Georgia vs. Florida: Game Grades, Analysis for Bulldogs

After an embarrassing 17-16 loss at home against Vanderbilt two weeks ago, there was no way it could have gotten worse for Georgia. And yet, somehow, it did.

The Bulldogs have now lost four of five, the latest coming in a 24-10 loss to Florida in Jacksonville Saturday.

After a bye week, you’d think the team would come out inspired; it would finally be able to put more than two phases of the game together and show out in its biggest rivalry game. That didn’t happen, and now even a bowl game could be hanging in the balance.

The only thing cohesive about the team is where the blame can be placed, because at least there’s several areas you can point to. For the sake of not piling on, let’s get our red pens out and start grading.

Pass Offense: D

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We’ll do something they used to do on American Idol: Jacob Eason, step forward. You are safe.

The rest of the unit, you are not going to Hollywood. Shreveport, maybe. But from the offensive line to the receivers whose case of the drops is only getting worse to the play-calling, this was an atrocious outing for the pass offense.

Georgia’s receivers still can’t catch the ball. There was a sequence late in the second quarter where Riley Ridley, wide-open, dropped an (under-thrown) pass from Eason that could’ve been a huge swing at the end of the half. Jayson Stanley then dropped a slant from Eason on the very next play.

As for the offensive line, things were not much better. Entering the fourth quarter, Florida had 15 quarterback hurries on Eason. Not to be Captain Obvious, but when you have a young quarterback, young receivers who have trouble catching the ball and said quarterback has no time to throw to the receivers who can’t catch anyway, then you’re not going to have a lot of success moving the ball.

Eason himself played admirably given the pressure he was constantly under. He showed an ability to improvise and extend plays outside the pocket, especially on Georgia’s lone touchdown drive in the second quarter. However, you can’t expect him to be Superman, especially since he had no reliable target to throw to throughout the game.

But that drive in the second quarter, a six-play, 75-yard one, accounted for 45 percent of Georgia’s total yards at 164. That is troubling, and the offensive line was a big reason for that.

Grade: D

Run Offense: D-

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Is offensive coordinator Jim Chaney just very bad at hide-and-seek? Could he not find Nick Chubb on the sideline? I ask because Chubb touched the ball just nine times. Georgia came into this game averaging 195.6 yards rushing per game. Their mark Saturday will certainly put a damper on that. The Bulldogs rushed for the same number of yards as college seniors are old—21—and their big three running backs carried the ball just 14 times. Chubb has to be getting the ball alone more than that.

We lead with this because you can’t really fault the running backs all that much when they weren’t really given a chance to get going. Florida’s defense is very good, and that certainly has something to do with it, but throwing a ton on it isn’t exactly the smartest move either.

What this boils down to is the offensive line is maddeningly inconsistent—ineffective more often than it is functional. It’s possible Chaney didn’t trust his offensive line enough to get a push against Florida’s front, but 14 total attempts from a trio of talented running backs isn’t a big enough sample size to make that type of definitive determination. We’ll dive more into this later, but it’s worth bringing up here.

Grade: D-

Pass Defense: B

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Luke Del Rio passed for just 131 yards on 25 attempts, so on paper that’s a win for the pass offense. But the unit had some crucial missed tackles and was again too soft in the middle of the field. They were hurt a few times on screen passes, and on third downs in which Florida passed, it converted seven of nine times.

Malkom Parrish did not have a particularly good game, committing what was an admittedly questionable pass-interference penalty in the second quarter that led to a Florida score and missing a tackle that led to a first down earlier in that same drive.

Dominick Sanders made a nice play early on disguising his coverage in center field to jump a Del Rio pass that led to a Georgia field goal. Sanders exited the game with what the team is calling a knee injury, so hopefully he is alright.

The biggest pass play Georgia allowed went for 21 yards. The unit and the defense as a whole played fairly well, but it was all for naught. Georgia’s offense lost the field-position battle often, and Florida was able to capitalize. The Gators’ average drive started on their own 41, fairly deep in the field. It’s hard to hold any team every time when it has field position like that.

Grade: B

Run Defense: A

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Major props all around to this unit. Georgia held a Florida team coming in averaging 181.8 yards rushing per game to just 100. Florida is a team that, like Georgia, prides itself on running the ball—it has the talented backs to do so. Note as well that Florida rushed the ball 48 times, equaling out to just 2.1 yards per rush. Georgia was able to get penetration up front for the second straight game. Not to sound like a broken record, but the run defense and defense overall did its job; it’s not its fault Georgia lost.

Give credit to Kirby Smart and Mel Tucker for the adjustments they have made in-season. For all the flak Smart is getting and will get, his handling of the defense, where again he specializes, is a bright spot in an otherwise dreary stretch for this team. Julian Rochester and Natrez Patrick both had nice games on the stat sheet, recording seven tackles apiece.

Grade: A

Special Teams: F

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There is not much good to discuss here. Georgia’s special teams were very bad again. But: Brice Ramsey punted! Multiple times! Granted, not well, but he punted! The third-string quarterback for a major college football program made his season debut not in relief but because the starting punter wasn’t doing his job well enough. If that’s not an accurate summation of this special teams unit, I’m not sure what is.

Georgia punted the ball eight times, with the average yardage of those punts sitting at 32 even with a grand total of zero punts inside the 20. That is almost unfathomable. Florida’s average punting yardage was a full 15 yards higher. The field-position battle was one Georgia once again lost Saturday, giving Eason a long field with which to drive down.

It got so bad, the situation devolved into a punter carousel, which is just a depressing phrase to write. Who the punter will be next week is a big story for this team at the moment. That’s the state of affairs at the moment.

Shane Beamer is having a rough go of it in his first year as Georgia's special teams coordinator, in that he is not coordinating the special teams well. Special teams can lose you a game, and too many times this has been a big factor in Georgia’s losses, from field-position battles to kicker woes to punter woes. We gave special teams an "F" two weeks ago. They must have watched Netflix for two weeks instead of studying for their next test.

Grade: F

Coaching: D-

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At what point do we stop giving Kirby Smart any kind of pass? The "these are not his players," and "it’s his first year" excuses now have to be null and void. "Georgia has lost four of five" is not a sentence you ever expect to hear. But here we are.

Smart had two weeks to prepare his team for this game, and it scored less points this week than it did against Vanderbilt. Georgia had less than 200 yards of offense. That’s not going to work regardless of who you’re playing.

For the second straight week, Smart did not have his team ready to play. And this is more puzzling this week than last. This was the seniors’ last chance to beat Florida for the first time since their freshman year. They didn’t want to drop three in a row to their biggest rival. The energy is built in for this game; fans come regardless of how each team is doing. That the team flailed and was as sloppy as it was does not reflect well on the coaches.

Smart also needs to have a serious chat with Jim Chaney. On 4th-and-2 with 10:02 to go in the game, trailing by 11 and the ball on the 48, was there any doubt Chaney was going to pass? The question is: Why? If you have Nick Chubb and you don’t think he can pick up two yards in the biggest play of the game up to that point, what’s the point?

The call is mind-boggling, and it’s the third or fourth time Chaney has done something like this in a key situation—last game against Vanderbilt with a pass to Isaiah McKenzie that effectively ended the game springs to mind.

I touched on this already, but Brian Herrien, Sony Michel and Nick Chubb getting just 14 carries between them is utterly egregious. Georgia is credited with 19 rushes and 33 passes. That is not balanced at all, especially with the backs the Bulldogs have to give the ball to.

That Michel wasn’t involved more as well was bewildering—he touched the ball just four times. Michel is a weapon who can spring out as a receiver and can catch passes out of the backfield. Georgia wasn’t ever able to get into a rhythm on offense, and while some of that falls on the players, it starts with the play-calling. It failed them Saturday.

Grade: D-

Conclusion

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There is not a lot to feel good about in Athens right now. Georgia has a road game against Kentucky next week, and there is chatter they could lose that game. So that’s where we’re at right now. Winning the East was a pipe dream before this game, but now it’s so completely out of reach, the team can book a reservation at the nearest sports bar to watch it on TV.

This can’t be how Smart and athletic director Greg McGarity envisioned the supposed new era of the program getting underway. Growing pains were expected as is wont to happen with a regime change. But not to this extent. Georgia doesn’t lose four games all that often, and it doesn’t typically find itself sitting at .500 after eight. It shouldn’t lose to Florida as consistently as it has, and a certain current Miami head coach can attest to that.

The Bulldogs have four games left, and there is a very valid argument to be made that they won’t be favored in all but one or two of them. I don’t see very many games remaining on the schedule that I’d have confidence in them winning, especially since they’ve made it clear they don’t have the ability to improve week-to-week. I’d argue Saturday was a step back in some ways, in that Vanderbilt was a prologue and this game was an equally as bad—if not worse—epilogue; it's a two-game master course in ineptitude.

You also have to seriously question whether this team will make a bowl game—for those unfamiliar, six wins is the qualifier. It sounds outrageous, but the schedule suddenly molds into something much harder if this is the team we’re going to see the rest of the way. And even then, it likely won’t be a good bowl game.

Kentucky is usually an afterthought on the schedule, but right now that is just not the case. That’s a scary thought. It's one that speaks to where the team sits as it leaves Jacksonville with a sour taste in its mouth for the third straight year with its hands on its hips searching for answers.