Ugh. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think we would win this game coming in. Georgia has the best D in the country and their offense has gotten much better under Todd Monken. But it still sucks to lose, especially after we made some great plays in the 1st half.
Big Picture
Georgia’s Front 7 > Our O-line. By far, this was the biggest issue. We couldn’t run the ball against Georgia’s front 7. And their D was constantly in the backfield on passing plays. Our O-line has improved dramatically since the 2017 squad that Pruitt inherited, but it’s still a step shy of being elite and we saw that against Georgia. In fairness, Georgia probably has the #1 front 7 in the entire nation, but feels so frustrating to have what should be an elite OL and see them struggling this much. I don't know the solution, but I hope Pruitt figures it out.
223 - 39. This is the only stat you really need to understand why we lost. Sure, the turnovers sunk us, too, but you can't win games getting outrushed 223 - 39. Georgia averaged 4.6 ypc and we averaged 2.3 ypc. It all starts and ends up front.
JG, Jekyll / Hyde. I thought JG played excellent in the 1st half and terrible in the 2nd half. Albeit, the weak O-line protection was a huge factor, but several of those bad plays were all on JG not being aware. No, I don't think we would've won with Maurer or Bailey either, as the O-line's inability to do anything against Georgia's Front 7 was a much bigger factor than JG, but I do think both Maurer and Bailey have a higher ceiling than JG. At the very least, I think I would've thrown one of the backups in after the game was out of reach.
Too many penalties. Absolutely brutal on the penalties. 10 penalties for 84 yards. The frustrating thing is that most of them were very avoidable pre-snap penalties.
Defense played better than expected. You wouldn’t know if from the scoreboard, but defense played much better this week than last week. We gave up 44 points, but a very large chunk of that came from a terrible offense in the 2nd half. Absolutely a miracle that we only gave up 6 points from those 3 red zone drives starting from the one before halftime and then the other 2 turnover drives. The D just wore down in the 2nd half.
3rd down D. That said, the biggest issue on D was too giving up too many 3rd down conversions. It was frustrating to see excellent 1st and 2nd down D, only to fall apart on 3rd. Still, I think the D played well enough to win this game. The offense, not so much.
Gray played well. In spite of not doing much in the run game, I thought Eric Gray had a good game for us. Not really his fault he couldn’t get any blocks. He had 8 catches for 54 yards and was often our only offensive weapon. It's easy to blame players like Gray for not taking over the game single-handedly, but it's just not realistic.
Palmer had a good game; other WRs struggled. Josh Palmer had 2 great TD catches, but the rest of the WR corps struggled mightily against Georgia’s D. Between poor pass protection and the WRs not getting open for most of the game, JG didn't have a lot to work with. So no, it definitely wasn't all JG's fault.
JG’s ceiling. While I don't think JG was the biggest reason for the loss here, I do think we're seeing JG's ceiling. I love the kid and he’s all Vol. He’s tough as nails and works hard, but we’re not going to defeat the top echelon of SEC teams with JG. All the people claiming ‘HE’S THE WORST QB IN UT HISTORY!” are wrong. But likewise, he’s not among the best SEC QBs either and he never will be. He’s a middle of the pack SEC QB and he looked like a middle of the pack QB against UGA. I don't think JG has the tools to be an elite talent. He's not a running threat. And he's not a good enough pocket QB to win on that alone. He may still be the best QB on the roster as of today and I actually think he was the better QB on the field yesterday (not difficult to win behind Georgia's O-line when your running game does all the heavy work), but we're not going to see another level with him.
Progress, but a long way to go. We definitely saw progress from the last 2 seasons against Georgia, but it’s clear we’re still not on their level.
Kentucky. Don't sleep on Kentucky. This will be one of the most important games of the seasons.
9 -3 vs 5-5. Just a stray observation, but we could have conceivably gone 9-3 against our "original schedule" but end up going 5-5 against the current one. Oklahoma, turns out, not to be that great this year, so we may have very well gone 4-0 OOC. The difference now is that we picked up 2 more difficult SEC opponents with Auburn and A&M. No one wants to hear this, but anything over 5 wins is overachieving with this schedule.
Around the SEC
LSU. Now 1-2 with one of the easiest SEC schedules played thus far (Miss State, Vandy, Mizzou). They haven’t even hit the “difficult part” of their schedule yet. Definitely not the same team from last year. We might be seeing this team revert to the Ed Orgeron norm.
A&M. Actually, kinda scares me that they beat Florida, because that means one of our opponents who looked bad the first 2 weeks, may actually be very good.
Arkansas. Got robbed by the refs against Auburn. I don’t know if Arkansas is much better than everyone expected, or their opponents have been worse, but in any case, I don't think this is the same trainwreck team from last year. They should be 2-1 right now.
Auburn. Still haven't figured out this team yet. It does seem like they are much weaker than the pre-season hype suggested. They got their butts handed to them by Georgia even worse than we did. We at least made it look like a game for 2.5 quarters. It was obvious in the first few minutes that Auburn didn't stand a chance.
Florida. From what I can tell, Florida has one of the most awesome offenses in the country, but their D is struggling. Still going to be difficult to beat them, but I'm more optimistic about the idea now than I was last week.
Vandy. Is awful. Not unexpected, but still. Might be the only team in the SEC that’s weak right now.
Bama. Is still Bama, but they did give up 48 points to Ole Miss. At the very least, this Bama D does not look to be on the same level as Georgia's, but their offense is better.
SEC QB Ratings
1. Matt Corral, Ole Miss. Ole Miss's offense is rolling under Lane Kiffin with Corral, but they've played a tough schedule thus far.
2. Mac Jones, Bama. Bama much better on offense than expected.
3. Kyle Trask, Florida. Can't put that Florida loss on Trask.
4. K.J. Costello, Miss State. Not as bad as he looked against Kentucky. Pretty much everyone knows Miss State is going to throw it every play.
5. Myles Brennan, LSU. Offense does not appear to be LSU's problem this season.
6. Connor Bazelak, Mizzou. Think we lucked up playing him early. He's good and improving rapidly.
7. Kellen Mond, A&M. Similar to JG, he's very Jekyll / Hyde. That said, I think he's better than JG.
8. Collin Hill, SC. He's been solid for South Carolina, but doesn't have a lot of weapons surrounding him.
9. JG, Tenn. I know rating JG #9 rather than "WROST QB IN HISTORY OF WORLD!" will gain the ire of many, but I try to be honest in my evaluations.
10. Franks, Arkansas. Really feel like Mond, JG, and Franks have all had similar careers. They look great at times and terrible at others. Franks looked great yesterday.
11. Bo Nix, Auburn. Kid has some upside, but hasn't looked nearly as good outside of Week 1.
12. Terry Wilson, Kentucky. He went 8 for 20 for 73 yards yesterday and Kentucky still won in a blowout. One of the weirdest box scores I've ever seen.
13. Stetson Bennett IV, Georgia. Some of you will laugh that I have him below JG, but truth of the matter is, Georgia's winning with a dominating D, dominating O-line, and dominating run game. Switch JG and Bennett yesterday and the outcome would've been the same. Bennett is a below-average SEC QB, but it just hasn't mattered because Georgia is elite almost everywhere else. The real question for Georgia is whether they can beat teams like Bama and Clemson with Bennett, because this team is national title level good outside of QB.
14. Ken Seals, Vandy. Vandy feels like a G5 or even an FCS team right now.
That's all folks! Let's hope for a better outcome next week against Kentucky.
GBO!
