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Georgia football secondary knows it has ‘a lot of work to do’ before facing Ohio State offense
System
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Georgia football secondary knows it has ‘a lot of work to do’ before facing Ohio State offense
For as great as Saturday was for the Georgia football program, it was not a day to remember for the Georgia secondary.
Comments
Much ago about nothing. UGA gameplanned for Jayden Daniels, a dual threat QB who - as Dawgnation pointed out earlier - is only going to consistently hurt a defense with short and intermediate passes. Truthfully, UGA probably decided that they were going to prioritize defending the run against Daniels and live with what he was going to do as a passer especially since he wasn't going to beat them with big scoring plays deep.
But after halftime, LSU trotted out a completely different player: a dropback passer with a very strong arm. UGA had no idea that LSU was going to concede the game at halftime, but it was almost certainly done to preserve Daniels' health for the predraft process. So at the drop of a hat, UGA, which had gameplanned and was mentally wired to take on a runner and quick slant thrower, had to deal with a pro-style vertical passer possessing one of the strongest arms that they have seen all season (stronger than Hooker's arm) PLUS an OL capable of reasonably protecting him (which Spencer Rattler did not have) AND receivers that can make vertical plays (which Bo Nix didn't have).
This isn't going to happen against Ohio State. Ohio State's best shot at beating UGA, in addition to actually having Jaxon Smith-Njiba who is actually the player on that offense most likely to be a 10 year NFL starter, would have been playing UGA in the championship game. Instead Ohio State draws UGA in the semi-final, giving Smart, Muschamp and Schumann 3 weeks to prepare for a spread offense that has only 2 WRs, a former LB playing TE (whom UGA can basically ignore schematically because he won't make difficult catches deep over the middle or get yards after the catch) and no running threat at QB. So, they are going to shut Ohio State down for 3 quarters like Penn State and Michigan did. (Unfortunately for Penn State, they shut OSU down the first 3 quarters, ran out of gas and let the Buckeyes explode in the 4th. Otherwise UGA would be playing Penn State in 3 weeks.) And then there was Notre Dame, who actually kept Ohio State bottled up the entire game, but the QB they were playing at the time couldn't generate enough offense to take advantage. Oh had JT Daniels chosen Notre Dame - who wanted him badly - over Missouri. Not saying that he would have ND in the playoff, as they still would have lost to USC, but at least he would be preparing for the NFL draft instead of back in the portal for the third time.
If Henderson comes back close to full strength then we'll be challenged with their running game. He's a beast.
The reason we were so successful against Young and Bama in the Natty game was due to our suffocating defensive pass rush. Young could hardly breath and was disrupted most of the game. We've got to find a way to cause some kind of disruption against Stroud or it may be a long afternoon. And the secondary MUST improve coverage. LSU was completing passes even with guys double covered.
texas A&M whooped LSU with just their 4 down D-linemen. THey have some beasts on the D-line. Our front 4 have to get more penetration on passes. LSu's O-lineman were fairly inexperienced and yet they kept our guys off their QB pretty effectively.
@thadec...I don't think Kirby "planned" on us getting picked apart in the secondary. We played much better in man coverage against TN, and Hooker was DEFINITELY a dual threat. We were in zone mostly against the Tigers. Daniel's had too much time to throw and so did Nussmeier.
I know our dawgs are looking forward to the challenge of beating Ohio State. It has been a long time since tOSU has played a team like Georgia and the closest team to Georgia still playing is Michigan and they crushed tOSU. And the Blue did not have all the time to prepare for the Buckeyes that Georgia will have - I pity the team that has to play Georgia when the dawg's coaching staff has weeks to scheme up a game against them. It just will not be fair - and that's the way we like it! GO DAWGS!
Containment and pressure on the QB are essential we can't give up 500+ passing yards to OSU. Go Dawgz beat the Buckeyes.😎
Personally, I would have much rather been playing Michigan or TCU in the semis.
The Buckeyes will be playing ANGRY and looking for redemption. Expect them to come out firing on all cylinders with their hair on fire! Just like we came out against Bama in the National Championship. The Tide didn't have a chance that day.
Make NO mistake. Ryan Day has got 4 weeks to prepare just like we do, but he has the advantage of a team of players that is going to be more motivated and determined than our Dawgs. And it's not really about beating us, but getting another shot at the Wolverines.
Yesterday Kevin Wilson (Ohio State’s Offense Coordinator x5 years) left for the Tulsa head coach position. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on the Buckeye offense. Go Dawgs!!!
@MontanaDawg
The difference between Tennessee and LSU (and Ohio State) is that Tennessee's wide receivers actually aren't that great. Kayshon Boutte, Marvin Harrison Jr, Emeka Egbuka ... they are going to be NFL starters in 2-3 years. Meanwhile Jalin Hyatt is just a product of Heupel's scheme. Bru McCoy and Cedric Tillman have some talent, but the former "has issues" and the latter got hurt and hasn't been the same since.
But UGA fans should be familiar with this. Remember 2018? UGA's entire gameplan was stopping Tua. Worked great: UGA had the lead and was on their way back to the playoffs. Then UGA's defense regrettably knocked Tua out of the game, Jalen Hurts comes in and the rest is history. (For Hurts anyway as Alabama got humiliated by Clemson 2 games later.)
So in 2018 UGA gameplanned for and shut down a dropback QB and got shredded by a dual threat QB coming off the bench. In 2022 UGA gameplanned for a dual threat QB and got roasted by a dropback passer. The difference: UGA's offense is much better in 2022 than it was in 2018. The 30 points that LSU put up this year would have been enough to beat the 2018 team, which scored 28. But it wasn't enough to beat this UGA team, which could have scored 70 if they needed to.
@BubbaBill
It won't have any effect. Kevin Wilson was OC in name only. Urban Meyer fired Kevin Wilson as the playcaller and hired Ryan Day in that capacity in 2018, making Wilson "a position coach with a coordinator title" similar to how Bryan McClendon is the "passing game coordinator" (actually a wide receiver coach) and Dell McGee is the "run game coordinator" (actually the RB coach). Even after becoming head coach himself, Ryan Day has retained the playcaller role, just like Andy Reid and Gus Malzahn do wherever they go.
Evidence of this: Wilson is also OSU's TE coach, but in Day's offense the TE doesn't do squat. But for Wilson's actual offenses at Oklahoma and Indiana the TE did plenty.
@thadec...SO, the key for us winning is to not really stop but simply outscore the Buckeyes? Hmmm...I do agree OSU's (2) elite receivers that will be playing are better than Hyatt and Tilman. So I don't think we are good enough to play Cover 0 against the Buckeyes which means we are going to have to get a disruptive pass rush without much extra help. I do think we've got to seriously affect Stroud if we're going to win the game. Stroud is much better than Daniels or Nussmeier when he is on target.
Ohio State's defense is their weakness, so we should be able to run against them. Penn State was outscored by the Buckeyes but racked up more total yards - 482 to 452 and Clifford's 371 passing yards to Stroud's 352. But Penn State threw 3 interceptions and had one fumble. Ohio State had zero turnovers.
Line of scrimmage and turnovers may be the deciding factor if we end up in a shootout.
I don't think what we did against LSU will work against Ohio St. We pretty much just played a soft zone except for Ringo. THey had receivers and TE's running without anyone on them or within 3-4 yards the first 10-15 yards downfield. Both their QB's pass completion rate was 61% and that's not nickle and dime type stuff. They averaged 16 yards per reception!! Terrible! Fortunately we held the ball about 10 more minutes than they did. We looked powerless to stop them.
Northwestern ran the ball 53 times against them for over 200 yards and held the ball more than13 minutes than Ohio St did. THey couldn't put it in the endzone though. Ironically they had identical rushing and passing stats.
“Oh had JT Daniels chosen Notre Dame - who wanted him badly - over Missouri. Not saying that he would have ND in the playoff, as they still would have lost to USC, but at least he would be preparing for the NFL draft instead of back in the portal for the third time.”
JT Daniels didn’t go to Missouri, he went to West Virginia.
GO DAWGS!
Man coverage, yes. Soft zone will not cut it against this offense. UGA may..may just have to score more times than OSU. Certainly UGA's run game will tally points. UGA's secondary must play better against OSU. Michigan smothered OSU's run game and kept Stroud out of the pocket. Michigan's offense rolled over OSU's poor defense. UGA is just as physical as MI and should gash large slits in the OSU defense. Because OSU is angry or more feverish than ever to beat UGA will help them, but they were that way with MI and lost by better than 20 pts. Key to this one...UGA needs to run, run, run, with some TE involvement, and stop Stroud.
^This!
"UGA needs to run, run, run, with some TE involvement, and stop Stroud." And one way to stop Stroud is to keep him off the field by moving the ball downfield and converting third downs ... and by NOT turning the ball over.