“We coach our guys hard and they receive hard coaching.”

You may have heard that the Georgia defense gave up over 500 yards of passing offense in the SECCG.  How concerned should we be about that, given that the Dawgs are about to face a considerably more effective passing attack in Ohio State?

Honestly, I’m not quite sure.  But I have my suspicions.

On the one hand, things didn’t really go south for the Dawgs’ pass defense until the second half when the game was out of hand.  (Remember, Jalen Carter didn’t see the field for most of the second half of the SECCG.)  And one reason the game got out of hand in the first place was because the defense clamped down in the second quarter as Georgia marched out to a 35-10 lead.  Beyond that, and maybe more relevant, is the fact that this same defense handled the best passing offense they’d seen until this week quite handily in the Tennessee game.

That being said,

Here’s the longer version:

Average stats over a 12-13 game season don’t give a good picture of what will happen in extreme outlier games where you face the far end of the bell curve as your opponent and each side has a month to prepare. https://t.co/bfeWevM74e

— Captain Bruisin, cruise director (@Ian_A_Boyd) December 27, 2022

I have to think there are things for a competent coaching staff with a talented quarterback and wide receivers to glean and apply, given the better part of a month to prepare.  Then again, that cuts both ways.

The last sample size is something the defense has had a chance to marinate with in what will be four weeks between games. In the 50-30 rout of LSU in the SEC championship games, the Tigers put up 502 passing yards, second most ever against Georgia.

The focus has been on technique and fundamentals, safety Chris Smith said.

“We know we had a bad day that game,” inside linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson said. “That was an embarrassment for us. We just went back to work.”

Smith said the defense knows “we can perform better, and that’s what we want to do for this game on Saturday.

… Schumann called the last half of football “really disappointing” when LSU backup quarterback Garrett Nussmeier threw touchdown passes of 33 and 34 yards and completed another pass for 59 yards.

“There’s never a singular issue, right?” he said. “You try to address things where they showed up in their own silos, right?”

He said that includes defensive calls made, scheme adjustments, technique and fundamentals and a mental lapses.

I still think it all comes back to Smart’s number one goal on defense, shutting down the opponent’s running game to make them one-dimensional on offense.  After all, despite LSU’s success throwing the ball, don’t forget the Tigers only rushed for 47 yards and lost the game by twenty points.  That wasn’t a coincidence.