Sunday Morning Comes: Vandy

A week ago, I sat on my couch and thought we were were beaten by a better team. I still see that, especially considering what Missouri did to Florida in Columbia yesterday. Today, I sit on my couch and am just scratching my head over the loss yesterday. Georgia is 4-3, with losses to two top ten teams. And Vandy.

Even more baffling, we are regressing on offense (I'll get to the injuries, I think that is only part of it) and on special teams.

• I thought the defense played quite well, at least until the second targeting penalty. After that, we gave up 90 yards and 17 points. 
• For that matter, I still think the defense did a serviceable job. They held Vandy to their second lowest output of the season, including the lowest rushing out put and second lowest passing out put. That also includes nearly 2 yards per play fewer yards coming into the game. 
• We also had two interceptions. One was a bit of fluke, but still was a good play. The other was a straight up awesome read and play.
• We also held them under their season average in 3rd down conversion. 
• We harassed their QBs and got 4 sacks. 
• The difference was giving them the ball, twice, inside our 40 from special teams snafus. Yes, the defense could have stopped them. I get that. But damn.
• So the offense.....what happened to our passing game?
• For that matter, what happened to our running game? I'm officially scared to damn death about Florida. You think last year was ugly? This year has the potential to make Tuberville vs. Croom look like a Tuesday night MACtion tilt.
• Vandy held the ball 10+minutes in the fourth quarter. That is with Georgia having four drives in the 4th quarter. 
• The offensive line got no push on rushing plays, especially after the first quarter. 
• But hey, Murray didn't get sacked. 
• I'm willing to put some of this on the injuries. When you lose two first team SEC caliber RBs, and three WRs (two of which would be #1 WRs at most SEC schools), you will have a fall off in production.
• But does that limit your playbook when you have serviceable to good replacements at all the positions? Because Vandy's defense is ok, but they aren't as spectacular as we made them look.

I've talked about the targeting calls already, but looking over the stats, I'm a wholly convinced we win if the Wilson penalty isn't called. They had less than 90 yards offense in over 25 game minutes since their last TD to that point. We were playing aggressively, tackling better than we had been, and Ramik was everywhere. After that, our defense matched our special teams and offensive play.

TD

Tweet