Whatever works

Jeez, talk about where my head is at — I read Graham Coffey’s 12 Takeaways post on Monday, thoroughly enjoyed it and somehow thought I posted about it.  Old age is a beyotch, but I digress.

Anyway, back to what Graham posted.  I’m pleased to see he had many of the same impressions I had live (backed up with more specific information).  Take, for example, this:

Speaking of Monken, his detachment from any sort of system is what enables his week to week brilliance. On the Dawgs Central preview show I talked about how UO ILB’s Flowe, Sewell and Funa were liabilities in pass coverage. On the first drive he made them run sideline to sideline after McIntosh and McConkey. On the second he got heavy with Washington and Bowers and alternately worked the flats and attacked the middle. In total the UO ILB trio was targeted 10 times. They gave up 9 receptions for 114 yards and UGA pass catchers had 90 yards after the catch when matched up on them. Flowe and Sewell had 5 missed tackles between them when in coverage. Monken found the matchup, exploited it, and then built everything else off of that threat. What’s dangerous for defenses is he’ll change that strategy week to week as needed.

Then there’s something I didn’t notice.

Bennett’s average time to throw on Saturday was 2.54 seconds (less than Nix’s 2.67), which is indicative of how quickly they had him get the ball out early in the game. Once it became clear that UGA’s offensive line had things under control you saw more slow developing plays downfield. Last year Bennett’s dropbacks were as much as 60% play-action some weeks. Against Oregon only 11 of his 31 dropbacks were play-action. Stetson was only pressured on 5 of those dropbacks and he attempted a pass on all of them. I know he had a couple throwaways but my point is that Oregon was never able to keep him in the pocket or speed up his clock in the passing game. Georgia’s OL was dominant in pass protection (More on the run blocking in Takeaway #7).

Georgia ran 62 plays Saturday, which is right in line with last season’s average of 63.5 plays per game.  While they did run a few quick snaps (to good effect, mostly), it’s not part of Monken’s MO.  Yet look at how quickly they had Stetson getting the ball out of his hands.  As I mentioned in my Observations post, Monken called very little play action, something that was definitely a staple of last season’s offense.

The point here being, the man isn’t wedded to anything other than finding the best way to attack a defense on a given day.  From where I sit, that’s pretty friggin’ awesome.