From the Macon Telegraph: “It’s not about sacks, because sacks don’t win games,” Rice said. “We have to make sure the quarterback isn’t comfortable and get him moving on his feet.”
With the nation’s lowest sack total, I know this has been the mantra for Georgia’s coaches and players this week, and I get the defense there. There’s only one problem with that.
They’re not exactly overwhelming opponents with pressure.
Georgia is also 110th in tackles for loss, good for last in the SEC.
Yes, they’ve been vanilla through the first three games. Yes, they’ve faced offenses either dialed around a running attack, like Austin Peay, or passing schemes that don’t require the quarterback to keep the ball very long. Again, I get all that.
Here’s my question, though: assuming Missouri’s pass game is better suited to the kind of pressure Monty Rice talks about, is Georgia’s defense simply able to flip a switch and do something we haven’t seen much of after three games?
The answer would seem to be they’d better.
Get The Picture 
I’m so tired of the pundits and the pass rush/sack talk.
I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that UGA hasn’t needed to do much to disrupt the QB when we are up 4 – 5 scores by the 3rd quarter.
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While the 3rd down stats are somewhat disconcerting, what jumps out at me is that there have only been 6 3rd downs in 3 games on his drives.
That’s real nyce Clark, real, real nyce.
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Anything for you, Eddie.
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Of all the tiresome memes, this may be one of them. I’ll worry about this more at LSU.
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Aus, has the pass rush passed your eye test? ‘Cause it hasn’t passed mine. Against fronts that we should have dominated, we didn’t come close. Tired meme, maybe. Wrong, not so sure.
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Let’s see how today plays out. Hold and contain with a vanilla and heavily rotated D against cupcakes just isn’t a measuring stick to use for me. I expect we will try to see if the front 4 can do the job before Tucker dials up the blitzes, but those will work if it has to.
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If Dooley wants Lock to stand in pocket more, then that is to our advantage.
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I get the lack of blitzing and requirement to be aggressive thus far, and it is true that measuring sacks isn’t a top key for winning, but #110 in TFL is a troubling number. It signals we are not getting penetration (always troubling, imo. 🙂 ) And that means you are not disrupting anything, run or pass. Not only is that never getting a team further behind the chains and forcing them into riskier plays that get us turnovers. It is a big thing, we just haven’t been burned by it yet. We also haven’t faced very good offensive lines either, so we should have just beaten them a few times. Making them uncomfortable is the goal, if you are doing that often enough, you get more than 1 sack.
I think we are minimizing this too quickly, and it shows why we are not making plays on runners near the LOS very often. If 1st contact is 2-3 yards, you are going to give up a lot of 4+ yard runs, and they move the chains.
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I don’t recall there being anyone named ‘Keyon Richardson’ on the team.
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