Georgia Football: Quick Takeaways from the Tennessee game

Silly mistakes cost dominant defense:

Don’t let the noise and two touchdowns confuse you. Georgia’s defense played really well today. They held Tennessee to just 66 yards on the ground and if it wasn’t for two mental errors by JR Reed and a stupid personal foul by D’Andre Walker, they might have held the Vols to less than 100 yards on offense. Other than those three mad moments, the Dawgs dominated.

Walker, incredibly dumb penalty aside, was brilliant. He had his fourth sack of the season and caused a fumble late in the game. There is little doubt that he is the Dawgs best pass rusher in a while but he wasn’t the only one who impressed. David Marshall looked really good, Tyler Clark and Julian Rochester both collapsed the pocket well on the inside and Brenton Cox is always tantalizingly close to sacking the QB.

On the outside, Deandre Baker continues to shut down receivers left and right. I saw the Vols complete all of one pass against him. Tyson Campbell also looked decent and other than a pass interference call where he ran into the receiver because he slipped (not pass interference but whatever), he had another solid day.

Georgia conceded two touchdowns on basic mistakes. On the first play, the Dawgs blew their coverage and left Juwan Taylor to cover a receiver and JR Reed didn’t recognize the downfield play. Reed was again at fault for the second TD when he collapsed too early on a screen pass and left the Vols a wide-open center field. The mistakes from Reed were frustrating but uncharacteristic. I’d expect Kirby Smart to work hard on those mental errors this week because this defense is close to being somewhat special.