Game grades: Georgia beats Tennessee 38-12
Offense: C+
441 total yards - 190 through the air and 251 on the ground. Those are pretty solid numbers, but if you watched the game you can see that Georgia is really struggling to find its offensive identity. Several drives Georgia just couldn’t develop any sort of rhythm, something that’s a huge part of UGA’s offensive. It never really had one of those drives where it was able to pick up good chunks of yards play-after-play. Pass protection along the offensive line was a big issue too. The Bulldogs gave up three sacks to a single player in Tennessee’s Darrell Taylor. UGA will have to get better there if it doesn’t want Jake Fromm to get mauled by tougher D-lines in LSU and Auburn.
Defense: B+
Georgia should have done better, but it didn’t do too bad. Tennessee was held to only 66 yards rushing, a significant drop from last week’s 172. And it was against a more physical run game. 143 yards and two touchdowns are probably more than Georgia should have allowed against a guy who is as limited as Jarrett Guarantano is. The defense was able to get two sacks which were good and helped to dispel the weak pass rush chatter that has been mentioned for the past several weeks. Overall, Georgia’s main goal is to stop the run and they did that today. There were sometimes where they might have slipped up a little bit, but the box score shows what kind of damage they did.
Special Teams: B
There wasn’t really a whole lot to go off of here. There weren’t any return opportunities for either team. Rodrigo drilled his one 43-yard attempt and then saved an almost ruined extra point with a no-runup kick that barely made its way through the upright. Jake Camarda had some booming punts, one of them going for 53 yards, but he needs to develop more touch on it when punting somewhat close to the opponent's goal line. A lot of time he just kicks it into the end zone. As a freshman, he’s got time. You’d just like to see some development there soon.
Coaching: A-
A player didn’t drop the ball before the goal line, so Georgia obviously got some work there. The play calling seemed better than last week, they just weren’t able to find that groove with it until late in the game. When the players started talking a lot of trash, the coaches were on them to make sure it never escalated after the late hit D’Andre Walker.