Jake Rowe makes a couple of good points in his second look at the South Carolina game.
On offense, JT Daniels isn’t perfect, but he’s making some good decisions on the fly.
One of the reasons the run so heavily outnumbered the pass in this game was because the defensive looks dictated where JT Daniels did with the football. If you look back at some of UGA’s most productive plays on the ground, quite a few of them were either RPOs or plays that had a pass tagged on if the look was right.
The most notable was James Cook’s 29-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. That was an RPO where Daniels had a chance to pull it and hit George Pickens on the curl route with space, but Georgia had a hat for a hat in the box because the Gamecocks were showing bracketed coverage on Pickens. That obviously worked out well for the Bulldogs and there were a number of other instances where UGA took advantage of the packaged plays or RPOs to make the Gamecock defense wrong.
That tracks with what Kirby said about Daniels.
On what he has seen from JT Daniels the first two games he has played and what he is looking for him to improve on…
“Good decision making—that is the most important thing, to continue to make good decisions. If it’s not there, take off and run with it, throw it away—which he did the other day. He threw it away one time. There are going to be times where you don’t have the perfect call, or maybe they got the perfect defense into a call, and hey, you have to punt, you have to throw it away. That’s what I want to see him do and continue to get better at.”
As impressive as Daniels’ start has been, we need to remember he’s still very much a work in progress. He’s only going to get better with more reps.
Meanwhile, on defense…
Lack of eye discipline on defense: This mainly applies to the linebackers and the STAR/nickel position. Look no further than the 35-yard connection between Luke Doty and Nick Muse on South Carolina’s first touchdown drive. That was a really nice play call from the Gamecocks but Tyrique Stevenson’s eyes were in the backfield way too long. The guy he was coverage man-to-man on the play released into the back field for the end around, giving Stevenson the next man, which was Muse. By the time he took his eyes out of the backfield where he was eyeing the end around action, it was too late. Muse had already run by him on the wheel and he couldn’t catch up. The same occurred multiple times with the linebackers where they were late picking up a swinging running back out of the backfield. Those instances resulted in easy yardage.
It hasn’t been just Stevenson. The ILBs have been guilty of much the same. Florida took big advantage of that. The problems haven’t been talent (although Rice’s injury, to be fair, has to be factored in). They’ve been the result of poor fundamentals, something you wouldn’t expect this staff to tolerate.
Get The Picture 
Stevenson seems to have regressed this season. He’s kinda gotten abused in both the run and pass at times.
The D can always be better but my biggest issue Saturday was allowing SC to go 3 for 3 on 4th down. Partly to blame for that was some poor tackling of Harris. Ojulari really made a poor attempt at tackling Harris on what should have been a loss.
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Azeez on that tackle had all the looks of a guy who thought they’d just blow the play dead once he wrapped Harris up. Which is absurd, bc they have gotten to where they let plays go on forever now.
The defense isn’t completely checked out, but it’s clearly not focused either.
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What was strange was that the D played lights out to start both the first and second half. They simply didn’t maintain it throughout the game.
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College football has reverted to it’s roots. Now after every run play we have a scrum. Whatever happened to aiding the runner, and piling on? We were great at it with the elephants that Pittman got us but when we drop down a weight class we are not go to be able to do this as much.
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This was the best thing Cade Mayes did. He was a bull jumping in the scrum.
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Poor tackling has popped up throughout the season but last Saturday I think it reared its ugly head and stood out. It has been a weird year for sure. Practicing for months. Not sure if you are playing every Saturday. Playing an all conference slate. Playing games out of sequence. All of those htings add up to players having a break down of fundamentals on both O and D.
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[d]ictated “where” JT Daniels did with the football. I know what he meant but sheesh, whatever became of proof reading?
Yeah, I know my posts have plenty of typos too.
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Its ok. We write for free on a comments section that doesn’t allow editing.
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That’s why shou; go new roos.
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For all of those yesterday crowing over a few series where the D was stellar, this puts it into prospective. For it to be an elite D they have to come out with that same focus and intensity on EVERY series, not just to start each half. For what ever reason, this D does not seem to have the same fire in their belly that the last couple of years have had. Maybe they swallowed too much rat poison during the off season when the media (and many of us as well) crowned them the best D in all of college football. IF we have spring ball, I suspect the returning members of the D will pay the price. I imagine practice will be rather intense to correct those issues. With Kirby’s penchant for a D dominated game, I suspect that they will have their tongues dragging in the dirt before the start of next season.
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I think a lot of this is true. The defense is not that motivated, but can you blame them? This is the second season they have had to carry a malfunctioning offense, and there really isn’t much to play for post-Florida. The offense, meanwhile, is getting into a groove and the players feel like they are auditioning for 2021.
On a related note, I wonder about Lanning. He has established a pattern of getting torched by good offensive minds (LSU last year, Bama and UF this year, Miss State to a degree), and making adjustments far too late.
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That Jake Rowe piece makes me think that JT could be a version of Jake Fromm, but with a better arm. Hmmm, I think I’ll have some of that. 🙂
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ILB play has been a disappointment. Rice, Dean, Walker, Tindall, McBride, Trezman Marshall, Rian Davis. Does any other school in cfb have that much talent and experience inside? Schumann has some splainin to do.
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But Rice and Dean are Butkus finalist!
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Part of the problem with the defense is there have been so many injuries there is no longer the produce or sit the bench mentality. Having someone pushing really hard for your job seems to make work ethic/production increase. We have lost some of that this season.
JT Daniels work ethic according to coach Monken can
t be questioned. Im much more happy with his desire to learn his craft right now than clubbing the dead baby seal that is USCe football. Its always fun to stomp a rival especially one that has been a recent thorn in our side. Its really encouraging when you see actual growth on the part of this offense.LikeLike
Maybe practicing regularly against JTD will improve the D against some of the better offenses they’ll see in the future. Iron sharpens iron. Seeing themselves embarrassed on film and a boot up the butt should fix the tackling issues. This D isn’t far from first rate.
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A couple things I’ve noticed about the D, both in recruiting and results, are: 1) we have a ton of good pass rushers but they aren’t nearly as effective against the run or covering underneath passes. Ojulari really only makes plays rushing the QB. Nolan Smith has hardly seen the field. Kirby went the transfer route for Johnson to have another guy who could do more than just rush the passer. 2) Kirby and Lanning seem to be leaning more on DBs. The defense is far removed from a 3-4. Often times, there are 2 true DL, 3 LBs with one o on the line (standing or hand down) and the rest DBs. That puts everything on a NT who can repeatedly demand multiple blockers to free ILBs who can everything between the line and DBs, sideline to sideline.
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The rules as they exist in college football right now make ILB the hardest position to play. Run-pass reads with a 3-yard cushion for the offense means you will always be a step behind on one of your two assignments – and now we’ve got an entire generation of QBs coached up from Pee Wee forward to see what the ILB is reading and go the other way. And an entire crop of offensive coordinators who know how attack linebackers in space.
It’s gone from a position that inflicts damage to the offense to one that just tries to contain damage to the defense.
Safety isn’t much better, but they’ve got a beat more time to figure things out.
Everyone else on defense has a much more streamlined job description.
No one has dominant inside linebacker play anymore. Roquan was the last guy in college football who was consistently making plays from that spot as a traditional ILB.
Isaiah Simmons at Clemson was an athletic freak who essentially operated as a 3rd safety near the line of scrimmage. Same with Devin Bush at Michigan. But absent that sort of athletic skill set, your guy at those ILB spots are more often than not chasing rather than dictating.
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Daniels throwaway was easily his worst read of the night. The safety fell and Burton was doing jumping jacks alone in the end zone.
The throw into double coverage the the SC db dropped was also a bit troubling, as was taking a 15 yard loss on a sack when he could have easily thrown the ball away.
I’m not complaining though. He does more good than bad at this point and he’s a helluva lot better than the alternative. I just wish the staff would have deemed him ready in Jacksonville as opposed to 48 hours later when they handed him the starting job to start Mizzou week.
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