For all our fretting, consider this:
That’s compiled against the current nos. 9, 36, 11 and 16 teams in SP+, so it hasn’t been an Urnge-colored November, either.
Monthly Archives: November 2019
Who’s up for some clean, old-fashioned hate?
Fair warning — if you’re one of those lost souls who’s been a steady advocate for dumping the series with Georgia Tech, this might not be the best week to hang around the blog. Just sayin’.
Georgia opened as a 29-point favorite over the Jackets. Twenty. Nine. Points.
To give you an idea of how lopsided that number is, consider this:
And this.
The Georgia football team hasn’t scored 29 points in a game since pasting Tennessee 43-14 in Knoxville more than seven weeks ago.
But that’s how many points the Bulldogs are favored by over Georgia Tech, per VegasInsider.com.
After you’re done with that, inject this directly into your veins.
At 10-1, Georgia has seven more wins than Tech at 3-8. In the series, only twice have the Bulldogs owned a greater margin in wins going into the game. That was in 1980 and 1981, when UGA was at its peak behind Herschel Walker and the Jackets were in coach Bill Curry’s first two seasons…
Tech has only twice beaten Georgia when it had a losing record going into the game, 1935 and 1969, when the Jackets were 4-5 before facing UGA. They beat Bulldogs teams that finished 6-4 and 5-5-1, respectively.
This will be the 39th time since the advent of the weekly Associated Press poll in 1936 that Georgia will enter the game ranked. In the first 38 , Tech is 7-31.
Ahhhh.
The genius is gone, which means that (1) Georgia faces off against a Tech squad that is in the first year of a rebuild with a ton of personnel ill-suited for its current scheme and (2) Georgia’s defensive linemen are liberated from dealing with constant cut blocking. Those guys are even happier than you are after reading those stats.
It’s lopsided enough that, one day in, we’ve already got a hardy StingTalk commenter invoking King Theoden from Return of the King in this thread about the point spread.
In short, a good time is promised for all this Saturday at historic Mark Richt Field.
Speaking of which, let’s have a quick reader poll on the crowd.
Show ’em who runs the state, Dawgs.
Filed under Georgia Football, Georgia Tech Football
But he’s so young.
How can we expect any kind of major contribution from George Pickens this season?
So he’s caught a few balls. But you can’t expect a true freshman to handle the physicality of the SEC, amirite?
Okay, maybe he’s got a future.
Filed under Georgia Football
Where they’re at
Pete Fiutak defines the essence of this year’s version of Georgia football:
This is how the team plays. The defense wins games, Fromm doesn’t throw picks – he still hasn’t given one up outside of the South Carolina loss – Rodrigo Blankenship hits kicks, and D’Andre Swift runs well. Now, the team that was dismissed after the home loss to the Gamecocks a few weeks ago has wins over Notre Dame, Florida, Auburn, and Texas A&M on the resumé.
Not exactly chopped liver.
Sagarin, ESPN’s FPI and Bill Connelly’s SP+ all have that adding up to the fifth-best team in the country.
Really, before the season started, how far off is the present from what we were expecting then?
Filed under Georgia Football
SEC Power Poll, Week Thirteen
It took 13 weeks, but we’ve got the SECCG participants lined up, finally. As for the rest of the conference, let’s just say there’s a noticeable drop off after number six.
- LSU. With one game left, LSU has outscored Alabama in league play this season. How many of you saw that coming?
- Alabama. Oh, shit, Tua’s out, which means they got almost nothing from his backup Mac Jones **squints, checks notes** outside of 10 of 12 passes for 275 yards and three touchdowns.
- Georgia. If doing just enough to get by in the SEC is an art, the Dawgs are Rembrandt.
- Florida. Dan Mullen is on the verge of starting his Gator career with back-to-back ten-win seasons.
- Auburn. Which coach in the Iron Bowl needs the win more?
- Texas A&M. The Aggies played well against Georgia, but still don’t have a meaningful win this season.
- Tennessee. The Vols are 4-3 in the conference, with a minus-44 point differential.
- Kentucky. All things considered — their two best players from 2018 gone and a wide receiver playing quarterback — to be bowl eligible with a week to go is no mean feat for the ‘Cats.
- Mississippi State. If the Bulldogs lose the Egg Bowl, they don’t go bowling.
- Ole Miss. All they have left is to ruin Mississippi State’s season. What else do they need?
- Missouri. Like Tennessee, the Tigers have a minus-44 point differential in SEC play; unlike Tennessee, Mizzou is 2-5 in the conference. At least they close with Arkansas.
- South Carolina. It sounds like Agent Muschamp will endure for another season. What’s the over/under on the number of assistants he cans?
- Vanderbilt. The Commodores three-game win streak against the Vols is on the line. I just wanted to type that because I probably won’t be able to do so again in my lifetime.
- Arkansas. A fine mess.
Filed under SEC Football
Fabris Pool results, Week 13
Massive five-way tie for first this week:
Congrats to By Georgia we did it, who pulled out the tiebreaker.
As for the seasonal race…
… with one week to go, I won’t say it’s over, but it’s certainly on life support.
“We won today. We’re fine.”
I saw D’Andre Swift’s reaction after he got blown up on a first down run late in the game, when Georgia was desperately trying to maintain possession of the ball to run out the clock. I didn’t know the background story, though, until afterwards.
The CBS and Sanford Stadium cameras caught an awkward moment between Jake Fromm and D’Andre Swift Saturday night during Georgia’s 19-13 win over Texas A&M.
The Bulldogs were coming off a first-down run by Brian Herrien on a third-and-one play when Fromm let the play clock run down and handed off to Swift into the teeth of a Texas A&M blitz. The Aggies showed the blitz at the last second, knowing that the Bulldogs were trying to let as much time tick away as possible, and Swift loss two yards on the play.
The junior tailback sprung to his feet and had some words for Fromm, who never really pushed back as TAMU called a timeout with 2:43 left in the game and the two started walking toward the sideline.
After the game, Kirby Smart shed some light on the event and described it as something that would have been impossible to avoid considering the circumstances.
“I wouldn’t call it a dustup,” Smart said. “He was just frustrated. It was a situation where we don’t run that play into a pressure from that side. They did a good job disguising it. We told Jake to milk the clock and when you milk the clock you can’t change the play. You milk the clock, you’ve got to run the play. It wasn’t a great play, but that’s called passion, it’s not a dustup. It’s love. When you have family, your family doesn’t always get along, right? But they love each other. These two young men love each other as much as anybody.”
Had it been any other time in the game when UGA wasn’t trying to milk the clock, Fromm would probably been up to snap it sooner, had an opportunity to recognize the blitz and put Swift in a better situation. Instead, the play put the Bulldogs behind the chains.
“I think it’s just two competitors that want to compete and do the right thing for the offense,” Fromm said. “The clock is ticking, they showed a blitz there at the last second and I didn’t have enough time to change it. That’s part of the four-minute scenario, trying to milk out the clock and two guys want to be really competitive and win a football game.”
The “four-minute scenario”. There’s your metaphor for this season’s Georgia offense. Or, if you prefer, you can go with this one:
Simmons said Georgia offensive coordinator James Coley has been focusing the offense on third downs and red-zone touchdowns. Against Texas A&M, Georgia went 5-of-15 on third down, and it scored one touchdown in its three trips to the red zone. The other two were Rodrigo Blankenship field goal attempts.
“There’s always something you can improve on,” Simmons said. “We’re definitely getting to where we want to be. We just have to keep progressing.”
Keep? When did they start?
Look, Jake and his receivers definitely had their share of execution issues, especially in the first half, when Fromm missed badly on a couple of key throws and one an early occasion when he threw a perfect slant (!), only to have it go right through the hands of the receiver. But the coaching staff isn’t exactly doing him a lot of favors, either.
Watching Georgia’s offense was interesting because they used a minimal amount of creativity or modern concepts. They stayed in 11 personnel, didn’t put anyone in motion across the formation, no bootlegs or rollouts, a couple of quick throws, and didn’t run any RPOs with backside screens. They used the toss play away from A&M’s playside blitzes a few times but didn’t go to them consistently.
Time and time again, A&M didn’t have to do much but crowd the box and allow Georgia backs to come to them. Nothing came easy for the Bulldogs and while A&M had something to do with that Georgia really was their own worst enemy time and time again both in philosophy and execution.
Forget Attack the Day. “Nothing comes easy” is this year’s mantra. And it shouldn’t be; Georgia hits a couple of those near misses early on and yesterday’s game isn’t close. Incapability isn’t an excuse, either, as Fromm nailed three beautiful passes on the Dawgs’ lone touchdown drive.
I’m beginning to wonder if there is so much confidence in the play of the defense that it robs the offense — coaches and players — of their edge. Whatever the problem is, they’d better find an answer in a couple of weeks. LSU has only failed to score at least 30 points once this season and has never been held below 23. Georgia has failed to score more than 23 points five times already this season. Something’s gotta give for Georgia to win another SEC title.
Filed under Georgia Football
Ah, decisions, decisions… linky More defensive scoring context
Today, I’ve already posted Patrick Garbin’s tweet about how remarkable the team’s defensive scoring mark is from a historical program perspective. It’s also remarkable from the perspective of the 2019 season.
In eight conference games, Georgia has given up a total of 84 points. To give you an idea of how dominant that figure is, consider that Vanderbilt, which has the SEC’s worst scoring offense by a country mile, has managed to score 92 points — in seven games.
SEC teams that put up some of their lowest scoring totals of the season against Georgia: Auburn (2nd lowest), Florida (lowest), Kentucky (lowest), Missouri (lowest), Tennessee (3rd lowest), Texas A&M (2nd lowest) and Vanderbilt (2nd lowest).
I find more value in advanced stats than do some of you, but when you get down to it, the most important stat for a defense is keeping the other guy off the scoreboard. In that regard, Georgia’s been stellar this year.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Two’s a crowd
The other possibility is that nobody wants to ride on an elevator with Corch.
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
Get The Picture 
You must be logged in to post a comment.