Georgia football pitches shutout, offense still conservative

Georgia football pitched its second shutout of the season, but the offense still has a lot of work to do.

Another sluggish start for Georgia football led to them being held scoreless for the entire first half, but the rain may have had something to do with it. The coaches also staying with a conservative offense didn’t help.

This offense has got to evolve, or Georgia is dead in the water.

There is no way Georgia will defeat the elite defenses down the road with this offensive play calling.

Kentucky came out defensively with the same game plan that South Carolina used. Press-man coverage on the outside and everyone else focused on the run.

Georgia’s receivers still cannot get off of press coverage, and that contributed to Jake Fromm passing for just 35 yards in the game.

The longest pass play was a 22-yard catch and run by George Pickens off play-action on first down.

After last week’s debacle trying to run it between the tackles, Georgia’s offensive coordinator, James Coley, continued to call inside run after inside run, just giving downs away.

Until Coley realizes that running it between the tackles two or even three plays in a row doesn’t work, the offense is going to continue to struggle.

After calling more outside zone plays, D’Andre Swift started to take over the second half of the game completely.

Swift refused to go down on a 39-yard touchdown run, breaking the scoreless tie with 6:20 left in the third quarter. From there, he would go on to run for 179 yards and two touchdowns on 21 carries.

Brian Herrien also added 13 carries for 60 yards and a touchdown.

The defense looked great again, as they pitched their second shutout of the season. It held Kentucky to just 177 yards and a 3.47 yard per play average.

Georgia also caused two fumbles, recovering one of them.

There were four Bulldogs tied for the team lead in tackles, Nakobe Dean, Richard LeCounte, Quay Walker, and Tae Crowder all collected six stops.

Nakobe Dean led all defenders in solo tackles with four. JR Reed and Quay Walker combined for a sack. Tyrique Stevenson, DJ Daniel, Tyrique McGhee, Eric Stokes, and Tae Crowder all had a pass breakup.

Kentucky’s quarterback, a former receiver, Lynn Bowden, did give the defense some fits, though.

His speed and shiftiness made him very difficult to tackle. He completed just a single pass for nine yards and ran17 times for 102 yards.

Overall this was a solid win for the Dawgs. It started slow, but once the running game got going, there was no stopping Georgia’s offense. The defense, once again, was a brick wall.

Heading into the bye, its time to get healthy and work out what kinks there are in this offense and start preparing for Florida.