South Carolina's Open Tight End vs. Georgia

I'm no football coach or scheme guru, and I don't pretend to be one on this blog. However, here's my take on the issue of South Carolina's open tight end in the second half. After pondering this quite a bit, I really don't think we had a reasonable adjustment to make on him (beyond clobbering him at the line of scrimmage) given our personnel in that game.

Here's Why:
Spurrier went to a personnel alignment of 3 WRs, 1 TE and 1 RB. That line-up from a team like South Carolina means that Georgia is going to a nickel coverage. Our most effective nickel package appears to be the 3-3-5 look.

The 3-3-5 is what we used to terrorize Tim Tebow and Colt Brennan, and it's the look we showed when we sacked, hurried and late hit SC's QBs on Saturday. We got very little pressure from a 4-3-4 or 4-2-5 look on Saturday.

If SC is in that personnel grouping, we generally have that Nickelback over the 3rd WR.

So...What Were the Other Options for Adjustments:

• Cover him with the Nickelback -- If we had put the nickel on SC's tight end (Cook), a linebacker would have to cover the 3rd wide receiver. A linebacker vs. a WR is an even worse match-up for us than a linebacker vs. a TE. Regardless, I'm pretty sure our Nickel is Prince Miller. At 5'-8" and 180 lbs, Miller is not physically who you want trying to handle a big tight end in the open field.
  
  
• Cover him with 4th Cornerback -- If we move to 4 CBs, then a linebacker has to come off the field. I wouldn't trade any of our linebackers for Vance Cuff or Remarcus Brown right now. The 4th CB (6 total DBs) would've also opened up some interior runs. (Technically, we could've gone with 3 safeties and 3 CBs, but our 3rd safety is a walk-on. Drew Williams doesn't seem like a viable option on that one).
  
  
• Cover him with a Safety -- I don't think CJ Byrd is physically large enough to quickly tackle or effectively jam a guy Cook's size. So that leaves Reshad Jones. Jones looks ideally suited to handle a big physical and fast guy like Cook. However, (to the best of my knowledge) he has never been asked to cover a TE like that in a game.

You can't "adjust" and ask Jones to do something that he hasn't YET been taught to do. That's my basic theory on it. The good news -- we've got a few weeks before we see our next big time TE (Bama) to teach RJ to play that coverage.

Spurrier is no dummy. He had an unusual weapon, and he knew how to use him. I guess Georgia could've tried jamming the big dude at the line of scrimmage, but I think they were afraid of him blowing past them deep.

Bottom Line:
South Carolina ran the ball for 18 yards on 16 carries, and they only scored 7 points. For them to even be in that game with us required their QB to play the game of his life...and he STILL couldn't create more than 7 points.

We left *at least* 11 points on the table due to sloppy play that can easily be fixed. SC left 7.

As JudgeDawg said on DawgRun, did you honestly think that Spurrier would only score 7 points? The defensive scheme wasn't the problem Saturday. The problems were defensive penalties and offensive miscues.

Am I way off? Agree or Disagree?

PWD

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