Georgia Football: Five Takeaways from the Middle Tennessee game

This defense is even faster than last year:

The thing that stands out the most when you watch this defense play is the sheer speed that they have at their disposal. Whether it’s defensive line, linebackers or in the secondary, the 2018 UGA football team can fly around with the best of them. There are athletes at every position and they can close at an alarming rate.

That’s good because there is no doubt that the team misses Roquan Smith. Juwan Taylor, Natrez Patrick, and Tae Crowder are all trying very hard to replace number 3 out there. But none of them have the raw talent or comfort in the defense to cover up the holes that Roquan did last season. It takes a team effort from across the whole defense to make up for Smith not being there this season.

Where you really see the speed is at outside linebacker and the secondary. UGA hasn’t done a tremendous amount of rushing the passer with their OLB’s so far this season. Instead, they have either tried to collapse the pocket and force the QB to throw or they have been on the outside, running to the ball and making tackles. It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, but 3 games down, it seems to be effective.

Richard LeCounte has made a world of difference to the secondary. I’ve lost count of the number of times where I see someone catch the ball and then number 2 comes flying from absolutely nowhere to bring them down. His closing speed is elite and it’s really helped keep offenses boxed in and reduce their YAC. I haven’t even mentioned the likes of Eric Stokes and Tyson Campbell who can both run like the wind. In short, this defense is faster than the one last year and that makes it a heck of a lot of fun to watch.