Georgia vs. Vanderbilt: Game Grades, Analysis for Bulldogs

There are ways to lose a game to a team like Vanderbilt, and Georgia tapped into almost all of them Saturday in a 17-16 homecoming loss in Athens.

Penalties, atrocious special teams play and an overall complacency plagued the Bulldogs throughout the afternoon as the team saw its hopes of winning the SEC East and staying relevant nationally this season all but disappear. This was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad loss for Georgia as it heads into its bye week with not a lot to be proud of.

Let’s grab our red pens and get to grading.

Pass Offense

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The passing game was one of the few bright spots for Georgia Saturday, a complete 180 from last week. Jacob Eason didn’t make it to 30 yards passing last week, but he eclipsed that number early on in the first quarter. Eason had perhaps his best game as a Bulldog, going 27-of-40 with 346 yards and a passer rating of 148.4. He did a good job of spreading the ball around and shined in intermediate passing routes and slants, which have become the bread and butter of Jim Chaney’s play-calling.

Georgia might want to remember it has Isaac Nauta available every game. Nauta had 83 yards receiving against Tennessee in a breakout game, and against Vanderbilt, he caught five passes for 74 yards and a wide-open touchdown in the third quarter.

Riley Ridley also had a nice game catching the ball with 67 yards of his own, a likely sign of things to come as the team searches for a true primary receiver.

The passing game was not the issue Saturday, and the team did a good job addressing what went wrong last week. Chaney spread the field and kept Vanderbilt guessing, and a lot of credit is due to Eason for getting a lot of receivers involved.

Grade: B+

Run Offense

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Georgia had two running backs rush for over 100 yards a week ago in Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, but if you didn’t know a lot about this team and tuned in this week, that stat would seem like an anomaly.

The narrative coming out of last week was that, going forward, Georgia would need to put everything together on offense. This is not a revelation and almost something that doesn’t need to be said. But the team is making it necessary. It’s like the Bulldogs are spinning a wheel, and whichever aspect of the game the arrow lands on is the part that doesn’t work that given week. This week, it was the run game. Chubb was held to 40 yards rushing; Michel had just 28.

A big reason for the lack of production, besides the offensive line not getting any push, was Zach Cunningham, Vanderbilt’s junior linebacker. Cunningham was a monster all game, finishing with 19 tackles, including a wrap-up of junior Isaiah McKenzie off a sweep on fourth down with about a minute left in the game to seal it.

Georgia’s offensive line can’t put together consecutive good games consistently. Vanderbilt quickly realized it could do whatever it wanted in the trenches. Georgia’s M.O. is running the ball, and when it can’t do that effectively, this is what happens.

Vanderbilt has a good defense, as is usually the case. But there’s no reason to think Georgia couldn’t have had more than just 75 yards rushing Saturday. If the Bulldogs got even just a little more production there, we’re likely talking about a win. But here we are.

Grade: D

Pass Defense

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We should preface this by saying that the quarterback position is not Vanderbilt’s strength—not by a long shot. Sophomore Kyle Shurmur had a few balls that could have been touchdowns had he thrown them the way he was supposed to, including a poorly thrown deep ball that sophomore Juwuan Briscoe got burned on.

The linebackers did a poor job in coverage off a screen pass to Ralph Webb on a 3rd-and-12 play that set up what became the winning touchdown later on in the drive. Starter Deandre Baker sat this game out due to a “nasty ankle sprain,” and while his presence wasn’t overtly missed, it’s worth noting, as the team had to plug in Briscoe to fill his role.

As for Vanderbilt’s passing game, Shurmur was just 7-for-18 with 109 yards passing. Vanderbilt didn’t have a lot of offense anywhere in this game, with just 171 total yards. Its points came off Georgia miscues, and we’ll get to that.

So to evaluate the secondary is a bit futile because it didn’t face a lot of passes. Shurmur was not effective, and Vanderbilt was often hesitant to pass at all. There were a few positive gains on intermediate routes that were set up because of where the Commodores were on the field.

Dominick Sanders did have a nice pass breakup on a third down that looked like a conversion before he knocked the ball out of receiver C.J. Duncan’s hands. Junior Lorenzo Carter also did an outstanding job rushing the passer, recording two sacks and being a menace for most of what was probably his best game.

Carter’s development has been a hot-button issue on defense; he has the skill set but hasn’t played well consistently. In a game that didn’t have a lot of positives, Carter’s emergence in the back half of this season is something to keep an eye on.

But again, the unit wasn’t tested all that much, so the grade here is a bit muddled. 

Grade: B-

Run Defense

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Vanderbilt was just 4-for-14 on third-down attempts, as the defense was able to stop Ralph Webb there and otherwise. Webb was a bit dinged up from an injury suffered last week, but he played nonetheless. He was fed the ball 19 times but rushed for just 48 yards, with nine yards being his longest run on the day.

Sophomore Jonathan Ledbetter had a nice day on the scoresheet in his first game back, notching four tackles. Junior Davin Bellamy also had a nice game, posting eight tackles on the day.

Forgive the brevity here, but it feels almost counterproductive to grade the defense overall beyond saying it played fairly well against a subpar offense. The points it gave up were because of mistakes made by other facets of the team.

Overall, the defense did what it was expected and needed to do. It gave up little to no big plays, and there were no big blown assignments. Whether that’s a credit to coordinator Mel Tucker or an indictment of Vanderbilt’s offense is a bit murky. It’s probably a mixture of both, but the numbers don’t lie.

Grade: B+

Special Teams

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Strap in. Make sure everyone in the car is buckled. All set? Good.

Georgia’s special teams were the worst they've been all season on Saturday—and probably in quite some time. They made just about every mental mistake they could, and the ones who the unit usually relies on played like it was their first times.

There was Vanderbilt’s 95-yard kickoff return to open the game that set up a touchdown and set the tone for the rest of the day.

There was Reggie Davis inexplicably catching a kickoff at the 3-yard line and immediately stepping his right foot out of bounds, which stymied a Georgia team that couldn’t run the ball at all, let alone when backed up in its own end zone.

There was a 61-yard Vanderbilt punt off a botched snap that the team still allowed to get off, which was followed by Terry Godwin misplaying it—granted, it was negated due to a penalty.

And there was Isaiah McKenzie trying to field a punt that had already passed him for no apparent reason, almost turning the ball over.

Vanderbilt punter Sam Loy had three punts of 50-plus yards, and a lot of those were rugby-style kicks that gave the Bulldogs fits. These are all mental things, in-game adjustments that contribute to a team like Vanderbilt hanging around and winning the field-position battle. Most of the Commodores’ points came off short fields.  

And the most remarkable thing? This all came despite Rodrigo Blankenship, not because of him! Prior to Saturday, Blankenship had just one made field goal, a 27-yarder against Tennessee. Georgia’s kicking situation has been the subject of ridicule for weeks now. But Blankenship hit from 36, 22 and 45, scoring over half the team’s points. He was the only good thing about special teams this week.

I would’ve asked you if you were thinking straight if you predicted that prior to this week.

Grade: F

Coaching

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Georgia was not ready to play this game. In Athens, not losing to Vanderbilt is a maxim, and the numbers back it up—Georgia hadn’t lost to Vanderbilt in Athens since 2006. Commodores head coach Derek Mason was 0-9 in SEC road games prior to this week. This was his first win.

In some ways, this loss is even harder to process than the one against Tennessee. It feels like The Twilight Zone, an alternate universe in which the more talented Georgia team loses this game, seeped its way into reality.

Georgia had eight penalties for 53 yards on Saturday, many of which negated big gains—a long Jacob Eason run in the fourth quarter being brought back due to a hold by senior Brandon Kublanow comes to mind. That stalled the drive, and the Bulldogs punted. A botched snap from Kublanow took Georgia out of field-goal range late in the first quarter as well.

There were multiple illegal formation penalties. That it happened twice displays a lack of discipline and basic understanding of what is being asked.

The sequence of events that led to the Bulldogs being put away with a minute left in the fourth quarter was inexplicable, too. Eason should not be passing on 3rd-and-1, and Isaiah McKenzie should not be catching a sweep far behind the first-down markers to the short side of the field on 4th-and-1. Zach Cunningham is too smart for that and made a great play on the ball.

As bad as Georgia played, it had a chance to drive down for a go-ahead or even potentially game-winning field goal. But the play calls prevented that from coming to fruition.

The Bulldogs forgot how to even go about doing the little things, and that’s what cost them. It was a perfect—or imperfect—mix of mental mistakes and bad situational decision-making that did them in.

Grade: D-

Conclusion

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Not much more needs to be said. In the big picture, the Bulldogs can forget about the SEC Championship Game, and you’d be wise to check hotels for the cities in Florida that host bowl games. To get to Atlanta, Georgia would need Tennessee to lose twice—and even if it beats Florida in two weeks, it would need the Gators to lose again to get into a tie, which it would still lose to Tennessee due to the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Georgia’s magic eight ball is snarky and direct at the moment. Outlook? Not so good.

I wrote last week that the next few weeks would determine how we evaluate head coach Kirby Smart and this season. But I wasn’t talking about or even considering this week into that equation. It was homecoming! The game that is scheduled on a date that the program expects a win! It is just a head-scratcher, and it's a shame this came during one of Jacob Eason's best performances of his young career.

In some ways, the team’s inconsistent play was building up to this. The close call against Nicholls State can’t be forgotten, and the Bulldogs still have yet to play a complete game of football. This team is trending downward with its biggest rival and a team that has owned it the past two years up next in Florida.

Something has to get figured out, or eight wins is looking like a real possibility. That’s not what Smart was brought here to do, regardless if it’s his first year. Georgia is now 4-3 on the year, nowhere close to sniffing the Top 25. There is no excuse for this, and unless something changes, we’re going to see more of the same the rest of this season.