Auburn is a good team. We are a good team. We played at their place and made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes. Auburn has improved all year and is hitting their stride at the end. They remind me of our 2007 team in terms of improvement over the course of the season.

I don't think they are quite as good as our first game made them look and I don't think we are that bad. Vegas has called both games near pickems, and I think that is probably accurate. I'm looking forward to a great game and assume we will play much cleaner, disciplined football than the first go around.

As usual, I will drink copious amounts of beer and bourbon and yell at the TV until my wife throws something at me. Go Dawgs!

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Posted by fibonaccisquared

The mystical waters of the Hooch

Member since Dec 2011

16898 posts

Posted on 11/29/17 at 4:10 pm to NCDawg52

quote:
Auburn is a good team. We are a good team. We played at their place and made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes. Auburn has improved all year and is hitting their stride at the end. They remind me of our 2007 team in terms of improvement over the course of the season.

I don't think they are quite as good as our first game made them look and I don't think we are that bad. Vegas has called both games near pickems, and I think that is probably accurate. I'm looking forward to a great game and assume we will play much cleaner, disciplined football than the first go around.

Yeah... I'm by no means a nega-dawg, but somehow I'm having to defend an accurate negative opinion of a past performance...

We played our worst defensive game of the year, but somehow it's wrong to say our defense played poorly... don't have to take my opinion for it...

2017 UGA Advanced Statistical Profile

So we played roughly half as well defensively as a game where we gave up 2 blown coverage TDs for 60 something yards each.

FWIW, Advanced stats shows that Auburn *didn't* actually play their best game, which I found surprising, but it was about on par with their best road performance against anyone other than Arkansas (Mizzou). They had a better offensive performance against us than they did against Alabama though defensively they graded out slightly higher.

We, on the other hand, obviously had our worst performance in total... as has been stated in many places, the game looks a lot different with a few key corrections: missed down field connection/lack of time on flea flicker - either of those likely results in +7 points, extended drive due to leaping penalty +7, poor clock management led to farther missed FG attempt +3 minimum, Hardman fumble +7... so 24 points worth of differential directly attributed to 4 "gaffes". I think our late TD was a bit of garbage time, so it still likely isn't enough to change the outcome in that game with all of the other issues that happened more consistently, but as I've said before and many others have, it was a much closer game than the score indicated even as poorly as we were playing.

It's going to take an A+ effort on the defensive side of the ball and some creative wrinkles from Chaney, but I see room for optimism. I don't envision this team goes out there with any sort of over-confidence this time around, the "neutral" crowd will play a role, and ultimately, they're playing with house money... it's been one hell of a season no matter what. Go Dawgs!