re: Dylan Sampson snubbed from Doak Walker

quote:

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Regardless of the final score, getting 100 yards against a quality defense is always brag worthy.

you should know better

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If you think so.

There's a reason why UGA gets beaten by passing teams. We don't pull up safeties in order to stop the run because we come out better if you run the ball 20 times a game for 100 yards than if we focus on stopping the run and get clobbered over the top.

We could have likely held all of those teams to 50-70% of their rushing total by bringing safeties up. We might have lost some of those games had we done so though.

It's an odd sort of situation, but having an opponent have the kind of success where they keep running because it's working a little but only end up with around 150 yards rushing means that we don't get burnt by big pass plays and win the game comfortably.

Tennessee was down by 7 at the start of the 4th quarter and ran a 6 minute long drive that went 36 yards and resulted in a punt. 12 play drive with just 4 pass attempts.

When they got the ball back they were down 14 with just 2 minutes to go. They had a grand total of four second half drives... in part because they ran the clock out on themselves because they thought that a running game that was working a little but not a lot was what they should rely on.

While I don't think the RESULT was intentional (UGA would have rather stopped them cold), I do think not stacking the box and instead preventing the deeper pass plays WAS intentional. Even though Sampson had some success, it wasn't enough for UGA to feel like they had to bring a safety up.

That level of running success isn't scary unless the other team had already passed to get a lead and was killing the clock you need to come back.