I haven’t been able to do film study this week since the Gator Nation grew by one in my household on Sunday, but I did do enough scouting during the bye week to be able to put this together for you. Here are some patterns I found in the way that offenses have attacked the UGA defense that I think the Gators can employ to help them pull out the win in Jacksonville this weekend.
Short Out
Georgia has one of the best explosive play defenses in the country. Getting big chunk plays against them is just not likely to happen all that often. Therefore, staying on schedule on a down-to-down basis is essential to offensive and field position success against the Bulldogs.
As I went through UGA’s bigger games, I noticed that the defense would sometimes play off of receivers. That is a part of them keeping things in front of them and not giving up big plays. While it does help prevent explosive plays, it necessarily allows shorter ones.
Short out routes seem to be ones that work particularly well against this edition of the Georgia defense. There were plenty I could choose from, but here’s one from late in the first quarter against Tennessee. The lead is only 7-0, though the Vols are backed up in their own territory quite a bit.
UT lines up two receivers to the right and sends them vertically up the field. This creates a void for the running back to slip out into the flat. The back catches the ball, runs over the 5’10” 187-pound Tyrique McGhee, and almost picks up the first down. It’s not a flashy play by any means, but it set up a 2nd & short situation. On first down, that’s a win.
Feleipe Franks’s arm strength means that Florida has a chance to hit on short out routes because he can fire it to someone over by the sideline before a defensive back can get there. He’ll have to make sure the player actually is open and he’s not being baited into the throw, but again, it works well when UGA isn’t playing press.
It’s easy to envision Lamical Perine taking that throw and either running over or sidestepping a DB for a nice gain. Franks has to make those throws and not either sail it high or hit the target in his feet. If his quarterback can be accurate on these, Dan Mullen can use short out routes to help avoid 3rd & long situations.
Pulling Two Linemen
Missouri was able to run a fair amount on Georgia. That’s not an unusual statement to make this year, as the Bulldogs are allowing 4.6 yards per carry on the season with sacks taken out of their totals.
The thing that struck me about the Tigers’ running success is that it often came with a commonality: pulling two linemen, usually the guard and tackle from the same side. The reason you pull a lineman is to get a numbers advantage at the point of attack. Pulling two of them at once only increases that advantage provided the defense doesn’t adjust immediately.
Here is a representative example of Mizzou’s two-pulling-linemen runs. The play is going to the left, and the right guard and tackle pull around that way. The Tigers have six blockers against a six-man box, so the numbers do favor running. Drew Lock will mime a throw to the right to try to freeze defenders, and it does work in the case of the linebacker wearing number 44, Juwan Taylor. A safety does come up fairly quickly in run support to equalize the numbers, but the combination of a great block from the tight end on the middle linebacker and a nice cut from the running back neutralizes the help.
Florida doesn’t exactly have this club in its bag. Mullen has a counter run he likes to use with two pulling players, but it’s been with a lineman and H-back tight end rather than two linemen. Even so, pulling two guys is a pretty strong run signal. Getting a play like that going is useful because you can run play action off of it. South Carolina had a play where it pulled both guards to the left, something that drew up both linebackers and allowed them to slip a tight end behind them for a nice gain.
Beating the Linebackers
Georgia’s linebackers aren’t as good as a unit as they were last year. Some of their key players have proven inconsistent. Natrez Patrick hasn’t been as effective as expected without Roquan Smith in the mix, while edge linebacker D’Andre Walker has alternated between dominating (like against Missouri) and being invisible (like against Vanderbilt).
Not to be discounted, the UGA defensive line hasn’t been elite either. Therefore, I think sometimes linebackers try a little to hard to make up for it.
Zone runs are an excellent kind of play to use against such a defense, and Florida has plenty of them.
Generically speaking with a zone run, the offensive line and any blocking tight ends will begin by moving in the direction the play is intended to go. They will either block the person in front of them, or, if there isn’t one, briefly help with a block before continuing upfield to block anyone coming into the zone near them. The idea is that somewhere in there, a lane will open for the running back to go through. The back should be decisive and only make one cut.
Because zone runs are strongly directional in that way, it’s easy for the defense and especially linebackers to overpursue on them. Sometimes that leaves a nice cutback lane on the backside of the play. That’s exactly what happened for Vandy against Georgia on this play.
Georgia gets too many players on the left side of the play, and No. 15 D’Andre Walker is frozen briefly by a perfunctory bootleg fake. That’s all Ke’Shawn Vaughn needed to break off a big run.
Misdirection and deception has worked well at times, including screens and running back swing passes of the sort Florida has used this year. Mullen has found something to punish defenses during games, like the quick passes against Mississippi State, the speed option against LSU, or the running back swing passes against Vandy.
Georgia’s linebackers will show a weakness at some point, and I can’t wait to see what play it is that Mullen will use against them. Finding and exploiting that weakness is essential, but Mullen has been great at that so far this year.