Looking Back at the Three Keys

Before the Austin Peay game, we tossed out three keys to a Georgia win. Needless to say, the Bulldogs made quick work of the Governors, even without matching one of those key areas. Here’s how things went in Athens.

Empty the stadium in the fourth

Seeing fans heading for the exits is not usually a good thing when you’re at home. On Saturday, with about seven minutes to go, however, it’ll be a good thing as it’ll mean that Georgia is on its way to a blowout win and fans, having gotten their fill of Krypton in, have headed for the exits to beat the traffic home. If it’s a repeat of Nicholls, with fans staying around to see if an embarrassing loss can be avoided...it won’t be a fun time, to say the least.

Given the blowout and the heat, this was easily accomplished. Night games may make for a late drive home if you don’t live near Athens, but they sure are nice in September temperature-wise.

Kirby Smart, as expected, had a lot of things from the win to pinpoint on as ways to get better, but in what’s becoming the norm in Athens, this program tends to take care of teams it should dominate in short order.

200 and 200 on offense

I’m not really hung up on the individual numbers here, but if Georgia rushes for 200 yards and Jake Fromm throws for 200-plus, it’ll be a good afternoon in the Classic City. If Georgia wins big, as expected, it could very well mean a heavy dose of its stable of running backs and not just D’Andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield and not so much each of them, or even one, hitting 100 yards.

Georgia was very, very basic on Saturday on offense. But even with the game shortened by five minutes and the Dawgs eating clock late in the game, Georgia’s stable of running backs rushed for 224 yards to go with three separate quarterbacks throwing for 284 yards.

A huge byproduct of that is a look at D’Andre Swift’s stat line. He only ended up with 43 yards, but considering he pretty much played one half and averaged 5.4 yards a carry,’ that’s hardly anything to sneeze at. If Georgia can get YPC numbers like that and Elijah Holyfield’s 4.8 from Saturday going forward, it’ll be in good shape going forward.

Georgia’s plan appeared to be one that it was going to line up and do what it wanted against an outmatched opponent, and it showed.

Five sacks

Ok, maybe that number sounds a bit lofty for an opener. But given Georgia’s talent and depth capable of wearing down Austin Peay, controlling the line of scrimmage with at least five sacks should be manageable.

This one obviously did not happen, but in the end was a non-factor. Georgia didn’t end up with any sacks and combined for two tackles for a loss against Austin Peay, but that was a pure product of a blow out as well as the Governors going away from the pass as the game went on, leaning more toward the option look.

There’s also the fact that Mel Tucker did not see a need to give South Carolina any looks at what blitz packages before next week, so even though Saturday was not a sack party, it’s not anything to belabor over.

Go Dawgs!