is that Georgia’s 2012 rushing defense stats are skewed (although I don’t know where he got the 3.3 ypc in conference play from, unless he wasn’t counting the SECCG).  Check out this page at Marty’s blog.  And this one.  No wonder Grantham knows he needs more bodies.

A thug here, a thug there…

and pretty soon you’re talking about real “very limited thuggery“.

If that ain’t your catchphrase of the day, I don’t know what is.