Georgia Football: Three defensive takeaways from the Austin Peay game

With the Georgia Football team holding Austin Peay to a shutout in week one, we take a look at three quick takeaways from the Dawgs first game.

While the defensive side of the ball didn’t create quite the same amount of headlines as the offensive side of the ball, they still managed to shut put Austin Peay. So let’s take a quick look at how they achieved that and what we learned for the season going forward.

1: This secondary is young but talented.

The first thing that jumped out to me during this game was how fast and athletic UGAs defensive backs were. They look young and there were several times that they ended up in the wrong coverage. That is a serious concern going into next week. However, their ability to fly around the field is really very impressive.

Tyson Campbell got the start which surprised many. He looked good for much of his time on the field although he did get badly beaten on one play. If the game had been against an SECopponentt, that would have been a big play because the receiver wouldn’t have dropped the ball. Other than that one snap however he looked impressive and showed that he’s got a very bright future in Athens.

A couple of sophomores also stood out and they were both a surprise to me. DeAngelo Gibbs has had a difficult past 6 months and many thought that he wouldn’t be with the team at this point. But he and William Poole both looked great playing the STAR position and were all over the field.

Richard LeCounte flashed a bit at safety and both he and JR Reed proved that they would be very capable of covering the back end. They were not truly challenged by Austin Peay and the deep ball and that meant that we didn’t see too much of them. I also loved the few plays that we saw otis Reese on the field. That’s another guy who is only going to get better as the year goes on.

In short, yes the Dawgs are young on the back end of the defense but they sure are talented. The future looks very bright for a lot of these players and that bodes very well for UGA as a whole going forward.