Kicking The Crap Out of Keys to Beating Auburn

Georgia continued its overall mastery against Auburn with Saturday night’s win against the Tigers. Going into Saturday, there were things that Georgia needed to go in order to make a win like Saturday night’s happen.

How did the Dawgs do this regard? Here’s how.

Stop Auburn’s run

In theory, putting the ball in the hands of Jarrett Stidham is a cautionary plan. The trouble with that is that Stidham in a pro-style offense is a lot more dangerous than playing in Malzahn’s offense, which is down a cylinder without a big power back and a Nick Marshall-type under center.

If Georgia makes Stidham beat it, the odds of slowing Auburn to a crawl are good.

Other than one scoring drive early on, Auburn once again fell victim to Georgia adjusting its defense. Since 2014, Georgia (other than last year’s game at Auburn) has not given up an . Auburn touchdown since the end of the first quarter of each contest

For the game, the Tigers ground game barely got above the century mark, gaining 102 yards. While the Tigers still got a chunk of passing yards, many were short screens and dump offs and for the most part, Auburn’s downfield passing game was never a threat on Saturday.

Lead early

Auburn is a time that has not met pre-set expectations. When you have a team like that, mounting adversity can cause things to snowball. It’s for this reason, combined with Georgia’s home-field advantage at night, that the Dawgs need to grab control of the game and not look back.

Georgia did this in a sense with its early score, but also flirted with disaster in failing to execute once again in goal to go situations. The fourth down pass to Godwin for a score, however, gave the Dawgs some momentum, and they used it to mentally take over the game as it went on.

Finish

Here’s the other half of Auburn running into hurdles this year. As we saw last week, it still believes that it can win football games, regardless of the odds. Don’t forget - this team caught lightning in a bottle last season, and many of those players are still on the roster.

Georgia cannot do what the Aggies did last week - take plays off late in the game. If they do, Auburn will make the Dawgs pay dearly.

Georgia’s defense took care of this to keep Auburn slowed down in the second half and Swift took care of it in a big way as well.

Sadly, Rodrigo’s had too much arm to drop another big finish. Georgia may not have pulled off that fake field goal that would have resulted on a statue being built by now, but the principle of getting a dig in at a rival should not be lost among Georgia fans.

Go Dawgs!