TFW a stopgap turns into a foregone conclusion

Matt Hinton neatly summarizes the — should we call it angst? — feeling among the Georgia faithful about putting their trust in Stetson Bennett to deliver a national championship.  (And, yes, it felt a little surreal to type that.)

First, there’s the “what has he done for us lately?” side of the ledger.

By any other measure, though, he has played his part as well as even the most unforgiving skeptic could ask for. With the regular season drawing to a close, he leads the SEC and ranks among the top 5 nationally in yards per attempt, overall passer rating and Total QBR. Against type, he also leads the conference in average depth of target (11.8 yards), defying doubts about his downfield arm strength. In fact, Bennett has connected on 56.5% of his attempts of 20+ yards, per Pro Football Focus, the best completion percentage among all Power 5 quarterbacks. Saturday’s 41-17 win at Tennessee was his 5th straight game with a touchdown pass in that category.

I think it’s fair to say if it were JT Daniels compiling those stats, we’d all be pinching ourselves over our good fortune and checking the weekly Heisman odds.

The reason we can’t bring ourselves to do that with Stetson?

The fact is, the lingering questions about Bennett’s limitations against Playoff-caliber defenses can’t be addressed until he actually steps on the field against a Playoff-caliber defense. The nearest approximations he’s faced so far this season have yielded his best performance (vs. Auburn) and his worst (vs. Florida), both in games the defense had well in hand from start to finish. (Bennett didn’t play in the opener against Clemson, which memorably held Georgia’s offense to 3 points with Daniels at the helm and has continued to field an elite defense in the meantime.) Keeping pace with Alabama or Ohio State, explosive attacks that are actually capable of putting some points on the board against any defense, will be an entirely different challenge.

Yes, Stetson’s performance last season against the two teams Georgia faced with potent offenses left something to be desired and I get why that sits in the back of folks’ minds.  Still, I think Matt’s take there shortchanges this Georgia team a little.  It’s going to take more than an offense that can challenge Georgia’s defense — which is definitely a lesser standard than what those potent 2020 ‘Bama and Florida offenses were capable of — to beat Georgia.  Somebody’s going to have to come up with a way to keep Georgia off the scoreboard more than any defense has been able to so far this season.  And, honestly, if Clemson is your benchmark (and their defense probably ought to be), I’m not sure Georgia will see a defense in the postseason that can perform to that level.

That being said, even if Matt didn’t say it directly, I think Tennessee solidified my feeling about the only way to hope to keep Georgia’s offense with Bennett at QB in check is to play soft coverage in the back to prevent the big play and hope your front seven can hold Georgia’s running game down just enough.  (Against Tennessee, that worked, until it didn’t.)  Selling out to stop the run against this Georgia team has proven to be a suicidal approach against Stetson Bennett.

So, maybe there’s a chance.  But maybe — and at the moment, I’d say this is the more likely possibility — Bill Connelly’s got it all sussed:

And hell, if Bama’s offensive line isn’t up to snuff, it could get destroyed by Georgia’s front, at which point nothing else might matter. There might not be an offense as good as last year’s Bama and Florida offenses this year, so for all we know Bennett will keep right on doing what he’s doing, and the Dawgs will be just fine. But in theory, Atlanta might still tell us something.

Keep enjoying the ride, folks.