Efficiency, for the win

In the wake of Georgia’s narrow win over Missouri, there’s been a lot of gnashing of teeth in the comments here and questioning by the national media.  Perhaps everyone should take a deep breath and then check out Bill Connelly’s advanced box score for the game.

Like they’ve done all season long, Georgia destroyed their opponent in success rate (46.8% vs. 28.3%).  I know it felt like Missouri dominated for much of the game, but it was the turnovers and Mevis playing out of his ass that kept the Tigers on top until the fourth quarter.  Maybe that’s a formula that comes back to haunt Georgia later this season, but I’m not sure it’s something to be counted on.  When the Dawgs don’t shoot themselves in the foot, they just grind and grind, as we finally saw in the fourth quarter.

A few specific tidbits worthy of note:

• Missouri had zero success on third-and-long, except for the Ringo penalty.  Georgia, on the other hand, knocked out three conversions in that setting.
• Stetson was much happier throwing into zone coverage than man.  (Cover 0, I suspect, for the Mizzou win there.)  Missouri struggled against Georgia’s man coverage, too, but only took five shots against man.  Makes you wonder if the Dawgs should have played more man coverage.
• Georgia averaged less than seven yards per pass attempt, another example of how Missouri was willing to compress the field because they didn’t respect Georgia’s downfield passing game.
• The Tigers blitzed at almost twice the rate the Dawgs did.  (See comment above.)
• It sure didn’t feel like it, but Georgia wound up with a better explosive play rate than Missouri did.
• One other key:  goal-to-go TD%.  Georgia (66.7%); Missouri (0.0%).

The point of these stats isn’t to mislead.  There’s no question Georgia struggled for a good bit of the game.  But there are clear reasons for that and the majority of those weren’t structural.  In other words, this is a very good team that’s got some cleaning up to do… and should be able to do.