Bad defense? It’s all relative.

Interesting chart from John Pennington, comparing SEC defensive yards per play from the 2012 season with this year’s stats (against BCS opposition only):

School	2013 Yds/All/Play	2012 Yds All/Play	Change
Florida	4.77	4.33	0.44 worse
Alabama	4.99	4.38	0.61 worse
Missouri	5.31	5.78	0.47 better
S. Carolina	5.47	4.63	0.84 worse
LSU	5.66	4.64	1.02 worse
Ole Miss	5.87	5.79	0.08 worse
Georgia	5.88	5.27	0.61 worse
Auburn	6.11	6.48	0.37 better
Vanderbilt	6.19	5.00	1.19 worse
Miss. State	6.22	5.67	0.55 worse
Arkansas	6.41	6.18	0.23 worse
Texas A&M	6.42	5.45	0.97 worse
Tennessee	6.70	6.49	0.21 worse
Kentucky	6.97	6.01	0.96 worse

Bitch about Grantham all you like – and much of it’s deserved, no doubt – but he’s got plenty of company this year.  Just for yucks, I checked Georgia’s offensive ypp for the same periods.  It’s declined from 6.7 to 6.29.  As TAMU, Alabama, Missouri, LSU and South Carolina have all improved in that department in 2013, I’d say that’s a bigger deal.  Toss in the craptastic special teams play, and you can see the path to 4-3.

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Alex, I’ll take inscrutable Mark Richt answers for $400.

Richt on whether Florida ever got inside his players' heads in the last 13 years: "We never called them the blue team or the orange team."

— David Paschall (@DavidSPaschall) October 29, 2013

Good thing, too.  It might have confused them with Auburn.

Mark Richt has lost control of playcalling.

Richt on the lack of downfield passes vs. Vanderbilt: "I'd have to say if we played the game again we would have taken a couple shots."

— Seth Emerson (@SethEmerson) October 29, 2013

Hey, don’t tell us.  Tell Bobo.

In other NCAA news…

You will be shocked, shocked to learn that the Division I Leadership Council, whose members represent all three subdivisions, “ha(s) a strong desire to preserve… the revenue distribution model.”

Just a hunch, but I don’t think that call is going to be left up to them.

Tuesday morning buffet

Come, you must be hungry.

• The Bielema-Malzahn feud continues.  I’m kind of enjoying it.  (But I expect Arky’s gonna get pounded this weekend.)
• Clowney:  “Last year, I really didn’t practice real hard.”
• Boom is starting to get hot seat questions.
• Macon Dawg scores a nice interview with ESPN’s Rece Davis, in which Davis talks a good bit about Georgia, Florida and the Cocktail Party.  It would have been even better with an awkward Jesse Palmer question, but I guess you can’t have everything.
• You may think Bill Connelly is just a stat guru, but he’s a CFB fan first, as this eloquent post demonstrates.
• However, some Mizzou fans are finding other (NSFW) ways to cope with the loss to South Carolina (h/t MrSEC.com).
• “If you’re not an alumnus with access to skyboxes and everything else,” Parker said, “this is kind of the common man’s skybox.”
• Division I coaches in non-revenue sports want in on the new super-division action, too.
• “I thought it was a celebration penalty, because everybody was jumping around. Then they were talking about I was ejected.”
• Shaq Wiggins asked Mark Richt about the weather on Saturday.  Don’t forget to ask about the unfair travel arrangements, Shaq!
• Another day, another shocking item of evidence the NCAA wants to introduce in the O’Bannon case.

For Georgia 2013, there’s two kinds of pessimism.

Bernie nicely skewers one of them, but here’s the one I fear a bit:

There is a chance a bad targeting call could end up deciding the SEC East. Georgia hopes it doesn’t. So does the SEC office. But it could happen.

In a season that’s seen its most recent manifestation of bad luck occur in the form of an ankle injury to Chris Conley on the last, completely meaningless play in a loss to Vanderbilt, of course that could happen.  (And before any of you pessimists Booker addresses insist that if Georgia doesn’t go to the SECCG as a result of losing the tiebreaker, it won’t be because of the penalty calls, but because of special teams, Grantham’s incompetence, etc., well, you may be right, but I guarantee you it’ll get spun exactly the way Seth describes it.)

So, the process will start with Georgia winning out, which means that South Carolina will need to do the same.  Then, either Missouri loses to a team in the West, creating a three-way tie at 6-2, which will be broken in the Tigers’ favor by virtue of having the best record in the division, or we’ll get an even more agonizing scenario:

If Missouri loses to Tennessee, Georgia could end up being the team that goes to Atlanta, because Georgia would be the only team that beat Tennessee. Really. This could all come down to each team’s record against Tennessee. Or Vanderbilt.

Why all this craziness? Because the fourth tiebreaker is:

Head-to-head competition vs. the team within the division with the best overall (divisional and non-divisional) Conference record and proceeding through the division. Multiple ties within the division will be broken from first to last.

Suddenly, the Tennessee-Vanderbilt game becomes critical. If Tennessee ends up ahead of Vanderbilt, then Georgia goes because it’s the only team that beat Tennessee. If Vanderbilt ends up ahead of Tennessee, then the Vanderbilt loss by Georgia knocks the Bulldogs out, and South Carolina goes based on the head-to-head with Missouri.

Before you scoff, harken back to 2007, when this stupid field goal would have been all it took for Georgia to play in the SEC title game:

Shit happens, Dawgnation.

Knowing their place

This gave me a chuckle, for more than one reason:

Georgia tailback Todd Gurley practiced at full speed on Monday and by all accounts, he looks close to 100 percent for Saturday’s game with Florida. But he will still have to beat out freshmen Brendan Douglas and J.J. Green in practice this week if he wants to regain his starting spot back against the Gators.

“Puh-leeze,” Douglas said with a laugh. “Yeah, right.”

Said fellow tailback Green: “I don’t think I ever had a job. I was just filling in for him…”

If Gurley’s healthy and not starting Saturday, somebody had better articulate an awfully good excuse for that in the post-game presser.  Right now, outside of compromising pictures, I can’t think of one.