Per Ed Aschoff,
What might be the most impressive stat about Nick Chubb’s return is that 194 of his 222 rushing yards came with at least eight defenders in the box. That ranked first nationally. He averaged 7.76 ypc on these runs.
Go ahead and keep loading the box, though. Jacob Eason and his receivers can use all the extra help they can get.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
My favorite two tweets today:
Clearly, Huntley Johnson needs to open a multi-state practice.
Filed under Crime and Punishment, Gators, Gators...
Not too well after week one, thanks for asking.
Again though, it’s not worth making too much out of one week, but here’s how the numbers stacked up in Kickoff Week:
There’s a good mix of quarterback talent in other leagues, particularly the Big 12, but the ACC is certainly off to a great start. The SEC … not so much.
To put it another way, out of the top passer ratings at cfbstats.com, there are two SEC quarterbacks listed in the first sixty. For comparison’s sake, in 2012 three SEC quarterbacks finished in the top ten.
I think the technical term for this is meh.
Filed under SEC Football, Stats Geek!
Somebody else may be making his 2016 debut tomorrow.
It appears that Sony Michel could make his 2016 debut in Georgia’s home opener against Nicholls on Saturday. Persons with knowledge of the situation confirmed to Dawgs247 that the junior running back has been cleared by doctors for contact and shed his black, non-contact jersey the past two days for a red one, allowing him to participate in practice in full.
Between this and Eason’s start, it’s time to ask: is there such a thing as a must-see cupcake game?
Filed under Georgia Football
Would it surprise you to learn that one of the stars at the Tennessee-Virginia Tech game is a garbage truck converted into a tailgating vehicle?
Donald Greene got the idea about eight years ago. The company he works for, Waste Connections, had retired a fleet of residential recycling trucks, and he thought it would be fun to retrofit the whole thing to serve as a tailgating vehicle…
Price tag on the renovation?
“Unknown,” Greene said.
That’s one way of putting it.
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange
Sure, we’re all naturally focused on the quarterbacks and, in particular, Jacob Eason’s ability to climb the learning curve, but there’s other areas where Georgia needs to get better as the season progresses.
So when I post this chart from Matt Hinton’s piece about Tennessee’s first game, don’t accuse me of looking forward, because that’s not what this post is about:
That’s about as stark a difference in quarterback performance as you’re likely to see. GAT(Q)A is a big deal. Georgia only managed to sack Trubisky once, although there was fairly steady pressure on him, especially after the Tar Heels took that ten-point lead. That’s not good enough going forward, though.
I’m not saying this because I doubt Smart and Tucker aren’t aware of it. Remember the environment from which Smart forged his defensive philosophy:
You have to have safety-type players who can play the quarterback but also can, if it is a pass play, race back and play as either an intermediate defender or as a deep safety. The defense must be able to play man coverage, and it must have the ability to blitz and attack both the quarterback and any other backfield player. Finally, the defense must have the ability to zone blitz to put pressure on the quarterback but still take away the short slants and quick passes, or at least threaten to do so.
In other words you have to play defense like Alabama head coach Nick Saban. [Emphasis added.]
Somehow, they’ve got to figure out a way to pressure quarterbacks like Dobbs and Kelly when they are in passing situations, but do so without getting burned by them running the ball. That’s no small task, probably made more daunting in Tennessee’s case by the threat of RPO plays with the likes of Hurd and Kamara, plays which North Carolina used effectively. But if Appalachian State could do it, you have to think Georgia can, too.
And that starts tomorrow.
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
… being in charge of managing Kirby’s cabling on the sideline. Good luck with that, my friend.
Filed under Georgia Football
Chip Towers makes a good point about the timing of Eason’s day in the spotlight.
I don’t think it was necessarily Eason’s play in the first game versus that of fifth-year senior Greyson Lambert that dictated this move. And I don’t really think it was what the coaches were seeing in practice, beyond, that is, the fact that the competition apparently remained very close.
No, this may very well have been dictated by the Bulldogs’ schedule.
Think about it: After this Saturday’s de facto practice game against Nicholls State, a struggling FCS team, Georgia is heading into a real gauntlet of games.
There are people out there who will scoff about the Bulldogs’ challenge of having to make the trip out to Columbia, Mo., to face a Missouri team that just lost to West Virginia 26-11. But say what you will about the Tigers, they always play salty defense, have a really talented front seven this year in particular and will be playing their SEC opener at home at night on national television.
As long as I’ve been around this game, I’ve never met a coach who thought the best place to give a quarterback his first start — never mind a true freshman — was in a conference road game at night.
After that, Georgia is on the road against a Top 25 Ole Miss team, back home against a Tennessee team that was picked to win the division, then back on the road to face rival South Carolina.
No, if you were thinking Eason was going to start eventually, then circumstances pretty much dictated that you do it now…
All of which makes you wonder if the coaches had that in mind even before the season’s opener. If so, the way Lambert and Eason were deployed against North Carolina makes a lot of sense. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really wonder all that much.
Towers goes on to speculate that Smart has left the door open to Lambert performing well enough to win the starting role back down the road as the opposition toughens up, but I tend to think that unless Eason really craps the bed, Lambert’s performance in future practices isn’t going to be a game changer.
As far as this Saturday goes, I do expect a more robust passing attack than we saw last weekend. For one thing, Eason and the receivers need to work on their timing against a live opponent. For another, Eason needs to get a lot more reps taking snaps under center. Ed Aschoff points out one big reason why: “Eason passed for more than 100 yards in his debut, yet went just 1-of-4 for 13 yards and was sacked on play-action passes.”
Play-action is the bread and butter pass play in a pro-style attack that emphasizes the running game. It’s great that your quarterback has the big arm to throw it deep, but if he’s not experienced enough to sell the play, he’s not going to get the secondary to bite on it, which means his receivers won’t get much in the way of separation. It also means that defense won’t pay a price for overplaying the run.
In other words, tomorrow, throw the damned ball, Chaney.
Filed under Georgia Football
Evidently it’s okay for Olympic athletes to pocket a few bucks for their success and still compete in NCAA athletics. But when somebody starts making Emmert-type money, well…
The NCAA will likely “very quickly” address a rule that allowed a University of Texas swimmer to receive $740,000 from Singapore for winning a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, NCAA president Mark Emmert said Thursday.
Joseph Schooling, a junior at Texas, won gold in the 100-meter butterfly at the Olympics, defeating a field that included Michael Phelps. The Singapore National Olympic Council awarded Schooling nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, an amount he can keep without losing his college eligibility due to NCAA rules tied to Olympic awards.
“To be perfectly honest, it’s caused everybody to say, ‘Oh, well that’s not really what we were thinking about,'” Emmert said Thursday during a discussion about college sports at The Aspen Institute. “So I don’t know where the members will go on that. That’s a little different than 15 grand for the silver medal for swimming for the US of A. So I think it’s going to stimulate a very interesting conversation.”
Amen to that, Mark. Things are so much easier when you can keep kids in their place by coming down on them for spending their book money on pencils, binders, and electronics at a school bookstore.
Filed under The NCAA
Ron Courson discusses the injuries suffered by Gurley and Chubb in less than a minute.
Filed under Georgia Football, The Body Is A Temple
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