Georgia Football: Bulldogs Smartly Cruise Versus Vanderbilt

Georgia Staff Intentionally Takes Feet Off Gas

Many Georgia Football fans were disappointed in the Bulldogs second half offensive output. The fans seemed to thirst for blood. They had a desire to see the Georgia Bulldogs match the 52 point total that the defending National Champion Clemson Tigers, posted against hated rival Georgia Tech.

Dawg fans wanted to see the Bulldogs out do the 42 points posted by the Alabama Crimson Tide, the team that Georgia must dethrone in order to win a National Title. I spoke with Jamey Goodman of the famous Dawgcast Podcast, to get his thoughts on the team’s offense and the fans disappointment.

"“Watching live you could see right away that this offense can be very different this year. The motion and misdirection I saw live, was unlike anything (Jim) Chaney ever dialed up. We scored with ease right away Saturday night. Kirby even alluded to this in his post game presser. Looking back to something Coach Smart said last week. I’ll paraphrase here, when speaking of the playbook “you only want to use the portion off the offense that you need”. I took that as we would only be as creative as we need to be to win. Once we reach that point we will no longer show our hand. Why give teams the film they’re looking for to game plan against us? Make them wonder as long as we possibly can. I’ve seen a large amount of unsatisfied fans letting it be known on social media. I realize that people want points in 2019, but Kirby does things his own way. The approval he is looking for is in the seats in places like Nashville.”"

I totally agree with Mr. Goodman’s assessment. The Georgia Bulldogs offense gave us everything that we wanted to see in the first half. There was noticeably more shifts, motion and misdirection, in the new UGA offense under a James Coley.

D’Andre Swift was the team’s offensive MVP and he looked extremely sharp, gaining 147 yards on 16 carries. That’s an incredible 9.2 yards per carry for Swift, who averages an unbelievable seven yards per carry for his NCAA career thus far.

Jake Fromm was solid completing 15/19 passes for 156 yards and a touchdown, prior to stumbling on the last drive. What was most encouraging about his performance, was that he completed multiple passes in the middle of the field, something he has seemed to shy away from in the past.

Jake Fromm completed three passes to tight ends, three to running backs and nine to wide receivers. This is a good indicator that the UGA passing offense will use a bigger variety of targets, than they have in the past.

While it is a great thing that the Georgia Football program now has such a high expectation level, Dawgs fans need to relax. The offense was dialed down intentionally.

The Georgia Football team was much more vanilla, after the first drive of the third quarter. The shifts and motion were held to a minimum. The team used the same basic running plays, multiple times in the second half.

The Georgia Bulldogs certainly need to avoid the drive killing holding penalties that plagued the team in half number two. The fact that the Georgia Bulldogs were also stopped on two short yardage situations, is definitely concerning and shows that a problem from last season has not yet been corrected.

Georgia certainly must be better than 1/7 on third down. Ultimately there will be games, where more than 6.8 yards per pass attempt will be needed to gain a victory.

However the UGA coaching staff, is clearly trying to reveal as little of the Dawgs new offense as possible. Expect to see more of the same basic vanilla from the third ranked Bulldogs, in the next two weeks against Murray State and Arkansas State. Those are two opponents that can’t matchup with the Dawgs physically.

UGA fans should expect to see new, never before seen wrinkles in the Dawgs offense, come week four against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. While I can understand the fans nature to compare the Georgia Bulldogs to Clemson and Alabama, there is a greater goal in mind.

The goal for the Georgia Bulldogs is to keep winning ball games and again reach the SEC Title Game. The goal is to reach a probable rematch against the Crimson Tide, with an undefeated record and guarantee a spot in the College Football Playoff. The goal is to win a National Championship.