Georgia football began the 2018 season victorious Saturday. The Bulldogs defeated Austin Peay 45-0 and awarded playing time to many third and fourth-string players.
With any game, there are bound to be overreactions from fans and media. No game is perfect, and some people will find ways to blow the smallest issues out of proportion. The 45-0 victory Georgia football enjoyed Saturday is no different.
The Bulldogs dominated Austin Peay from the opening whistle. Yet, many people went into panic mode on social media. That’s not to say that the Dawgs don’t have anything to work on. But let’s not make a mountain out of a mole hill, especially after a 45-point, shutout victory.
Dawg’s running game is in trouble
Most viewers saw Georgia’s rushing performance and felt confident that D’Andre Swift, Brian Herrien, Elijah Holyfield and James Cook would form one of the SEC’s best stables. Others perceived a lack of success from Georgia between the tackles and noted that as a cause for concern.
While we can’t ignore that 91 of the team’s rushing yards came on end-arounds, and Justin Fields racked up 33 yards on scrambles. Georgia still accumulated 160 traditional yards before taking the top running backs off the field. Now, 160 isn’t a great amount, but those 160 yards came on 26 carries. That’s an average of 6.15 yards.
However, the biggest reason why Georgia’s fairly low amount of yards from the tail backs isn’t a big issue is that the game plan clearly wasn’t based around pounding the ball up the middle. You can check the play-by-play on ESPN.com, Georgia only had consecutive hand-offs to running backs five times Saturday. And only twice did they handoff to a running back more than twice in a row.
One of those five instances ended with Holyfield’s 17-yard touchdown run. The last instance included five-straight handoffs to James Cook and Prather Hudson for a combined 48 yards.
The coaches never tried to dominate the game between the tackles. You can’t panic about a handful of two-yard stops in the middle of the game when coaches never tried to force the issue. Georgia’s game plan Saturday was to spread the ball around. 19 different players recorded positive yards for the Dawgs.
Newcomers such as James Cook and Luke Ford, and sophomores Jeremiah Holloman and Trey Blount received meaningful plays with the ball. That was clearly more important to the coaches than whether or not the backs could run well between the tackles.
Georgia travels to South Carolina this Saturday to begin SEC play. In Columbia, the Bulldogs will place more emphasis on running between the tackles, and I expect them to have success. However, regardless of the outcome, there will still be overreactions.