Georiga Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart has Evolved, but He Can't Change This
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ATHENS - Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart has one of the most efficient teams in the country - not that Saturday’s result was the best indication of that. UGA’s win over Kent State proves that even highly-efficient teams can get killed by giving the ball away.
Still, the seventh-year coach has seemingly evolved (if he would admit that or not is a good question) to an offense that gets a healthy chunk of running or run-type plays with passes to backs and runs from receivers and tight ends. It is hard to know where Georgia is attacking you. It used to be simpler to know that - it was the running backs.
Not any more.
College football has changed, and Kirby’s Dawgs have too. A season ago Georgia’s defense was suffocating foes. Eight single-digit offensive showings from foes put a spotlight on the defense. And it was quite good.
But the 2021 offense - with a quarterback change midseason - exploded, too. However, the offense’s production might not have been as obvious as the defense’s. Still, what Georgia has done this season is remarkable - even without the 15 players who departed for the NFL Draft.
Georgia has completed 81 drives this football season (87 total drives have happened in 2022, but seven drives in four games have been junk drives like kneel downs). In those 81 actual drives, Georgia has had an optimal outcome in 64 of them - or a 79% success rate.
That’s pretty astonishing.
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Consider that Georgia’s offense has started 41 drives - it has scored on 30 of them (73%). Georgia’s defense has been even better. In 40 drives the defense has had optimal outcomes in all but seven of them. That’s a conversion rate of 18% for the other offense.
That’s about an 80/20 split each game. In other words, Georgia is going to get its optimal outcome on defense (a punt, turnover or defensive score) and offense (a touchdown 49% of the time; FG 22% of the time, or killing the clock) 80% of drives in each game.
Not 80% of the time Georiga “has” the ball - 80% of the time the ball is on the field.
That means, if the first four games are a predicate for the remainder of the season, that Georgia will score a TD just shy of six times a game and a FG about 2.5 times a game. That’s “about” 35 points a game from touchdowns, and six from field goals - or 41 points a game.
Conversely, the defense forces a punt 56% of the time. The Dawgs’ defense gets a turnover (fumble, interceptions or downs) 25% of the time. That leaves the other 19% of the drives for the other team to score - or at least attempt it.
If there are 12 drives in a game (that’s usually the case for each team), 20% of that means the opposing offense would score, or attempt to score “about” 2.5 times a game. Georgia has only permitted three touchdowns all season - one of those was a pop play from KSU. So even saying one of the 2.5 scores a game is a touchdown only gets you to about ten points a game.
Those are normal games. And looking at those numbers it is hard to imagine Georgia losing a game with that sort of production.
Normal games? Georgia isn’t losing those.
But turnovers change things. That’s what we saw Saturday against Kent State. Georgia has only committed three turnovers all season. Only 16 teams have fewer than the Dawgs in all of college football so far in 2022. All three of those turnovers came in the game with the Flashes.
In statistics we call that an outlier.
So, in effect, Georgia gave away its chances to score more by forfeiting three drives - and giving itself a chance to only score on nine drives instead. UGA scored 39 points on nine drives - or 4.3 points a drive. Conversely, the defense had to defend three “extra” drives (in theory).
Without the turnovers we know Kent State would have at least three fewer points (the Flashes actually went backwards after the Ladd McConkey punt fumble - by the way McConkey led the Dawgs in receptions on Saturday... let’s not forget how well he’s played.). The data suggests Georgia would likely have had 13 more points - but they certainly could have added 21 more.
A 52-19 score would have been much more indicative of what happened on the field Saturday.
I should note here the problem for Kent State is they only had 11 drives even with the three turnovers. It got so bad for KSU that when the Flashes needed to get the ball back in the fourth quarter, Georgia was busy running the clock out.
That quarter Kent State only had the ball for three minutes and a few seconds. Georgia was busy death marching on them the entire quarter. Just after Kent State’s only drive touchdown drive of the game, a 12-play, 75-yard scoring drive, Georiga returned the favor to push the game out to the final score - 39-22.
The game Saturday was a bit of an anomaly. This is the only game of the season Georgia has given up two scores or had a turnover on offense (and it had three). So this was something new.
Does it signal a problem, or just football averages catching up with the Dawgs? That’s what the next few games are about.
The third quarter of the game, interestingly enough the only one without a turnover for either side, was the closest quarter of the game - and one of the closest of UGA’s 16 quarters this season. The other three quarters of the game - even with the Georgia mistakes, weren’t close.
Georiga outpaced KSU 414-176 in yards in the first, second and fourth.
What happens when Georgia doesn’t turn it over three times? Typically when you give the ball away that liberally you lose. But Georiga won by 17, and was taking a knee on the Kent State side of the 50 at the close of the 4th quarter. That’s not what normally happens when you have a bad turnover day. But it happened Saturday, and is indicative of how wide a margin for error this team has.
All that said - Saturday was an easy case study on why turnovers matter: KSU scored nearly half of their points after Georgia fumbles.
