Damn the demons: Kirby Smart, Georgia need to flush past failures vs. Alabama
By Sam Ranson
Published:
It’s no secret that Alabama’s had Georgia’s number for… quite a while now. Bulldog fans are well aware of this, and so are their coaches and players. (Great insight!)
But if Georgia’s going to play like Georgia in this game — which it hasn’t done very often in this series — it’d be wise to acknowledge internally that this is a big game… and then flush that historical narrative entirely.
Georgia needs to beat the team in front of it this weekend — not 2017 Bama or 2020 Bama — and this Crimson Tide team has already proven beatable in the early going. The 2025 Bulldogs can’t make up for past failures in this series. But they can take a step toward a brighter future…
So who is the team in front of them? By my eye, 2025 Alabama is a talented team that’s beginning to develop an identity — a very un-Saban identity of a 4-wide, drop-back passing game — but, as it’s already shown, is also vulnerable in ways that few Nick Saban teams were. Critically, some of the flaws that Alabama put on tape in its Week 1 loss to Florida State — like an alarming vulnerability in run defense, as well as surprising issues in pass protection — are flaws that Kirby Smart-led Georgia teams love to exploit.
Might the Crimson Tide have hammered away at these imperfections — teams are allowed to grow throughout a season, after all — and might they bring an improved mentality and, ultimately, an improved product to the field this Saturday? Absolutely. In fact, I expect them to. Kalen DeBoer is fighting like hell to right his tenure in Tuscaloosa, and it should help that elite space-eating nose tackle Tim Keenan is back for the Tide this week. Keenan’s Week 1 absence was, in this columnist’s humble opinion, important to FSU’s ability to establish a bruising run game and control that contest. Another positive for DeBoer: a tough SEC slate also means the Tide have plenty more opportunities to prove themselves a serious outfit this season. They’ll get a huge one in Athens this weekend.
From a schematic standpoint, I said before the Tennessee game that Georgia needed to take the training wheels off its passing game in order to have success offensively (and in particular, to have enough success to keep pace with a high-powered Tennessee offense). Call me Sabrina the Teenage Witch, because that’s exactly what the Bulldogs did. But I feel differently about this one.
I hope, and I fully expect, that Mike Bobo and the Georgia offense will chin-check Alabama’s front 7 early, forcing them to prove that they can slow the Bulldogs’ power run game, which Georgia used to control much of the second half (namely, by keeping Joey Aguilar and the Vols’ offense off the field) of its wild win in Knoxville. Georgia’s going to hit them with inside zone, it’s going to hit them with Duo — both interior run concepts designed more to create an immediate push and keep an offense ahead of schedule than to break big plays — and it’s going to test Alabama’s manhood to see if this Tide team is up for a 4-quarter, physical war.
If Georgia’s able to establish those base run plays early and then open up the playbook from there, this one could play out in a similar manner as Bama’s loss in Tallahassee, where quarterback Ty Simpson was forced to play from behind in a low-possession game where Alabama’s defense was often unable to get off the field.
Alabama’s ticket to hanging in this one is showing a completely different version of itself in run defense. The Tide need to fight Georgia’s run game to at least a stalemate of 2- and 3-yard, dog-pile runs — as opposed to 5- and 6-yard drive-starters — and they need to force quarterback Gunner Stockton to do it again and stack another big-time performance in another big-game environment.
(Curiously, Stockton’s actually been better away from Sanford Stadium than he has between the hedges early on in his Georgia career. Interesting trend to monitor.)
Alabama’s winning formula also includes testing — and winning against — talented but relatively young Georgia defensive backs that were victimized downfield by Tennessee.
Georgia’s ticket? Be itself. Lean on a deep, talented stable of running backs, use Stockton’s legs in intelligent spots (Bobo did this oh so deftly in Knoxville), get the ball out quickly to playmakers like Zach Branch and Dillon Bell, and utilize an improving downfield passing game to punish Alabama’s safeties for crashing down to combat a (hopefully) bruising run game.
Brass tacks: I love Georgia in this game… but damn, how many times have we, as Georgia fans, said that in this series? The deciding factors are that I think Georgia’s the more physical team, and that this one’s between the damn hedges, at night.
I’ll cop to it: Sanford can be a bit sleepy at noon. It ain’t sleepy at night.
If the Dawgs establish an effective run game early and Stockton can settle in behind it, Ty Simpson and the Bama offense are going to have to play a whale (an elephant?) of a game to get it done in Athens and extend the Tide’s run of dominance in this series.
