Georgia Bulldogs: Will offense match defense in 2016?

The Georgia Bulldogs should continue to have a dominating defense under Kirby Smart in 2016, but will Jim Chaney improve the offense in his first season?

Seth Emerson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and DawgNation wrote Monday evening that what arguably hurt the Georgia Bulldogs the most during the Mark Richt era (2001-15) was that the team never seemed to have balance on both sides of the football at the same time.

Teams led by Knowshon Moreno and Matthew Stafford never had the defense to help the Georgia Bulldogs win big. Last season, the Dawgs didn’t have enough stability on offense to compliment a top 10 defense in the Power 5. While there were a few years that UGA had an overall strong and balanced team (2012 is the best example), not being consistent enough on both sides of the ball at the same ultimately cost Mark Richt his job with the Georgia Bulldogs.

In hiring former Alabama Crimson Tide defensive coordinator Kirby Smart to head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs for the 2016, fans of the UGA program should largely expect to see the Dawgs’ defense play at a high level again this upcoming season. Georgia will lose a few players on that side of the football to the 2016 NFL Draft, but expect the 3-4 defensive scheme to continue to thrive under Smart and new defensive coordinator Mel Tucker in 2016.

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While the Dawgs should get back their best player on offense in Nick Chubb at the start of the year after an ACL tear, what new offensive coordinator Jim Chaney has to do is a more arduous task than what Smart and Tucker inherit defensively.

Chaney will have to first decide who is the team’s starting quarterback: incumbent redshirt senior and University of Virginia transfer Greyson Lambert, true freshman and No. 2 pro-style passer in the 2016 recruiting class Jacob Eason, or former four-star redshirt junior and punter Brice Ramsey.

UGA’s aerial attack nearly evaporated in 2016, as former offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer limited what Lambert could do in the passing game to best prevent the Dawgs from turning the football over through the air. The conservative approach on offense allowed the running game to succeed, but it did suffer a big blow with Nick Chubb’s knee injury in Knoxville in early October.

Chaney brings with him former Arkansas Razorbacks offensive line coach Sam Pittman, who is supposedly one of the best in the business at what he does. Perhaps Pittman can provide stability to an offensive line that loses both starting tackles in John Theus and Kolton Houston. Georgia also loses its best receiving target in redshirt senior Malcolm Mitchell.

Jim Chaney will have some key pieces return on offense besides Chubb and Lambert in sophomore wide receiver Terry Godwin, redshirt senior offensive guard Greg Pyke, and junior tight end Jeb Blazevich. While the quarterback situation seems infinitely better for Chaney than what Schottenheimer had to deal with last season, can Chaney get more out of the offensive line and the skill position players than Schottenheimer did?

Realistically, UGA will probably be slightly better on offense in 2016, but won’t challenge the Georgia Bulldogs’ strong defense until at least 2017 when Jacob Eason has had at least a year in Athens to fully learn Jim Chaney’s offensive system.

The running game will still stay as the focal point of the UGA offense in 2016, as Chaney has used a ground-and-pound approach from his time in Arkansas and Smart will want a defense-first football team in 2016 that can effectively run the football.

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However, we should expect the passing game to have more of a place in the UGA offense than it did last year. Greyson Lambert will have a full year under his belt in Athens and Jacob Eason has the obvious arm talent to open up the vertical passing game should Chaney feel so inclined. Go Dawgs!

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