It's Shit Like This

TeamSpeedKills has a great post up today breaking down one play as an illustration of Georgia's defensive struggles against the option. Now, the Dawgs' failures against the option are nothing new - ask Georgia Tech, especially in 2009 - but this play against Florida exposes a deeper, more disturbing issue:

"Now, I don't know enough about Georgia's defense from last year to say who is at fault here. However the defense was playing this as though Burton was a threat to pass the ball, but he had thrown just one pass all season at this point. There was no reason to be a man down in the box against that formation with that guy at quarterback. Either the coordinator on the sideline or a captain on the field failed to adjust the defense to counter the offensive formation. This was just a base 3-4 set with nothing special done for the option specifically. The same was true of the defense when Burton broke off a 51-yard option keeper for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps this fall, in the second year under Todd Grantham, the right adjustments will be made. Something must be done though with option heavy teams like Mississippi State (24 points, 4.1 YPC in 2010), Auburn (49 points, 463 total yards), and Georgia Tech (34 points, 512 total yards) on the schedule again. Maybe Grantham was just rusty in his option defense last year as I speculated, but he better find some WD-40 this summer."

Here's the link to the breakdown. If you're a Georgia fan worried about the upcoming season, take a look; it's in-depth, but easy to follow, and gives you something to be on the lookout for in 2011.

Just for fun, here's the full play:


Untitled from David Wunderlich on Vimeo.