SEC Championship: Who has the better defense, Georgia or LSU?
So which defense is better: Georgia’s or LSU’s?
The natural answer would be, unequivocally, Georgia. Right? Well, maybe not. Sure, it’s been led by an elite running defense and is toward the top of the stats in basically every major category, something it will be able to hang its hat on in Saturday’s SEC Championship.
Meanwhile, LSU is known mostly for its offensive exploits. Joe Burrow enters with 9 more touchdowns than his closest competitor and is racking up numbers at a record pace. It’s not uncommon to see numbers in the 40s, 50s and even 60s on the scoreboard when the Tigers take the field. But beyond that may lie a few strong links on their defense that might slip under the radar just a bit.
Let’s see how the 2 teams stack up defensively:
Secondary: LSU
The Dawgs are a lot of things, but ball hawks? Not quite.
Here’s a stat for you: Tigers cornerback Derek Stingley has 4 interceptions. Georgia as a team? Only 6. I should mention, too, that Stingley — a true freshman, I might add — has 14 defended passes. Only 4 players in the country have more.
Georgia’s passing game already was going to be challenged without injured Lawrence Cager and George Pickens suspended for the 1st half. Good luck throwing it Stingley’s way, whoever he lines up against.
Stingley is merely one part of a loaded secondary. Do everything safety Grant Delpit is an All-American and potential 1st-round pick. Senior Kristian Fulton is a known quantity, with 11 pass breakups from the Tigers’ other corner spot. Free safety JaCoby Stevens has 5.0 sacks, 8.5 tackles for a loss and is 2nd on the team with 74 tackles.
There is no weak link here — evidenced by the fact LSU has 14 interceptions this season — so the Bulldogs’ offensive staff will need to be aware of LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda calling for safety blitz packages to keep Jake Fromm and the Georgia offensive line on their toes.
Georgia hasn’t been able to generate takeaways from its secondary in the same fashion as LSU, and that’s a big checkmark in the Tigers’ favor. Yes, they let Sam Ehlinger and Tua Tagovailoa go to town against them, but nothing I’ve seen from Fromm this year suggests he’ll come close to those numbers. By the way, they’ve allowed 311 yards or less in every other game, so those games against LSU and Alabama aren’t the norm at all.
Running defense: Georgia
It’s a stretch to call what the Dawgs are doing against the run unprecedented, but it’s close. If you want to beat Georgia, you better be able to throw it. Nobody has beaten them on the ground. Period. Georgia held Texas A&M to negative-1 yard, after all.
LSU could try to run Clyde Edwards-Helaire at the Georgia defensive front to try to replicate what South Carolina and Vanderbilt did, to an extent. Outside of Kentucky’s 4.8 yards per carry, inflated because Lynn Bowden kept it on the ground more than he threw it, only the Gamecocks and Commodores (3.9) have averaged more than 3.3 yards per attempt. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Joe Burrow go well above 40 pass attempts as a result, to be honest. (He’s only done that twice.) If he’s able to lop off chunks of yards on just a few passes, he might not need to, though.
In any event, the path to victory for the Tigers won’t be through a heavy dose of Edwards-Helaire. The Dawgs are just too good.
Overall: Georgia
When looking at the complete picture, you’d have to give the Dawgs the edge defensively. Along with those points above, their best attribute is the most important one: They don’t give up many points.
Georgia has allowed just 14 TDs all season. Nobody has scored 3 TDs against this Dawgs this season.
Georgia and LSU played 4 common opponents (Auburn, Florida, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt). LSU allowed 12 TDs to those teams. Georgia allowed just 5.
If the most points you’ve given up is 20, you’re doing something right. And it’s that very reason LSU, Vegas’s pick as expected, is favored by just a touchdown.
Meanwhile, LSU, as adept as it is at putting points on the board, has, at times, struggled to prevent opponents from doing the same.
The Tigers insist they have the playmakers and point to last week’s shutdown of Texas A&M as proof this defense can get it done, too. Maybe it will.
But the edge speaks more to what Georgia’s defense has done, I think. I still have reservations about the Dawgs winning on Saturday, especially if Burrow can turn this into an Air-Raid shootout. But even if this is the most dominant offense it’s faced this season, considering its body of work, would it really surprise anyone if Georgia is the first team to solve it?
Keep in mind, it held a record-setting Alabama offense that routinely scored 50 to 35 last year in the SEC Championship Game.
Can it do the same to Burrow and Co?
Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.
That’s as dumb as asking who has the better offense
Even without looking at stats, having seen both play many times this season I have no doubt that Georgia has the better defense of the two teams. LSU’s is not as bad as some want to claim, but they certainly aren’t on par with Georgia. Georgia has an exceptional defense- probably the best in the SEC. It will be strength against strength and LSU has the ball.
The UGA defense has been outstanding all season. The LSU defense has had its moments. There is no question that the UGA defense has been the better unit this year. That doesn’t mean that the LSU defense won’t have the better game Saturday. The units they are going against will certainly factor into that.
LSU’s defense definitely has a more favorable matchup, if that makes sense. As a standalone unit I would argue that UGA’s defense is better, but the results also hinge on who they’re playing this week, and the advantage of going against an underwhelming, depleted UGA offense outweighs the advantage of facing Burrow with arguably the country’s best defense.
UGA seems better defensively to me but some of the stats are misleading. UGA runs clock, gets ahead of less talented opponents, and slows down the game. LSU boat races you forcing teams to play a little wild and also getting more possessions will result in more scores. LSU seems to have faced better offenses as well but I don’t have stats on that.
Good point on slowing the game down, and I wrote about that being a potential advantage for Georgia yesterday.
Burrow’s good, but he’s not good enough to score from the sideline :)
Florida dominated time of possession against LSU. Didn’t matter. One turnover and the game is over.
Agreed. I think UGA can slow it down and keep LSU from hitting too many big plays. UGA has to play an error free game to have a chance.
As Nash stated, UF did this very well against LSU and the result was what you’d want – a close game in the fourth quarter. One mistake though, and you’re done. UGA tried to play safe against USC and it backfired. They’ll do it again against LSU but they’ll have to score consistently.
Why is this even a question?
The only thing that LSU’s secondary has over UGA’s secondary is name recognition and more opportunities to have balls thrown their way. UGA’s defense has been very good in press man, zone, cover 2, cover 1 and zero coverage, and they only time teams really pass on them is when they play soft zone at the end of games.
Georgia fans keep saying this. I went back and watched highlights of the Florida-Georgia game. Georgia was in the same defense in the last six minutes of the game that they were in during the first six minutes of the game, and all their defensive minutes in between: a hybrid man free/cover one with a free safety at 10-12 yards off the ball, strong safety usually 3 yards off Kyle Pitts, strong-side corner in tight man at about 3 yards and back-side corner backed off at about 7 yards.
How they line up and how they play leverage is different.
1. They don’t line up like that every play. They give the defense different looks throughout the game.
2. It’s not as much about how they line up, it’s about the leverage they play and their space responsibility in relation to the player and where they try to force the ball.
Early in the game you see them play a lot more under, inside leverage, trying to take away inside routes. Later in the game they play almost 0 under coverage. It’s all over and outside. If the offense is going to get completions, it’s going to be in the middle, hopefully shorter than 10 yards. You also see them line up in that cover 3 look and then shift to a cover 2 or cover 4, again with an over leverage keeping each man underneath.
I didn’t see any cover 2 or “soft zone” against Florida.
2:49 left in the 3rd quarter. No UGA Db is within 6 yards of a WR. No pressing on the line. Swain catches a 13 yard in route. Next play they are in off man. Only DB within 6 yards is Stokes and he’s at 4 on Cleveland. No press. Swain catches a 11 yard out. Next play. All DBs at 5 yards out from the WR. No Press. Soft coverage again. Cover 2. Cleveland catches an 8 yard stop.
You want me to keep going? I can break it all down.
Next play they get tricky and play zone on one half and man on the other. Nobody is within 4 yards of a WR. Swain, on the soft man side, beats the outside leverage of Webb and gets 11 yards on a slant. Next play. UGA lines up in press man. Corners on the LOS. Press at the snap. Trask is sacked.
Next play. UGA showing soft coverage, 2 high safety look. (BTW they have had 2 high safeties in every play so far, I forgot to mention that) Soft 2-Man. Trask hits the RB option-out for 3 yards, Monty Rice with a good close and tackle. Would have been a big gain had he not held on to the back. End of Quarter.
Next play, UGA with 2 high, showing press on the edges. Either press-man-2 or Press-cover 2. Trask runs for 3 and a half yards.
Next play. UGA in a man look, single high safety with LeCounte manned up on Pitts. Corners are playing inside-over leverage (very hard to do) and stokes gets beat on a good move inside and under. Swain with a 7 yards gain on the slant.
TD play, 2-man look. playing over inside again. Trask extends after pressure, finds Jefferson who got a little push to create some space.
Like I said, they mix it up a lot. Definitely some cover 2 and soft zone as well as soft man thrown in there. The soft mainly referring to the fact that they are playing a lot of over leverage and giving up anything underneath. Even when they press, that CB is working hard to stay on top of the WR instead of trailing, even when they have 2 high safeties.
I’m thoroughly convinced that Nashvillegator has never played football above pop-warner. This is the second time I’ve seen incorrectly describe a defense.
Matt(if he doesn’t mind me calling him that) already did a good job describing the difference.
I don’t mean this in an insulting way, but please leave the X’s and O’s to people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Actually, I was a safety in both high school and college and — with respect to your previous misconceptions about what a prevent defense is — you keyboard cowboys don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
The UGA defensive numbers are impressive regardless of their competition; however, I still say UGA will have to score at least 30 to win this game.
Most games for UGA I say If they can get to somewhere between 21 to 28, they have a good chance. Not so much with this game. They are going to need 35 at least.
Both of you may be right, and for all I know LSU may score 60.
But if Auburn had scored 24 in Baton Rouge, they would have won. Is their defense so much better than ours?
Even Auburn fans admit that LSU screwed up and left points on the field in that game. Same mistakes are not likely to happen again.
A lot of things fell right in that game for Auburn to hold LSU to 23, and for really the only time the whole year LSU went into run out the clock mode (instead of score mode) early in the 4th quarter because Auburn had essentially mounted no offensive threat for most of the game. At any point had it looked like Auburn could have scored 24, LSU would have scored more.
But as it often does, the run out the clock strategy almost bit LSU in the butt as Auburn scored their last TD with less than a minute left in the game. They were very much aided by a no-call on offensive pass interference and a bad call made on defensive pass interference; but never the less, it was worrisome having to recover an onside kick.
Could happen again but I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s much more likely that you’ll need at least 30 points out of your O to win.
The way I’ve always looked at matchups is 1. the difference in (LSU’s offense vs UGA’s defense) vs (UGA’s offense vs LSU’s defense) and 2. how have the teams progressed throughout the season (performance and health).
Comparing LSU and Georgia’s defenses matter little without introducing the opposing team’s offensive quality. Yes Georgia has an excellent defense but they shutting out a broken Kelly Bryant-less Mizzou, loss to South Carolina, and barely beating TAMU 19-13 at home shows me that Georgia is simply LSU in previous years.
At the end of the day, it all goes down to who scores more points and I’ll bet on LSU with this one.
LSU is now healthy on defense and the TAMU game showed this.
Soooo, the only stat that matters as a DB is ints? Sounds a little wacky to me. UGA is as far ahead of LSU on defense as LSU is ahead of UGA on offense. Its really not even a discussion.
Total Defense:
UGA – #4
LSU – #35
Total Offense:
LSU – #2
UGA – #55
I do not think you can use LSU / UGA stats (aka total offense and total defense) as you show above. Remember both LSU & UGA have played legitimate competitors vs. some teams who may be ranked higher in Offense or Defense.
I think this weekend is legit the best offense (LSU) vs the best defense (UGA) which HOPEFULLY makes it an amazing game.
Burrow should win the Heisman AND LSU should be ranked #1.
All SEC fans should be excited about watching some of the best players (current and future) in the conference!
Let’s have an awesome game and prove once again why 2 SEC teams should be in the CFP!
We would probably have better stats on defense if the best ranked offense we played against all season was ranked #44 in total offense (Arkansas State).
or if you just played better defense
Another Captain Obvious article.
UGA Pass D: 15th
LSU Pass D: 56th
2 points:
-LSU has more opportunities for picks because they’re almost always playing with a lead, so the other team is forced to air it out more.
-Because LSU’s offense scores so quickly, our defense is on the field a lot longer, and therefore gives up more yards/game.
Just food for thought.
The UGA defense is also on the field longer than offense. I think Saturday will be (fingers crossed) an awesome game. Of course I would like to see my Dawgs win, but – much respect to the Tigers this season. They have been awesome.