WSLS Ep. 105 - Vandy Postgame

We wrap Vandy, talk about Georgia's upcoming kicker controversy, and praise Scott and his never dying homerism.

   

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Scott: twitter.com/jawavifilms
Will: twitter.com/williamfleitch
Tony: twitter.com/tylerdawgden

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Can we all agree Vandy is better and move on?

I've been saying it for three weeks: Vandy is going to hurt someone's feelings this season. It nearly happened in Oxford last night. I'll not got into the yeah buts about either. The fact remains that Ole Miss, at home, needed a 4th quarter TD and a stop late in the game to ensure a victory. And Ole Miss played a game that no one is calling sloppy.

A quick look at the Vandy's stats vs Ole Miss and vs UGA shows a team that played really good defense on a team that is hampered by a clunky offense. In other words, like Florida last year. Vandy held both Ole Miss (5.62 yards per play) and UGA (6.39 yards per play) to their lowest yards per play of the season.

Vandy's schedule isn't their friend, with Texas A&M being their other cross over game, but their defense is good enough to keep them in the game. I just don't trust their offense to do anything to help them win. They'll still not end up bowl eligible (I think), but make no mistake, 2015 Vandy is a much, much better football team than the 2014 version was.
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3 questions answered: Vandy

Got a little behind and didn't finish this until this morning...

1. How many passes will UGAQB attempt? Well, we didn't throw it much. 25 times, as foretold by the prophesy: For my money, Lambert will get 20 or so attempts, with Ramsey getting another 5. Ok, Lambert took 21 and Ramsey 4. We still stayed in base 22, but did use two wide outs a few times. This week, stay tuned as UGA may run as many as three wide outs on one play, those crazy kids.
2. Can the defense handle Vandy's rushing offense? We held them to 105 yards on 39 rushes. I wonder if Jake Bernstein would trade Webb for Chubb now?
3. What can we realistically expect to be the outcome here? I predicted a 21+ point win, with it back and forth. I guess with it being Nashville PHANTOM HOLDS TO EXTEND DRIVES FOR THE WIN, with the added excitement of Georgia's any given kicking play bug/feature, 17 points seems right.

We got another week of tasty vanilla treats. We didn't get fancy. We didn't need to. We controlled the edge play from their offense. Jenkins used the game to make Vern forget Tim Tebow, if only for a game. Win and move on has been thrown around, but at the end of the season, I'd take 13+ of these wins, honestly.

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WSLS Ep 008: Vandy wrap up

We wrap up Vandy, discuss QB play, and marvel at how Leonard Floyd is so fast on the edge, he can make an official see the opposite of what actually happened.

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And when you leave your defense to win for you...

Blutarsky beat me to it (no surprise), but Connelly's five factors tells you a lot about yesterday being a defensive led blowout. The one thing that I kept thinking was the difference in the starting field position:

UGA - Own 24.4
Vandy - 31.1

Yeah. It looks like seven yards, right? But given the situations, think about this: Vandy started two drives inside Georgia territory, including one at our 8 yard line. Vandy had three more scoring opportunities and started inside our ten once and inside our 45 on another drive. They got a touchdown on one of those against our second team defense.

The defense was the epitome of bend, don't break. Vandy had four drives of 10+ plays, giving up 71 yards before getting a turnover on downs. Of their 15 drives, seven were 3 or fewer plays.

If you want to find a bright spot, it is this: while some players put up gaudy tackle for loss numbers (I'm looking at you Mr. Jenkins), the entire defense played lights out.

There are plenty of what if's to be had, but the fact is our defense led the win. Haven't we always been taught you have to run the ball to win and defense wins championships?
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That time we dominated Vandy and it looked terrible

That was yesterday. Run the ball with authority and playing stout defense. Looking over the numbers:

UGA - 41 rushes for 281 yards - 6.9 ypc
Vandy - 39 rushes for 105 yards - 2.7 ypc

Vandy ran 23 more offensive plays and gained 22 fewer yards. We can "yeah but..." all day (and I will later today in a different post), but UGA did exactly what we thought we'd do. We didn't do it as pretty, and we'll pay later unless we find a way to open up the passing game, but pretty wasn't needed yesterday, again. Despite at least two terrible calls that extended drives, cost UGA one of our more dynamic defensive players, and gave Vandy 15 extra yards on a scoring drive.

I'm about to type something controversial: Vandy's defense is much better than it was last year. Mason has found a solid defensive coordinator. They are going to hurt someone's feelings later this year.

I'm about to type something more controversial: Georgia's passing offense is going to open up. It might not be with Lambert, but it will open up.

One final thing, we need to practice catching kickoffs because South Carolina is going to pooch kick every single time. I would.

That was a dominant victory. No, it didn't feel like it, but it was. Is it the kind of game we can play and beat Alabama or Tennessee? No way.
TW

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Saturday Down South clickbait

If that is your thing....

At the risk of sounding like an old man with a blog, so much of what you read now is really just throwing stuff against the wall to get clicks. While I don't doubt the courage of this particular author's conviction, because a lot of people are in love with Tennessee, there is a certain amount of 'we have to work something wacky into the post' in this....

6. VANDY KNOCKS OFF GEORGIA … AGAIN
Vanderbilt has done it before. Just ask South Carolina and Georgia. They’ll do it again. The Commodores throw a monkey wrench into the early SEC East race with a Week-2 beating of Georgia in Nashville. Unranked Vanderbilt knocked off No. 16 Georgia in 2006, and then did it again for good measure to the No. 15-ranked Bulldogs in 2013. The Commodores punched the No. 6 and No. 24-ranked Gamecocks in the gut in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The Bulldogs get stung (sunk?) again this year.

Well, yeah, they did do it before. They also won a bowl game before. I'm not doubting Georgia's ability to lose a game they shouldn't, but throw out the 'it happened before' stuff.

Anyway. There is that.
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3 Questions and Morning Comes: Vandy

Busy living dadlyfe yesterday....

Watched Calliou, moved furniture, and bathed a cat. Pretty much a perfect day.
— Tyler Dawgden (@TylerDawgden) October 6, 2014

So on to the questions:

1. Now is the time to get our passing offense figured out. Will we? Yes.....and no. Until the interception, both QBs showed a willingness to go down field. Afterwards, tentative armed Mason was back. But hey, Gurley completed the longest reception of the season, so there is that.
2. Can we commit to a defensive philosophy that works? I noted that we were aggressive during the first quarter and fourth quarter. Come to think of it, that has been an MO for our defense, aggressive two quarters, demonstratively less so for two quarters. I think we've found our identity.
3. Will we have too many men on the field during a punt return? No, but Isaiah McKenzie forgot he wasn't in high school and all of Vandy's players, despite being Vandy players, are still better than 99% of everyone he faced in high school. I suspect that is a discussion John Lilly has had with him multiple times already.

On the the observations:

• I loved the wildcat, but agree that if we are going to run it, we have to do something to get teams to think the QB is involved, even if we run a throw away QB pitch pack pass. See the Kentucky game for a good example of that.
• I'm ok with using Ramsey some, but couldn't figure why we only saw him in for a drive, then not again for a half of football.
• I am increasingly convinced that any pass coverage package we run that doesn't involve blitzing eight men is a missed opportunity.
• Of course, blitzing eight men can be neutralized if officials allow offensive linemen to hold with abandon.
• Our incredible disappearing offensive line was around in the second and most of the third quarter. That's fine against Vandy. It won't be for the next several games.
• I'm still shocked Vandy scored 17 points. I'll have to re-watch it to figure out how, because it seemed we continually owned the line of scrimmage when we were on defense. 
• Looking at stats, it could be explained by the FG off the int, plus Vandy gaining 44% of their total 320 yards on two scoring drives.
• The upside is Vandy was only 2-13 on third down.
• Todd Gurley. (I don't feel like I need to add more)
• We won't ever get as nice a gift as the terrible throw back screen play that ended in a pick six for Bowman.

I'm sure there are a few other nits to pick. For me, the past two weeks have illustrated exactly what worries me about Georgia this season: we are very good when we are playing well. We look like we are in the SEC East the rest of the time. Now would be a nice time for Georgia to put together a run of strong performances in all three phases of the game, because Missouri and Arkansas won't be as easy as the last two games.

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Not Breaking News: James Franklin is a douche

Though it is a paid article on Rivals, it is hard to miss this Vandy reporter's contempt for James Franklin. I won't post the article, but the Vandy writer mentions his duplicity on the way out of town as exhibit one as to why he's not a nice person. I'd say his over top self promotion is exhibit one, but the Vandy writer gets to that, too.

Definitely shows that people are ok with enormous asshats, as long as those asshats are their asshats.
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Friday Morning Meltdown: Vandy

Dr. Goldstein hung up on me this morning....

• Penn Wagers reffing.
• Hutson Mason finding a lot of Vandy players open.
• Jeremy Pruitt looked like a genius at Alabama and Florida State because he was given the keys to the top two defenses in the land, instead of, ya know, being a good coach. 
• And he ends up pointing and yelling at Derek Mason because Vandy cut blocks four guys to the trainer's table.
• Todd Gurley's ankle.
• We end up playing Marshall Morgan at SS.
• That kick return guy breaks his own record (set in their South Carolina game) and returns three kickoffs for touchdowns.
• [fill in the blank], Vandy's QB this week, suddenly looks like Jay Cutler. The good Jay Cutler.
• Same goes for whatever walkon James Franklin left there to play running back.
• Mark Richt having to fire up the crowd late in the fourth quarter because we need one more first down to run out the clock.

As I mentioned, with our team the way it is, we'll be in a lot of games where we have to grind it out to win games that end up being closer than they have any right to be. I worry this'll be one of those games.

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3 Questions: Vandy

1. Now is the time to get our passing offense figured out. Will we? The row gets tough to hoe after this one. Road games against Missouri and Arkansas. We'll have to have some competence passing. Both the Tigers and Razorbacks are good enough defensively to stack the box and make us pay.
2. Can we commit to a defensive philosophy that works? We've show some streaks of brilliance on defense. Then we seemingly switch up just to outguess ourselves. I know we have to show some different looks, but if we can never show the looks we did on Tennessee's TD drive at the end of the first half or on their last TD, that'd be nice.
3. Will we have too many men on the field during a punt return? Or a kickoff or a kickoff return or a punt? No way to to get around this, that kind of mess up is soooooo 2013. And it'll cost us a game before it is over with.

There is no way this game shouldn't be a win, but you know how it goes.

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Vandy Kickoff Time?

Good news, no chance the Vandy kickoff time gets put into a six day window. With the possible match-ups the week of October 4th, I think the networks will use one of them:

DATE MATCHUP
Sat, Oct 4 # 8 LSU at # 5 Auburn
Sat, Oct 4 # 3 Alabama at # 10 Ole Miss
Sat, Oct 4 # 14 South Carolina at Kentucky
Sat, Oct 4 Florida at Tennessee
Sat, Oct 4 # 6 Texas A&M at Mississippi State
Sat, Oct 4 Vanderbilt at # 13 Georgia

They'll wait a week to see what happens with Arkansas vs. Texas A&M. If A&M wins, that A&M at Mississippi State game is going to be your 3:30 CBS game. If not, then it'll be Alabama at Ole Miss. It is possible they'll throw LSU at Auburn in there on the window, but with the Tigers' loss last night, I think they go ahead and put that game as an ESPN game, probably at noon.

Whichever game isn't picked for the CBS national broadcast (A&M at MSU or Alabama at Ole Miss) will be an ESPN networks prime time national game.

The better news is that the SEC Network has three time slots to fill with the rest of those games. Looking at the three games available:

Vandy at UGA
Florida at Tennessee
South Carolina at Kentucky

One stands out as a likely nooner, based on getting eyeballs on the channel: Florida at Tennessee. Throw in that UGA will have had Troy and Tennessee in consecutive weeks with noon kickoffs, I would think we'd be looking at at least a 4:00 kickoff.

If it is noon, I give up. I just don't see any rational explanation other than UGA has told the conference to put us at noon all the time. Considering it is also homecoming, that would be just dumb to do to your alumni, your alumni and development professionals who are forced to pack meeting with donors and alumni into less time, and students.
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-Tennessee tickets available
-Vandy tickets available

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About last night...

South Carolina endured a very swift and far fall from pre-season SEC East favorite at the hands of Texas A&M. What does that mean for Georgia? Well, we are 1/2 game up on them, for one. Look for Spurrier to renew his call for division games to matter more, I guess. Though he's got bigger issues than the division race right now.

Or Texas A&M is going to win the west by 22 games. Mike Slive is looking like a genius going after the Aggies, because no one but Longhorn fans remembers when they were a perennially underachieving Big12 team.

And then there is Vanderbilt. Damn. James Franklin really was a genius. Losing by 30 at home to Temple?

Of course, there is plenty of football left to be played, but Missouri, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia (and hell, Kentucky) has to feel pretty good right now about what happened in Nashville and Columbia last night.

Schadenfreude tweet of the day:

#SEC Fun with Spurrier Meme's... #Gigged pic.twitter.com/pjFnVyBR0V
— GATA Dawgs (@BassinDawg) August 29, 2014

GATA, y'all.
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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.

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Good morning from Nashville

Couple of final thoughts I've had on the drive up:

• Vandy's rush defense has had troubles, over 200 yards allowed in each of their three SEC games. Getting our running game going certainly takes pressure off the young receivers.
• And it eats clock. When we have the ball, Vandy can't exploit our DBs.
• Lord, please let us not screw up something on special teams.
• Also, I'd love to get to see Aaron Murray break the SEC TD mark today.

Ok, if I have service in the stadium, I'll probably have more.

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3 Questions: Vandy

I'm about to load up and head north, taking my son on his first away game experience. Hopefully, we'll do what we need to.

1. How much does Jordan Matthews go off on our secondary? For that matter, how much does Austyn Carta-Samuels go off? We've stopped exactly one team defensively (although we held Missouri below their season averages), but have done ok against the run. Vandy isn't a great running team. That combined with our decent run defense, and inability to do anything competently in pass coverage means they'll be looking to throw out of any set and with any combination of personnel on the field. And with their drag screen and perimeter passing game, look for them to have some success unless we progress a bunch with fundamentals of tackling.
2. Can we get the QB-WR mojo back? Murray is a rhythm QB. He is one of the best when he is in the groove. He spent countless hours with wide receivers during the off season on timing and patterns. Same goes for the first five weeks of the season. As we saw last week, not all of the receivers were involved in those drills. When you look at the replay, there were several plays that you could easily see the receiver and QB weren't on the same page. While the run game is important, getting Murray and his receivers back together will make Saturday morning much more enjoyable for UGA.
3. How many points do we need to score to win? Blutarsky thinks it is 35. I'm not certain. Vandy comes in averaging 33.7 ppg. That is exactly what UGA has been giving up per game. When you look at UGA vs. Vandy's competition, that should give you some hope that we won't have to do much to keep them below their average. Not that we want it to be a one TD game. I'm ok with saying we'll need 30, but this also has the feel of a get right day. 

For some reason, I'm feeling more optimistic about this game than I probably should. Last year, we came in having played poorly defensively against Buffalo and FAU and held them to one FG. I don't have any such illusions about keeping them out of the end zone this week, but I certainly think we keep them some below their season average of points. 

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Changes in defensive approach?

I'm working on a fairly in-depth piece on defensive scheme that probably won't be out before we get to Vandy, but I wanted to note something about our defense from Saturday against Missouri. We were much more effective when we set our defense and didn't wait for a call from the sideline.

At halftime, Coach Richt took his interview opportunity to note we needed to do things better on the defensive side of the ball. We came out at half time and only allowed one drive of longer than 35 yards or 5 plays (remember one score came off an interception). Compared to the first half were they had three drives of more than 50 yards and 4 of their 6 drives were more than 5 plays. I think that was a direct result of running pre-set defensive formations, and getting the coverage calls from the side line, as opposed to getting the formation and coverage calls from the side line.

Granted, I have no idea if that was something that was discussed at the half, but when you see Missouri gaining 1.5 yards per play less in the second half than they did in the first, you have to think something they did worked. As Blutarsky mentioned, we should plan on seeing plenty of the 4-2-5 (which is what got me started looking at schemes in the first place) with Moore and Mauger. If we have found something that allows us some confidence in (or advantage from, to put it another way) our formations by setting up before hand, that'd make me pretty happy.

When you consider so much of Grantham's defense is predicated on DB-LB communication and cooperation, the talk about communication breakdowns earlier in the nearly all season, and the slightly improved numbers we saw against Missouri in the second half, the same slight improvement can be a difference maker going forward. We know we won't see a change in personnel, but are we seeing a difference in approach that will make a difference?

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The day Vandy's program changed

I wrote the following post the week after the 2011 Vandy game. You know the game I'm talking about. The one where the media took Todd Grantham to task for yelling at Jamie Franklin. The one where Grantham was made to be a bad guy because he had the temerity to tell Franklin that if he had a problem with one of Grantham's players, he should talk to Grantham, not the kid. But Franklin was the hot young coach, and Grantham was the dirty choke signer, so we had a meme.

For whatever reason, I decided not to post it then. During the off season, I was digging through some drafts and found this. In light of the heat CTG is taking (and rightfully so) this week, I felt it might be a good time to bring it out, especially if CBS decides to play up the kerfuffle from two years ago:

Well, the Senator handles this far better than I, but one thing that is sticking in my craw is the conversion of Vandy from school that is respected to a school demanding respect.  In the SEC, as in most of college football, there are programs you respect.  You might do so for any number of reasons, not the least of which is how they conduct their business on the field.  Until Saturday night, Vandy was one of those programs. Then there are programs that loudly demands respect, usually because of an inferiority complex.

Vandy might not have the best historical won-loss record, but when you played them, they always played with heart, passion and want to. Until this past week.  This week, they played like a team that is demanding respect by doing whatever they had to to win, including cheap shots.  Their coach backed that up with his antics after the game.

Congrats, Coach Franklin.  Now, I view Vandy like I do Tennessee, but without the history of excellence.  Respect is earned, not demanded.  Standing up and saying we won't take it anymore just means you want the fight and are willing to cash it all in to get it.  I had a great deal of respect for you and your program (I tweeted as much before the game).  Now, I honestly and sincerely hope Vandy loses to Army this week.

Whatever the outcome, remember, Clay Travis loves him some Vandy. That should tell you all you need to know.

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Looking for 3 to Vandy

Doing a road trip with my son and a friend to Nashville for the Vanderbilt game. Anyone got three in the Georgia section they are willing to part with? I can grab them off our ticket site and will if I need to, but I'd rather help out a known UGA fan who can't go.

I can meet in Athens, at Mizzou after the game this weekend, or have someone meet you in Atlanta if that works for you.

Contact me at tylerdawgden at gmail dot com.

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Thoughts on Vandy's #anchordown

You know, we've all been wondering about Vandy's #anchordown thing. I mean

@TylerDawgden Has anyone explained to him that the boat goes nowhere when the #anchorsdown?
— Scott Bass (@LawDawg2011) August 2, 2013

So I thought, wouldn't it be fun if we came up with analogous UGA hashtags.

My best shots:
#gettingdawged
#leashedup
#inthekennel
#fearthebark

What'd ya got?
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