For those of you who think I’ve been too harsh on Smart and Coley lately, let me just say there are plenty of stats out there that illustrate that this Georgia team is a very good one.
Here’s a sampler of a few that I’ve taken off Twitter:
Fromm has been a productive passer this season. Generally speaking, offensive efficiency has been among the conference’s best. The offensive line has done well above average work protecting the quarterback. The receivers have done as good a job of holding on to Fromm’s passes as any group in the SEC. These are all unequivocally good things.
The fly in the ointment?
Georgia’s passing game isn’t taking the top off opposing defenses. That play action stat is particularly telling: Fromm’s percentage of 8.62% is well below the conference average. And that’s been Georgia’s bread and butter in its pass attack for… well, seemingly forever.
This gets back to playcalling, in my humble opinion. I don’t know why the coaches have chosen to compress the field for Fromm, but it’s clearly limiting his game. It’s not that Georgia’s bad offensively. It’s that right now, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. To me, that’s a fixable thing in the bye week.
By the way, for all the talk about havoc rate, note that the defense continues to do what Kirby’s defenses have done since he walked in the door.
A Smart-coached defense is going to make you earn every point. An offense has to work it all the way down the field. The funny thing is that Smart’s got his offense playing the same way now. As long as Georgia’s screwing up on offense less than the other team, that should work. When it doesn’t, that’s how you get South Carolina.
Get The Picture 
Yeah we are definitely a good team, but we aren’t elite. And this was the year it was all pointing to when Kirby got here. Not sure how this is where we are after stacking those elite recruiting class one on top of the other.
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I’m curious if any of the recruiting gurus ever go back and reevaluate classes based on transfers and dismissals. Like Fields leaving for Ohio St would retroactively boost their class ranking for that year and drop ours a little bit. Regardless, I’m sure Kirby’s recruiting classes would still all be top 10 at least, so there’s still no excuse.
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247 ranks teams by current talent: https://247sports.com/Season/2019-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite/
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Thanks, Doug. That chart tells me the hottest seats are in LA and Tallahassee.
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Yeah. I get that a team can be stacked at one spot and thin at another, but how can USC and FSU be THAT bad?
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I don’t follow either of those teams, but I know USC was down a couple of QBs due to injury recently and I keep hearing how FSU is horrible in the trenches.
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USC and FSU…. woof. Guess that’s enough evidence to show that while the jimmies and joes are vital to this game, you can’t win on that alone.
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Very interesting, thanks!
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All the receivers left at once. That’s mostly how.
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Robertson, Blaylock, and Pickens were all 5 star recruits. Blaylock and Pickens played for solid HS programs that played elite teams, and pass the eye test. Robertson was a Freshman All American at CAL.
But somehow they all are flat footed WRs that lack basic route running skills?
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Returning WR production matters. It’s not as plug and play as we would think.
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Good thing we had Robertson practice his blocking all last season.
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How did CAL get production out of Robertson is Freshman year? Maybe we can hire that WR coach as an analyst or something to bring in that cutting edge coaching.
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Playing PAC-12 defenses probably didn’t hurt.
Also, Mays was freshman AA last year and he has been flat out bad this year, so plateaus and regressions happen.
I think Coley sucks and needs to be replaced the second the season is over.
But we all fooled ourselves in thinking that losing essentially all returning receiving production was nbd and could just be covered up with talent.
It doesn’t work that way.
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If we run the same offense the past 2 games and we lose in Jax, I don’t think Coley should be allowed on the plane back.
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Playing in a phone booth may protect your defense and field position … it also removes the margin for error. I’m not calling for us to become a Big 12-2 air raid offense, but you do have to use the whole field in the passing game. If we’re going to play like this, you better score whenever possible and limit turnovers.
Re: play action, no one respects the play action off the zone read because Fromm doesn’t run. You can have the backside end chase down the run or go directly for Fromm. Most of our play action in the past has been out of the pistol or from under center (that’s a gut reaction rather than through hours of video study). One gripe I do have with Jake and the QB coaching is that he doesn’t appear to have been taught the ball handling skills Richt and Bobo taught their guys.
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Agree with the play fake being atrocious ( don’t know if that is poor coaching, execution, or play design) especially compared to the best I recall, David Green. The play fake is useless if no defenders bite on the run.
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“This gets back to playcalling, in my humble opinion. I don’t know why the coaches have chosen to compress the field for Fromm, but it’s clearly limiting his game. It’s not that Georgia’s bad offensively. It’s that right now, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. To me, that’s a fixable thing in the bye week.”
You have to wonder how Fromm feels about this. If he is the game manager we think he is…is this not gnawing at him? Is managing about efficiency or caution?
If the coaching staff does decide to ‘fix this’ during the bye week…how does Fromm respond? Is he ready to go, or will he settle into the comfortable training he has been subjected to, to date? And…what about the receivers? Will they be ready to open things up and stretch the field? Can they get separation?
I swear there were plays where it seemed like the play call was “everyone go out and I’ll hit who gets open”, like backyard ball.
I’m looking forward to a well thought out game plan to start a game, with the needed adjustments throughout. Let’s help our players succeed!!
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It’s hard to complain about a team that is doing so well. But watching the offense it feels like everything is just harder than it should be.
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There’s something about constipation in there.
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If we only found ways to win with we go 0-4 in turnovers everything would be perfect.
No reason to see that stat as the anomaly and trust what you’re doing.
Pretty soon, if we really apply ourselves, we could be so fucked up we lose when we go 4-0 in turnovers.
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But they didn’t, which is kind of the point.
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Who does? That’s MY point.
The overwrought existential navel gazing that’s taken place since that game is needless and tiresome.
It’s obvious what happened. We played like shit on offense AND turned it over 4 times.
Take your opponent more seriously and take care of the ball. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here or look at the CKS tenure as a doomed failure or boo our team because of our subjective certainty that we are better football coaches than who we’ve got.
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Even with that abysmal turnover margin, UGA still should have beaten a mediocre SC team playing a converted receiver at QB that failed to score in the second half.
You are overreacting here far more than those who have questioned the offensive misfiring in the last two games.
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I’m repeating what I’ve read right here. It’s not a reaction. It’s reporting.
Of course we should have. But the margin was in poor play and turnovers not what we’re trying to be as a football team.
The idea that any football team says “ok here’s plan B. This is what we do when we can’t block, catch, find the open receivers and give the ball away” is absurd.
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Honest question not meant to inflame in any way: I’m curious if we had the capability to run higher percentage plays. I’m no coach, but it appeared we were banging our heads against brick walls, determined to succeed at our will.
If our WRs are struggling to get separation, are there schemes/plays to help?
I totally agree that no Georgia fan should be inching toward any ledge.
I’m okay with the offense we run, but I expect us to utilize the things that work and back off the things that doesn’t.
Of course, no one could expect the turnovers at the time they happened and we certainly shouldn’t have expected that hotrod would miss a FG.
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I think your comments sum up my take as well. I don’t think the sky is falling, but I don’t think everything is running as smoothly as it could either. I don’t mind that we didn’t pass a lot during the Kentucky game due to the conditions, but I don’t see why it seemingly took us an entire half before we tried running to the outside.
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Things would be better if cager weren’t dinged and Fromm had more trust in the remaining guys and/or if we had real production from a te. But that’s not a “structural flaw” it’s a roster problem which can be quickly amplified by other issues.
Jake has played best when he has had a go to guy like wims and cager to beat press coverage.
As for the running into a wall thing, I think you see a lot of stunting trying to beat our guys with speed since power isn’t going to cut it. The rbs need to be a little more patient. We’ve seen Herrien do some of that but swift and Zeus are probably not waiting for the holes to open up. If a guy bursts through on a run play there’s not going to be gap integrity behind that if you can dodge that first guy.
The other thing is that once you challenge the a gap, even if it isn’t going for big yards, it can open open up the b gap and the outside runs as the interior defenders tire out. Once the defenders know they don’t have to worry about interior runs they can defend the others more quickly.
IMO the main thing we have to do is shut Trask down. If they aren’t scoring they’ll get frustrated and worn out and lay down.
Trask is the sort of guy we ought to be able to take apart. If we don’t, we just ain’t that good.
How can we challenge Tua or burrow if Trask and perrine are going up and down the field?
We can’t.
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Thanks, nice breakdown. Also, I forgot about Cager’s health.
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Agree, they aren’t going to run well against our defense from all I have seen. Any QB would see a falloff when he lost his go-to, 50/50 guy, especially when the other receivers have been blanketed. That INT where Landers and Fromm mis-communicated would have been a reception. He basically had one INT in that game that can be attributed to a bad throw. So one QB based INT all season, things aren’t broken but they also aren’t rosy against a better opponent if Coley is drawing blanks. I am more worried about Trey Hill snapping and blocking than Fromm’s ability to throw.
Trask is a threat primarily if we haven’t fixed what we saw exploited by ND over the middle. I will take our chance with the D otherwise. The KY game doesn’t concern me given the situation that night, had it been a different environment last Saturday following the SC game fiasco, and that was how we responded, I would be on drugs and not Bourbon or Scotch. Think our guys get it done in JAX but it clearly isn’t the slam dunk it looked like at the beginning of the season. And that is more about our shortcomings in 2019 than them being so formidable. Should Grantham be able to out scheme Coley after 2 weeks to prepare, we have a whole new situation.
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How is it Fromm is said to not trust the WR’s when he rarely targets them.
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Obvious disclaimer: I never want to see a kid get hurt.
A few of those stats tell me UF should be glad they had to bring in Trask. Question is how did that great QB guru running the show down there not see that absent injury?
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One thing you’re average football fan never will get is what happens to a team when they face that sort of adversity. Everyone steps up. The other ten offensive players, defense, special teams, everyone knows the margin for error has narrowed.
It happened to us beginning at ND. And a lot of the rest of 2017. Doesn’t mean Fromm was the best qb on the roster when Eason was named starter, but he was probably the best qb for that team.
And uf isn’t the only team to see it this year. USCe and UT both played better with the second guy. It’s an observable, demonstrable psychological phenomenon.
Hell, when is the last time we took out a qb and won? I can’t even remember.
The new qb just has to be reliable. Limit turnovers. Make the easy plays. If you’re a turnover machine or can’t hit 55% of your passes it won’t work because no one can win like that.
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My question would be, what are the offensive numbers if you remove Murray St and Arkansas St.
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That is an excellent question.
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If you sort just for games against SEC opponents, UGA is 4th in the conference in YPP on offense (UF is 6th).
But UGA has played teams ranking 14, 12, 10, and 6 among SEC teams against other SEC teams in YPP conceded. We still have 2 (AUB), 3 (MIZ), 7 (A&M) and 8 (UF) to go.
UFs YPP conceded in the conference is a bit skewed as LSU absolutely ripped them apart (10+ YPP, which is stupid).
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The same reason bend but don’t break defense works is the same reason our bend but don’t break offense won’t / doesn’t work: relying solely on stringing together 12-14 play drives to score is a tough way to make a living offensively. You have to at least have the threat of taking the top off of the defense. Efficiency is not a substitute for explosiveness. Our offensive numbers drop off a cliff relative to the rest of the conference once you define explosive plays as plays of 20+ yards as opposed to 10+
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Those stats definitely indicate the glass isn’t empty, and give some balance to those on the ledge. It didn’t help to see that SC has given up the most explosive plays (41) in the entire SEC, and we only scored 17 in four and a half quarters? And look at who they have played. Giver the talented skill players we have on board, if that isn’t a red flag, it is a very hot orange one.
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