“They’re doing this to offenses that are used to scoring.”

That’s Arkansas offensive coordinator Kendall Briles, talking about Georgia’s defense.  He had more to say:

“Because they’re so good inside, you want to try to get the ball on the perimeter, but their space guys are great in space,” Briles said. “That’s what makes it so hard. They tackle so well in space. They get off blocks in space. They run so well to the football, and they get there angry. When they hit you, your players remember how it feels when you get hit by Georgia.”

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?  Georgia has depth, talent and plays fundamentally sound defense.  That will take you a long way.

What’s interesting in this Chris Low piece (read it all, of course) is what steps Kirby Smart took to fine tune the scheme this season.

What’s not the same about this defense, according to Smart, is the way Georgia is playing more zone and not getting caught up in trying to match up all the time. The defensive staff made a conscious effort to simplify things this offseason.

They call it “Blackboard,” and the concept doesn’t change regardless of how much offenses shift, motion or line up in different formations. Smart credits his defensive staff for tweaking the scheme to help avoid some of the confusion that hurt Georgia a year ago.

“We still have the hard calls, but we added easy calls and we’ve been in the easy calls more than the hard calls,” Smart said. “We didn’t throw things out. We’re just not doing them as often.”

As I’ve mentioned before, some of that was no doubt driven by the personnel losses in the secondary.  I also think the Addae addition to the staff contributed to the thinking Smart describes there.

I also found this comparison revealing:

Smart has seen the game evolve greatly in the past decade. He was on the field in 2011 as Alabama’s defensive coordinator when LSU beat Alabama 9-6 in overtime. There were 28 defensive players in that game — 14 on each side — who would go on to be drafted, including 10 first-rounders.

But it was much more of a possession game back then, and tempo and run-pass options weren’t ingrained in offenses the way they are now.

“Both of those offenses at the time were bully offenses, and what a good defense is made up of now is not what a good defense was made up of then,” Smart said. “You have the same situational principles — short-yardage, goal-line and all those things. But the makeup is so different. You have to be able to give people negative plays to get them behind the sticks. You have to be more disruptive whereas back then I felt like you could out-physical people.”

What Georgia is doing now — 53 points (46 by the defense) yielded in eight games — is off the charts, when you consider the present era of offensive football as context for the performance.  What’s most impressive about that to me is Smart’s confidence in scheming and talent evaluation almost makes him sound like it was expected all along.  Hell, for all I know, maybe it was.