Georgia Football: Five offensive takeaways from the Austin Peay game

2: The Offensive line isn’t quite there yet

While there were a lot of positives from yesterday, there was one disappointing area on the offense. UGA’s much hyped offensive line didn’t look as dominant as people like me were expecting. Solomon Kindley got the start over Kendall Baker at left guard, but other than that, the line was pretty much the players that many expected to be one of the best units in the nation.

While UGA did rack up 284 yards on the ground, a big chunk of that came on Demetris Robertson’s 72-yard end around which had little to do with the offensive line. when you take that run out of it, the Dawgs only averaged slightly over 6-yards a carry. That’s an ok statistic, but it’s not really good enough for a program like UGA that wants to have a power running game. That’s especially true when you consider the level of competition they were facing yesterday.

The biggest issue was on the inside runs. Elijah Holyfield and D’Andre Swift were not really able to go very far when running inside. That’s a concern going into SEC play next week. The Dawgs are going to have to make that work if they are going to beat South Carolina. They have to be able to make consistent chunk plays when running up the gut.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that there was an unusual amount of rotation going on on the offensive line. Trey Hill saw a lot of time at center as well as guard and Cade Mays was also in at left tackle pretty early on in the game. A lot of the younger players got some playing time in the second half and that can only help them going forward. Hopefully next week, there will be more cohesion on this front because it was pretty much the only unit that disappointed in week one.