All the criticism of the 'Bama defense

They had to abandon the run because they were down 30-7 at halftime. They were in 13yo Madden player mode the entire 2nd half, going for it on 4th down no matter field position or distance every time. In fact, UGA's gameplan coming in seemed to be to attack the secondary early. Never really Established It. By the time they settled in v. Alabama's disguises and blitz packages they couldn't really run much other than to keep Alabama honest.

Many really bad pass defenses have very good rush defense metrics because none of their opponents bothers to establish the run because all the throws are there.

Is that the Alabama defense's situation? I don't know...they played 3 air raid or veer n' shoot teams and took away the pass by conceding some yards on the ground. Against a more balanced offense, they challenged them to hit throws against mixed up coverages. I suppose you can say that the concern is that the defense has to be schemed up to make the opponent succeed only with their off hand approach. When they play an offense with no significant weakness, what happens?

What nobody seems to have noticed is that a BIG reason why we jumped out to such a big lead is our defense kept forcing three-and-outs and turnovers.

Winning the game on an INT is just the cherry on top.

I'm a believer in Kane Wommack after last night

We actually conventionally stopped them almost every drive in the second half. They had an extra down to work with. While you should not give all of those up but In a semi close game there is a lot more forced punts.

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This.
We blitzed a lot in the first half and played a shite load more man than normal.
With a big lead in the second half, we went back to zone and combo zone and stopped blitzing any where close to the rate we were in the second half. We did that to force them to make long drives and eat clock. They went for it on fourth down and made it every single fricking time. That part sucks but again, we aren’t gonna play every game with our opponent going for it on fourth down every time.
Lots of good. Lots to work on. And a W.
Just my opine

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Can't argue with any of this.



Going back to last year's SEC championship game, Georgia couldn't get much going on the ground then either. 'Bama blew them up in the back field on short yardage plays 5+ different times if I'm remembering it right. They weren't in 4th down desperation mode in that game and still couldn't run it like they usually do. Normally they could just out-athlete other teams and run it down their throat, but seem to struggle against 'Bama recently.

Of course Kentucky had similar success, so maybe it's just that their OLine sucks worse than usual this year and I'm giving the defense too much credit. Either way, happy with how they played last night in that regard.

Secondary has a lot of film to watch, but by the time we have to play these guys again (if/when), that group should be world's apart from what we saw Saturday after a season of experience. Here's hoping.

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They did but Georgia didn’t run the ball like I thought they would.

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The interior of the UGA OL was a trainwreck due to injuries.

Ratledge was out then their C went down so they had one guy shift over and had to bring in a glorified walk-on.

It didn’t matter ultimately due to game situations taking the run game away, but I was actually disappointed we didn’t get more pressure up the middle than we did.

Ultimately we went conservative, they converted an unfathomable number of 4th downs to stay alive and eventually the defense just hit a wall when the offense started going three and out on consecutive drives.

UGA had to be perfect in the 2H to get back in it and needed help and we gave them some.

Lot to learn from, but the 1H was as dominant as the 2H was a problem so I’m happy to take the W and hopefully learn from it because the safety play will have to be miles better against TN in Knoxville. We’ve been getting beat over the top all year and almost paid the price for it Saturday.

Our D line was apparently exhausted after the first TD drive by Ga in the second half. . They couldnt put pressure on the QB, and they couldnt contain him from running the ball. We didnt help them with our 3 and outs though. But we either need to get in better shape, or get a couple of more D linemen.

Smith and Payne played well vs. UGA. Very stout against the run. Payne absolutely dominated the man in front of him a handful of times. Latham isn’t a liability, but his ceiling is not very high either.