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October 2, 2012

More on the Offense; Inside Our Own 20

One of the best features of cfbstats.com is their situation stats link for teams. I love to see how teams are doing in certain situations. After the post over concern about the offense's stagnation in the last 1/3 of the Tennessee game, I decided to take a look at our performance through the season in certain situations.

I wasn't surprised.

Georgia Rushing Stats
Situation
Attempts
Yards
YPC

1st downs
Inside own 20251024.08
  3
Own 21 To 39 493907.96
 15
Own 40 To Opp 40604427.37
 16
Opp 39 To 21351975.63
 11
Opp 20 To 1  (RZ)331213.67
  8






That YPC inside the red zone number includes 12 TDs (over 1/3 of all rushing plays inside the red zone results in a TD).

Georgia Passing Stats
Situation
Attempts
Compl %
QB Rating

1st downs
Inside own 2014100223.00
  7
Own 21 To 39 3770.3209.24
 20
Own 40 To Opp 403253.1 103.01
 10
Opp 39 To 213259.4185.68
 14
Opp 20 To 1  (RZ)1973.7 213.34
  6






Stunningly, 3 of the four Georgia Ints happened inside our own 40. At least two I can think of (Aaron's this week and LeMay's) were returned for TDs.

Besides the fairly low number of attempts from inside the 20 (of which 1/3 happened in the Tennessee game), take a look at the disparity between passing the ball and running the ball from inside our own 20. So are teams expecting us to run and committing to stopping it, much like Tennessee did?

One other thing I took away from the situation stats linked above is that offensively, Georgia isn't great in the 4th quarter. Murray is only completing 46.2% of his passes and only has a QB rating of 103.19, going 6 of 13. Rushing the ball, we are way below our averages, as well. We have 269 yards on 58 carries (4.64 ypc) and only 8 of our 53 runs of more than 10 yards.

Either the offensive S&C improvements aren't all that we have thought or teams are guessing what we will do in certain situations, especially when we are pinned inside our own 20 or with a lead in the 4th quarter.  My money is on the second considering we have run the ball twice as much from inside our own 20 and 5 times as much during the 4th quarter.

Yes, we have had a couple of games where we've taken our foot off the gas, but looking at those numbers, is there any surprise we are averaging over 3 TDs/quarter fewer in the fourth quarter than the other three quarters? My worry remains: we get too conservative when we need to keep doing the things that got us a lead in the first place. Our offense is what it is because it is dynamic. We are able to keep teams off balance due to our ability to run or throw from nearly any formation. When we don't leverage that, our offense becomes very pedestrian.
TD
See also:
-Bulldogs focus on late first downs, Marc Weiszer (ABH)
-The Dawgs, the Falcons and endgame mistakes, Michael Elkon (SBN Atlanta)

ED NOTE: In response to a comment, I did some quick calculations on the 4th quarter offense:

BU- 95 yards, 14 pts (Murray finished a TD drive at start of 4th Q)
Mizzu-42 yards, 17 pts (two very short TD drives, last Georgia drive was -21 yards thanks to penalties)
FAU- 74 yards, 7 pt (Murray didn't play 4th quarter)
Vandy- 34 yards, 0 points (Murray did not play 4th quarter)
Tenn- 16 yards, 0 points 

If we are using Mizzou as a guide on how to finish strong, we need the defense to come up with turnovers...which is what we had to have for Tennessee.

We've scored 24 4th quarter points with our starters in. 17 of those came on drives of fifteen (TOD), five (fumble recovery) and one yard (Int). 

By my count, that is a shade under 10% of our total offensive yardage and just over 15% of our scoring offense. Some of that can be attributed to the big leads, no doubt. My concern remains that we will be in a position to have to burn 4 minutes with a less than a score lead and not be able to do so.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So you have to ask yourself, how much do you trust the defense? I don't mind conservative and relatively unproductive play calls late in the game where we have a comfortable lead that we can really trust the defense with.

The problem that I have is going to those calls when the lead really isn't all that comfortable - like in the bowl game last year and arguably last weekend.

I feel confident that the offense can get some things done against USCe. We have no reason to doubt them based on what we've seen this year.

But we can't kick it into cruise control unless we have a three score lead in the 4th.

j.leonardjr said...

How skewed are the 4th quarter stats due to the Buffalo, FAU, and Vandy games? There was no big reason to score late in those games and very likely the Dawgs had been called off. That leaves the Mizzou and Tennessee games where we finished strong in one game and stalled in the other scoring wise.

I could be way off as I haven't gone back to look at the actual scoring by quarter in all of those games but those stats might be misleading.

MarkS31 said...

You definitely raise some good points here. I suppose the interceptions returned for TDs deep inside our own territory highlights the dangers and why we tend to get conservative, but still. . . The creativity in playcalling in the first half of our games compared to the fourth quarter has been night and day. I think Bobo's been doing a great job overall this year, but you really have highlighted something I hope he corrects. We are getting too predictable.

Tony Waller said...

J, that is a great question.

One thing I did, though, was to look specifically at Murray, as opposed to team, passing in the 4th quarter.

As far as yardage and scoring goes:

BU- 95 yards, 14 pts (Murray finished a TD drive at start of 4th Q)
Mizzu-42 yards, 17 pts (two very short TD drives, last Georgia drive was -21 yards thanks to penalties)
FAU- 74 yards, 7 pt (Murray didn't play 4th quarter)
Vandy- 34 yards, 0 points (Murray did not play 4th quarter)
Tenn- 16 yards, 0 points

If we are using Mizzou as a guide on how to finish strong, we need the defense to come up with turnovers...which is what we had to have for Tenneessee.

We've scored 24 4th quarter points with our starters in. 17 of those came on drives of five and one yard.

Shit. I think I just threw up.

Tony Waller said...

That should be 17 came on drives of fifteen, five and one yards, due to TOD, fumble recovers and interception.

 
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