Coaches Film Room haz a crayon.

Well, now…

Coaches Film Room Returns with Limited Commercial Breaks
After making its first College Football Playoff Semifinals debut, the popular Coaches Film Room (ESPNEWS) returns to the CFP National Championship MegaCast. Mike Bobo (Colorado State), Pat Fitzgerald (Northwestern) and Kevin Sumlin are among the coaches participating. Additional coaches will be added throughout the weekend.  [Emphasis added.]

That should make for some interesting informed commentary in a number of ways.

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Another reason

You know the end times are at hand when Phil Fulmer is living vicariously through Alabama.

Something I thought I’d never type: Phillip Fulmer pulling for Alabama to win the National Championship, “I’m pulling for Jeremy (Pruitt) to win it.”

— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) January 5, 2018

There’s something really wrong with that.

Calvin Ridley is kind of a big deal.

Meet Jalen Hurts’ security blanket.

Here's a look at how Jalen Hurts has distributed his passes this season pic.twitter.com/Bv0kupB7K8

— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) January 5, 2018

Sure hope Tucker’s got some answers for that.

Comrades in arms

From Roll Bama Roll’s Q&A with Dawg Sports’ Macondawg comes this amusing exchange:

7. It’s pretty funny that Auburn has to watch this game, isn’t it?

It’s freaking hilarious. I think we can all agree on that one.

It’s really been a great season, hasn’t it?

About Alabama’s injuries…

Before you get too excited about information like this,

Despite missing 2 full games and parts of 2 others, Anfernee Jennings was the most disruptive player on Alabama's defense this season. He will miss the NC Game with a knee injury pic.twitter.com/PHRlR8KKBA

— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) January 4, 2018

consider this.

Random championship note: Bama will have three reserves making their first or second career starts on defense (Mack Wilson, Deionte Thompson, Christian Miller) and no one is concerned about them in the slightest. All three were top 50 recruits nationally.

— Matt Hinton (@MattRHinton) January 5, 2018

There is no other team in the country with depth like Alabama’s.

Chicks dig the long ball, Jake.

One thing I noticed reviewing Fromm’s passing stats from the Rose Bowl is that despite going 20-29 with no interceptions, he wound up posting a passer rating below his season’s average.  The primary reason for that is a low (for him) 7.2 yards per attempt number.  As the three games he had with lower ratings all involved much lower completion percentages than the 69% he hit in the Rose Bowl, all I can conclude was that he really stuck to a short and mid-range passing game.

This CFB Film Room tweet bears that out.

Here are all of Jake Fromm's pass attempts from the semifinals. Very efficient, but not a lot going on downfield… Will they trust him to air it out at all against Alabama? pic.twitter.com/3XOXALiOIm

— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) January 4, 2018

That is an excellent question… although I might expand it to ask whether they’ll trust the offensive line to give him the time to air it out against ‘Bama.

“There are a lot of guys who love stats. And I loved stats! But I liked winning more.”

So I’m reading this New York Times article about what Saban wants out of his quarterbacks…

The Saban philosophy of quarterbacking can be summarized as: Don’t screw up. For Saban, who was an N.F.L. defensive coordinator under Patriots Coach Bill Belichick and coached the Miami Dolphins for two seasons, the quarterback’s main goals are to get the ball to talented backs and receivers, avoid big errors and let his typically top-ranked defenses do the rest.

“Jalen has always been a guy that, because of his athleticism and his ability to run the ball, has made a lot of plays with his feet,” Saban said. “But I also think that we’ve been able to help him develop as a quarterback in terms of his decision-making in the pocket.”

That emphasis is not new for Saban. The starting quarterback on the first of his five national championship teams (including one with Louisiana State) has, in his football afterlife, taken on the profession that perhaps best suits the prototypical Saban quarterback: dentist.

As the head signal-caller on the 2003 L.S.U. team, Matt Mauck averaged just 16 completions and barely 200 yards per game. He was called on not to be a superhero, but to be efficient.

“If it’s 3rd-and-5,” said Mauck who now works as a dentist near Denver, “just focus on getting 6 yards.”

In a Saban offense, the quarterback is never the team’s most talented player. (This year, that distinction likely belongs either to running back Bo Scarbrough or wide receiver Calvin Ridley.) For the quarterbacks who played alongside the Heisman Trophy winners Mark Ingram and Derrick Henry, the best play was frequently a dump-off.

“So many guys want to drive it down the field, make a tight window,” McElroy said, “but if you have the running back 3 yards away from you, that’s the best ball-carrier on the field.”

Saban could not — as has been remarked of offensive gurus like the former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh — take any guy off the street, anoint him quarterback and win the national title.

“It doesn’t bother me — well, it does a little bit — when people say anyone can play quarterback at Alabama,” McElroy said. “But it’s not true.”

That is because Saban asks his quarterbacks to do different things than most college coaches request, but not necessarily fewer things. The derogatory “game manager” appellation is unfair to them. Mauck was one of the game’s most efficient quarterbacks; McCarron and Coker had among the highest completion percentages.

“The first thing we talk about in any game we play is, ‘The ball, the ball, the ball,’” Saban said earlier this season.

… and I’m thinking “hmm, this sure sounds familiar to a Georgia fan”, when I get down to this:

If there is any team whose quarterback represents the old Saban paradigm, it is probably Georgia. Coached by the former Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart, Georgia relies on a stifling defense and a run-first offense whose quarterback, the freshman Jake Fromm, stands out for his extreme calm, his 63.7 percent completion rate and his 23-to-5 touchdown-to-interception ratio.

In fact, Alabama had eagerly recruited Fromm.

“We thought he was a fantastic player,” Saban said recently, adding the highest praise one can imagine Saban giving a quarterback. “Always puts his team in the best play that they can be in.”

Is it Monday night yet?

SEC contracts, where it just means less

Arkansas lawyers:  We screwed up the drafting of Bert’s contract so he’s owed a bigger buyout in the millions than he actually negotiated.  Who could do anything that incompetent?

Tennessee lawyers:  Hold our beer.

The Georgia run game goes from Oklahoma to Alabama.

Bill Connelly writes about the transition.

Chaney used these simple ideas to great effect all season. The Oklahoma game was the best example since the Missouri game, in which the Dawgs repeatedly sent blue-chip athletes through holes formed by wrong-footed Mizzou defenders.

But Oklahoma and Missouri had defenses that were, at best, mediocre. Alabama remains the gold standard.

Georgia has played three games against teams in the Rushing S&P+ top 15 — two against fifth-ranked Auburn and one against 13th-ranked Notre Dame — and found the going a bit rougher.

• Against Notre Dame, Michel and Chubb combined for 136 yards in 26 carries (5.2 per carry). Ten of their 26 carries (38 percent) gained at least 5 yards — six of 13 for Michel, four of 13 for Chubb.
• In the first game against Auburn, Michel and Chubb combined for 48 yards in 20 carries (2.4). Only six of 20 carries (30 percent) gained at least 5 yards. The national average is around 39 percent.
• In the second game against Auburn, things improved: Chubb and Michel gained 122 yards in 20 carries (6.1), and nine of 20 (45 percent) gained at least 5 yards.

The addition of D’Andre Swift to the equation made a big difference in the second Auburn game. He carried seven times and caught three passes, and his 64-yard explosion early in the fourth quarter sealed the game.

Swift, the latest blue-chipper in the arsenal, carried 18 times for 191 yards over the final three games of the regular season and has averaged 7.8 yards per carry in his freshman campaign. He has added one more dimension to the attack. Or should I say, one more direction.

Chubb is the north-south guy; Michel kills you with diagonals. Swift is used in a lot of east-west ways. Add to that a solid if unspectacular short passing game — Fromm was 20-of-29 against OU but averaged just 10.5 yards per completion — and you’ve got too many different things going on for most defenses to account for.

‘Bama is obviously going to be a completely different animal from what Georgia’s offense has faced all season.  The question I find myself asking at this point isn’t whether Bill is right about what Swift has brought to the offense.  It’s what the change made to the offensive line by inserting Cleveland as a starter after the Auburn loss has meant.  Bill notes that the line is 35th in stuff rate (run stops at or behind the line) and 44th in power success rate (success in short-yardage situations), but it would be informative to see breakdowns of those stats through the first Auburn game and then after.

How many points do you see Georgia needing to score to win Monday night?

Observations from the end zone, Rose Bowl edition

This has been the toughest Observations post I’ve tried to write, mainly because there’s a certain element of closing the door after a game that I’m reluctant to absorb.  As I posted in the immediate wake of the win, it was the greatest football game I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing in person.  It’s damned hard to put that feeling in my emotional rear view mirror and I say that even knowing that I’ll be back at it with an even bigger game Monday night.

Boy, it’s tough being a Georgia fan these days, ain’t it?

Enough navel gazing, then.  On to the bullet points:

• If the obvious comparison in terms of results is the 1980 Georgia-Florida game, I have to say that unlike my Jacksonville experience, I never reached the point in Pasadena when I thought things were hopeless for the Dawgs.  Concerned, sure.  There were moments, such as when Oklahoma went up by seventeen near the end of the second quarter and when it took the lead back after the Michel fumble — and what a time for the first in his collegiate career — when things seemed shaky, but they never got to the “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” stage.
• That being said, how huge was Tae Crowder’s snag of the squib kick?
• That, in turn, led to Kirby Smart’s best management of a first half ending all season.  And that, in turn, was based on Smart’s faith in Blankenship’s ability to kick the longest field goal of his career.  All told, that may be the most remarkable six seconds of game time I’ll ever see from a Georgia team.
• From there, we were treated to the most dominant third quarter of play this season.  The defense shut down Oklahoma — three complete series netting less than thirty yards — while the offense stormed back behind Chubb’s awesome 50-yard touchdown run and another long touchdown run from Michel.  The offensive prowess wasn’t that surprising, given that the Sooner linebackers didn’t play the run well all day, but the change on defense, after watching it take it on the chin all through the first half, was remarkable.
• Smart and Tucker made a decision at halftime to play more nickel on the back end and to attack Mayfield aggressively on the front end.  The result forced the Oklahoma offense to work harder to move the ball downfield.  It also appeared to confuse the Sooners offensive line, which had pretty much had its way in the first half.  Georgia was able to get a lot of pressure on Mayfield in the third quarter with a four-man rush, and if there’s a general rule for success on defense, it’s that if you don’t need to blitz to disrupt the quarterback, you’re in good shape.  Such was the case.
• For those of you who were skeptical about Mayfield and his offense, the first half should have changed your minds.  Even so, just watching TV and tape won’t give you an accurate idea of how good that offense is when it’s clicking.  There is so much going on at times that it makes Auburn look like it’s running basic I-formation stuff.  Even worse (from Georgia’s perspective, anyway), it’s going at light speed, which means any defensive misstep is enlarged.  Mayfield is a master of misdirection; he clearly had Georgia’s defense befuddled early on.  Really, Smart and Tucker had no choice but to find a way to bring pressure, because Mayfield made a joke out of Georgia’s attempt to contain him.
• Rodney Anderson is the best back Georgia saw this season.
• Another game in which Georgia’s special teams proved to have an advantage that made a significant difference.  I’ve already mentioned the sequence that ended the first half.  Another factor that fueled Georgia’s third quarter comeback was a series of kickoffs that the coverage team handled brilliantly and left the Sooners starting with poor field position time after time.  Then there was the Lorenzo Carter block of the field goal attempt in the second overtime that set up the game winning score.  It’s almost stunning to consider how quickly and effectively the staff turned around a weakness that had plagued Georgia football for years.
• Offensively, you have to start with the line’s prowess on blocking.  The insertion of Ben Cleveland into the starting five after the Auburn debacle elevated the line play and that was evident Saturday.  When Chubb and Michel combine for well over 300 yards on the ground, you know the run blocking was effective, but what equally stood out was how much time Fromm had to throw.  He was sacked twice, but one of those came on a safety blitz that it appeared the tight end and Michel didn’t expect.
• Speaking of Chubb and Michel… well, what can you say?  They both ran all day like two seniors who came back for exactly that moment in the sun.  And you can’t write a better ending to a game like that than Michel’s redemption for the fumble.
• Two plays from the Wilddog, two touchdowns.
• It was a solid day from the receiving corps.  Wims was his usual self; his touchdown catch was brilliant.  Godwin made a couple of tough snags, especially on Georgia’s fourth quarter drive to tie the game.  But perhaps my favorite play from the receivers came from a guy who didn’t have a catch.  On Michel’s TD run that tied the game in the third quarter, Riley Ridley blocked his man down the field and then took him five yards out of bounds before planting him on his ass.
• The stats may not reflect it, but given the stakes and the pressure of having to come back from seventeen points down, that may have been Jake Fromm’s best game of the season.  He kept his poise throughout — it was Mayfield, not the true freshman QB who threw a crucial interception — and was brilliant with his pre-snap reads in particular.  He was positively Murray-esque in that fourth quarter scoring drive that tied the game and took it to overtime, particularly on that play where he eluded a pass rusher who’d gotten by Baker, stepped up and looked like he might run, only to slide down the line of scrimmage and dump the ball off to Michel for a decent gain.  If that’s what a game manager looks like, then carry on, Garth.
• As far as the defense goes, there’s no way to sugarcoat the first half.  Those guys got shredded.  It was stunning to see how effortlessly Oklahoma scored on its first two possessions of the game.  The Dawgs wound up yielding more points in the first half than they did in all but one game all season.
• As Roquan went, so did the defense.  His first half wasn’t particularly memorable, but he was the picture of dominance in the second half and was otherworldly in the overtime, with two enormous stops.
• His day overshadowed Lorenzo Carter’s.  Carter was in on a number of plays and was all over the field.  And he certainly picked an ideal time for the first blocked field goal attempt of his career.
• On the front line, Ledbetter, Walker and Clark all turned in terrific efforts.  There was a stretch in the third quarter when Clark was unblockable.  Ledbetter had one of the few great plays in the first half when he ran somebody down short of a third-down conversion to force a rare punt.
• Like the rest of the defense, most of the secondary had a better second half.  (Deandre Baker being the rare exception, as he was one of the relatively few first-half bright spots.)  But when they got going, the safeties played well, particularly when Georgia committed more fully to lining up in nickel sets.
• Another big adjustment that was made in pass coverage was paying a lot of attention to Andrews, Oklahoma’s great tight end.  Georgia appeared to be bracketing him a good bit in the second half and denying him as a target for Mayfield.
• As far as the coordinators’ days went, while you can knock Tucker’s game plan for the first half, you also have to give him credit for finding a way to get some traction in the second half.  Again, the defense was as dominant in that crucial third quarter as it had been all season, against the best offense it faced all season.  As far as Chaney goes, while I could quibble with some of the play calling — when your backs are averaging better than twice as much as your quarterback is throwing, why have Fromm attempt almost thirty passes? — but his game prep was top-notch.  One reason Chubb and Michel were ridiculously effective all day was because Chaney came up with sets and plays that exposed the Oklahoma linebackers.  When your offense goes for 54 points and more than 500 yards, you must have done a few things right.
• Smart had a good day, too.  He got exposed by Lincoln Riley’s playcalling in the first half, but in the end, he had the last laugh, as it was Riley’s playcalling in the overtime that seemed questionable.  Smart’s conservatism was justified by his team’s physicality and revealed him to be the coach who had the best handle on how the game progressed.  He also deserves credit for keeping his team from panicking; part of that second half comeback came from managing his team’s emotions and riding the shift in momentum all the way to a lead after a 24-point run.
• This was the first game all season when the officials quietly surprised me by not having a bad day.  I can think of very few bad calls — there should have been an offensive pass interference on one play when Wims was prevented from catching a pass I recall — but for the most part I didn’t really pay attention to what they did, which is how it should be when they’re doing their jobs right.
• The venue was everything it was cracked up to be.  The history, the surroundings and the classic sight lines you get inside a one-level bowl all added up to something truly memorable.  (The concession prices were also remarkable, but not in a good way.)

I’ve never been through a game with more palpable momentum shifts.  There was so much at stake and the changes on the field were so dramatic you couldn’t risk leaving your seat.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend two remarkable games at two bucket list stadiums this season.  If you’re a college football fan, it’s hard to see how things could be better… although I can think of one thing happening Monday night that might qualify.