Today, in it ain’t rocket science.

Missouri’s head coach explains his defensive strategy to you:

“Credit Georgia,” Odom said. “They made good in-game adjustments and their quarterback played really well and receivers made some catches. But I wanted to try to establish our front seven and sometimes front eight of getting an extra guy in there to take away part of that.”

Guys, this isn’t that hard.  You’ve got a true freshman quarterback — okay, a gifted one — whose grasp of the playbook isn’t all that great yet, due both to time constraints and the limited reps that come from having a quarterback competition in preseason camp.  You’ve got coaches who are realistic enough not to try to overload him with too many pre-snap options.  You’ve got a receiving corps still in the process of sorting itself out.  You’ve got an offensive line that, to put it politely, is struggling.

With all that going on, if you’re on the other side calling the defense, why wouldn’t you stack the box to stop Chubb and Michel, both of whom, by the way, are coming off injuries?  Or to put it in the current political vernacular, what have you got to lose by selling out on defense?

Defenses will back off as soon as Georgia can sell its passing game.  Until then, don’t expect any opposing defensive coordinator to fix what ain’t broke.

Advertisement

A tale of focus

Check out this rather startling stat comparison of Jacob Eason’s passing game:

Jacob Eason – Stat Comparison

	When leading	Tied or Trailing
Attempts	22	65
Completions	10	38
Comp Pct	45.5%	58.5%
Yards Passing	109	534
TD Passes	0	5
Interceptions	2	0

That translates into a passer rating of 68.89 when Georgia is leading and a passer rating of 152.86 when tied or behind.  Talk about your glass half full/half empty situation — it’s great that Eason shows out when his team needs him, but maybe that’s also a sign of him coasting a little when the game seems comfortable.

In the end, I’d chalk the disparity up to immaturity more than anything.  He’s a true freshman; he’ll grow.  But, man, that upside!  When he gets it all together, it’s really gonna be something.

Leave it to the pros.

The Force Bullshit is strong in this one.

“I think it was a fad to bring in business people,” an ACC AD said. “And you saw where it resulted in a lot of them coming across like a bull in a china shop, firing people immediately, clashing with fans. Also, if I have 22 sports at my school; two of them make money. Would I run them like a business? No, of course not. I wouldn’t expect to cut 20 programs.”

No, the typical AD would rather overpay a mediocre football coach who’s got Jimmy Sexton as an agent and blow money upgrading perfectly fine facilities because he or she worried about keeping up with the competition.  Let’s see how this guy would do with those 20 programs if the TV money wasn’t rolling in.

And don’t get me started on the quality work turned in by non-business ADs at places like Baylor and Penn State.

Just because Dave Brandon was totally unsuited for the job doesn’t make the rest of you folks geniuses.  Or even competent.

Good news: a stat inside a stat

One of the smaller interesting developments of this young season is that Georgia stands third in the conference in time of possession.  The offense is controlling the clock at more than five minutes per game more than was the case in 2015.  Some of that may be due to the number of plays Georgia is running.  This season, the team is averaging almost 76 plays per game, about 14 plays more per game than last year.

There, in turn, may be more than one reason for that.  As someone mentioned in the comments yesterday, it’s reasonable to expect a team forcing more turnovers to run more plays.

But I think there’s another area that deserves some attention, and it’s a happy development.

As we all remember, last year’s third-down conversion percentage was a real sore spot for Georgia’s offense, which finished next to last in the SEC, converting only about 31% of its opportunities.  The 2016 numbers are considerably improved:  43.75%, good for fifth-best.  The improvement isn’t coming due to the running game.  Last year on third down, Georgia rushing converted 21 of 63 tries; this year’s rate (5 of 16) is actually slightly worse.

But look at what’s happened on the passing side.

• 2015:  28 of 96 (29.17%)
• 2016:  16 of 33 (48.48%)

Before you ask, based on the 2016 numbers, it’s not an Eason vs. Lambert issue.  (Greyson, although he’s had fewer opportunities, has a slightly higher conversion rate than does the freshman, although not by much.)  Rather, this appears to be an area where Jim Chaney is getting more production than did Schottenheimer.

Now that being said, Chaney’s offense is about to run into several salty defenses, so we’ll see if the trend continues.  In the meantime, though, maybe the man deserves a little credit.

*************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Ole Miss’ defense may be salty, but it’s also 11th in the SEC in opponents’ third-down conversion percentage.

Today’s stat that makes you go “hmmm…”

Not sure I would have expected this.

Winning the Turnover Battle in 2016 translates to only a 67.2% chance of winning the game. Down 7% from 2015. #CFB pic.twitter.com/Vfl3j7W9sx

— SportSourceAnalytics (@SportSourceA) September 21, 2016

For two reasons:  one, I would have expected a higher correlation, and, two, that’s a decent sized decline.

Of course, small sample size warning applies here.  I’ll be curious to see how this plays out over the course of the season.

No hard feelings, Bobby.

Everything that’s bullshit about the playoff selection committee, in one anecdote:

With No. 3 Louisville (3-0) moving up the rankings after its 63-20 win against Florida State last week, that makes it possible Long could sit in on committee discussions about including the Cardinals — led by former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino — in the Playoff.

They are discussions Long said on Wednesday before a meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club that he won’t recuse himself from, despite the fact he fired Petrino in 2012. The coach wrecked his motorcycle, leading to revelations of a mistress who worked in the athletic department.

“No, there’s no reason for me to recuse myself,” Long said. “I think Louisville is a fine football program, and they demonstrated that after three weeks of the season. We’ve got six more weeks before we rank a group of teams.”

Members of the committee recuse themselves from the selection process when their own schools or conflicts of interest arise.

When asked if he was concerned about the perception of a lack of objectivity concerning Petrino, Long simply said, “No.”

Now, on one level, an accusation of partiality here is silly.  Long had no choice but to cut ties with Petrino after his misbehavior came to light.

But ask yourself this:  if Louisville narrowly misses a shot at the semi-finals, in part because Jeff Long decides it’s not one of the four best teams in the country, you don’t think there’s going to be plenty of yelling and finger pointing about his motives?  It may not be fair, but it’ll certainly be fodder for every talking head bringing up references to Caesar’s wife in December.

You may not have liked the BCS computers, but at least nobody could accuse them of getting emotional about anything.

“It didn’t go away in two weeks.”

Nick Chubb says whatever’s ailing Georgia’s running attack the last two games, it ain’t his health.  You want to argue with him?  I don’t.

Dial this clip up to the 3:35 mark and take a look.

It’s Chubb’s longest run of the night, on the last play of the third quarter.  He goes wide, shakes off a defender who eluded Payne’s block and turns it upfield for a sixteen-yard gain.  It’s classic Chubb.  The big difference between that play and what went on for most of the rest of the night was that he was able to get a little space within which to operate.

Jim Chaney needs to figure out a way to make that happen more often, that’s all.