Familiar faces

Phil Steele’s compiled his 2014 returning starters list, which you can see here.  It’s easy to read too much into this, but there are still a few SEC-related items worth noting.

• For one, the SEC looks to have plenty of old faces back this season, as nine of its teams are in Steele’s top fifty.
• Georgia is the only school in the conference to return as many as ten starters on one side of the ball.
• By comparison, Missouri brings back nine starters total.
• Tennessee has no returning starters on either of its lines.  That’s no as in zero.  Good luck with that, Butch.
• Texas A&M, however, brings back four starters on each line.  That won’t make up for losing Johnny Football, but it’s not a bad place to start.

You guys see anything else?

Georgia/Clemson, a Steele-y comparison

The season opener is about a month away, so maybe it’s time to get the ball rolling, discussion-wise.  Thought it might be fun to start a conversation by looking at Phil Steele’s rankings of each team’s units and seeing how they stack up against each other.  Steele has Georgia ranked ninth and Clemson fifteenth in his preseason top 40, but has them spaced farther apart in the one power poll he publishes.  In that, Georgia’s sixth and Clemson’s 20th.

Here’s how he breaks down the respective units (he lists the top 45 nationally at each position):

• Quarterback.  He’s got Clemson fourth and Georgia sixth.  Boyd’s got gaudier numbers than Murray and Clemson’s backup quarterback has more experience than any of Georgia’s do.  Still, those rankings are close enough to be considered a toss-up.
  
• Running back.  Monster gap here:  Georgia is first and Clemson doesn’t even rank in his top 45.  Boyd is the Tigers’ leading returning rusher.
• Receiver.  Another close one, with Georgia fifth and Clemson seventh. Both teams lost one of their top receivers, but still return a lot of depth at the wideout position.  Watkins will be the scariest guy on the field that night.  Georgia has more productive tight ends, though.
• Offensive line.  Steele projects a pretty good-sized difference here. Georgia has his third-best unit and Clemson only ranks 28th. Both teams bring back experience, but Georgia brings back more.
• Defensive line.  The shoe is on the other foot here, with Clemson at #15 and Georgia at #42.  The Tigers did lose a big, if uneven, talent in Goodman, but still bring back seven of their top eight from last season. The Dawgs… don’t.
• Linebacker.  Back to the toss-up – Georgia is 30th and Clemson is 32nd. Clemson actually brings back more experienced players than Georgia does, so take that for what it’s worth.
• Defensive back.  Close, but not impressive:  Clemson’s at #39 and Georgia is 44th.  And that doesn’t take into account JHC’s suspension.
• Special teams.  Neither team shows up in his top 45, which in Georgia’s case is a little hard to follow, as he describes them as finishing thirtieth in his 2012 rankings and expects improvement this season.  On the other hand, Clemson’s place kicker has been more consistent than Morgan, who, yeah, won’t play opening night.  Call this the big wild card of the game.

I see two talented offenses, except that Georgia has a more balanced running threat (Clemson does have a couple of freshmen backs from whom it’s hoping for big things).  That’s probably not such good news for the less highly ranked defenses.  Subject to our old friend turnover margin, I’m seeing Gurley and Marshall as difference makers, but I’m a little concerned about who wins the special teams part of the night.  What do y’all see?

Tuesday morning buffet

The buffet table is cranked up and ready to go.

• Ouchy ouch:  “Let’s just say Brian VanGorder worked out better as Georgia’s defensive coordinator than he did at Auburn.”
• Chris Brown breaks down Nick Saban’s breakdown of three plays during his stint at ESPN yesterday.
• Randy Edsall may not like players transferring, but he’s down with them getting paid.
• Georgia Tech’s top two receivers have eight career catches between them.  Their backups are redshirt freshmen.  That’s how the genius defines quality depth, I guess.
• Brace yourselves – Tennessee is coming out with new uniforms this season.
• According to Steele, if a team had 32 or more starts lost to injury the prior season, they improved or had the same record the next year on 80 out of 102 occasions for an 78.4% success rate.  Georgia lost 33 starts last season.
• Here’s an attempt to rate coaches factoring in a program’s financial resources.

Tuesday morning buffet

Mmm, mmm good…

• Now it’s time to worry:  KC Joyner loves the Georgia offense.
• Methinks the Big 12 has an inferiority complex.
• Florida hasn’t had a receiver with over 600 yards since the 2009 season.
• Phil Steele says the talent level is not a 49-0 difference between Auburn and Alabama.
• Chris Brown thinks college football needs a better box score.  I heartily agree on the average starting field position stat.
• Mark Richt has lost control of the hot seat meme.
• John Infante writes if the NFL is really serious about academic eligibility, it ought to go all in.
• Guess who wants to be on ESPN’s College GameDay?
• Life after football for the Zooker.  That’s almost as strange as Woody Widenhofer working in a tollbooth.

Tuesday morning buffet

The buffet line is open.

• Jeebus, has ‘Bama been a dominant program the past few years.
• First look at Vegas win totals for 2013 – limited, though, to only 19 teams.  (Georgia’s not among them.)
• I have to admit one thing the NCAA does well is chutzpah.
• Phil Steele explains his thinking when he names freshmen to his All-Conference teams.
• Here’s another “no-huddle comes to the SEC” piece.
• Yeah, yeah, rocks, glass houses and all that stuff, but I still like the sound of “Incarce-Gators”.  (Also known as Huntley Johnson’s Hall of Fame.)
• Why the Tide won’t three-peat.
• The way Coach O describes Reggie Carter – “He was a good football player in high school. He was an instinctive guy. He was a guy who made a lot of tackles and had production. He caught the balls that were thrown at him and he made nice plays.” – seems reminiscent of another Gwinnett County product, Rennie Curran, no?

Now he’s just screwing with us.

I love Phil Steele for the massive amount of data accumulation he bombards us with every year, but there are times when he pushes the analytical envelope a little too far.  This is one of those times.

The Final 14 Teams Who Fit the
National Championship Mold in 2013

Alabama	Notre Dame
Florida	Ohio St
Florida St	Oregon
LSU	South Carolina
Michigan	Stanford
North Carolina	Texas A&M
Northwestern	Vanderbilt

I will eat whatever hat Mr. Steele cares to furnish if Vandy winds up closer to a national title game than Georgia does this season.

Tuesday morning buffet

I got what you want.

• John Infante wisely notes that bad NCAA defense (Kolton Houston!) and bad NCAA criticism share certain components.
• Roll Bama Roll ain’t seeing much positive in Kentucky’s and Missouri’s 2013 futures.
• Another fine SEC tradition:  hotel price gouging.  Y’all come back now, heah?
• How do you score on Alabama?  (Hint:  it’s not easy.)
• Sequestration may have an effect on the service academies’ athletic budgets.
• The Wall Street Journal likens Mark Emmert’s latest move to sailing a large ship.  My maritime analogy would be more about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but what do I know?
• If you take a look at Phil Steele’s 2013 Combined Experience Chart, you’ll find Georgia right smack in the middle, which is pretty much what you’d expect.

When you put it that way, it looks kinda grim.

Steele ranks Georgia dead last nationally in percentage of tackles returning.

Wednesday morning buffet

Come grab a plate.

• “[Georgia]  Tech ran the ball 81% of the time, so that merits the majority of our attention, but they also averaged 9.37 yards per pass. Only Georgia was better.”
• If the rumors are true, it looks like Les Miles should be happier with the bridge schedules coming up in 2014 and 2015.
• In case you’re interested, here’s the list of the top 15 players in EA Sports ‘NCAA Football 2014′.  Aaron Murray made it.
• If ever there was a story made for Bleacher Report, this is it.
• Sanford Stadium makes #2 on Athlon‘s ranking of SEC stadiums.
• Georgia’s offseason prep is focused on the first two games.
• Coach O on academics:  “He M-F’d me all over the place,” says DeMars. “He made me feel like a bad person for going to class.”
• Per Steele, Georgia returns the second highest percentage of offensive yardage in the SEC, behind only Ole Miss.

Steele on Georgia, 2013 edition

You can find the link to his preview of #9 Georgia here (note the link there downloads as a pdf).  It’s chock full of stuff and it’s certainly not an unreasonable analysis, as this comment about the offensive line indicates:  “With the way this unit has gone I’m not sure how to interpret this, but the line returns intact w/101 car sts and should be one of the top O-lines in the country.”  I feel ‘ya, Phil.

If you’re looking for predictions, he calls for Georgia to win the SEC East again.  But the most interesting tidbit I’ve gleaned so far comes from his statistical analysis of last season.  I’ve mentioned before that Steele puts a lot of stock in a team’s yards per point metric.

Steele makes a very big deal out of yards per point (YPP).  You can read a breakdown of it here.  Essentially, it’s a measure of offensive and defensive efficiency – the lower a team’s offensive YPP is, the more efficient it is at scoring and the higher a team’s defensive YPP is, the better it is at making its opponents less efficient on offense.

Take a look at Georgia’s defensive YPP numbers.  From 2008 through 2011, they ranged from 12.7 to 14.9.  Last season, that number jumped to 18.2.  That number isn’t Sabanesque, but it’s a big swing in the direction of the elite.  And that’s in a year when SEC offenses improved generally and Georgia’s run defense had its ups and downs.  Maybe Grantham didn’t impress us last year, but it looks like he did alright.