Give credit where it is due. The Tennessee Volunteers look to be the part very early on in this college football season. Much of that has to do with the great play of transfer quarterback Joey Aguilar within the context of Josh Heupel's offense. The UCLA transfer played for Appalachian State the last two seasons. While he is playing like a much better quarterback so far, he does have this bad tendency.
When looking at Aguilar's stats over the last three years, he turned the football over a combined 24 times during his two seasons' worth of starts at Appalachian State. He may be playing with better players now in Tennessee, but he does have it in him to turn the ball over at will. Aguilar essentially averaged an interception during his 25 games with the Mountaineers. Could Georgia take advantage?
Currently, Aguilar is completing well above his career average mark of 60.1 percent at a 66.1-percent clip this year. In fact, he only completed 55.9 percent of his passes last year with the Mountaineers. He threw an interception on 3.6 percent of his passes for 14 on the season. Once again, this was in the Group of Five at Appalachian State. Aguilar will now finally be going up against elite SEC defenses.
Kirby Smart has preached that his Georgia Bulldogs need to force more turnovers, so now is the time!
Georgia has the defense to take advantage of Joey Aguilar's weakness
The one thing that cannot be overlooked in this rivalry series coming in between Georgia and Tennessee is how badly Smart has owned the Vols, especially since Heupel has taken over. It is an opportunistic former defensive back who loved to pick the ball off Between the Hedges in the mid-1990s, going up against one of the greatest quarterbacks in Oklahoma football history's Air Raid.
Simply, Heupel's offense has yet to have any answers for Smart's swarming secondary. Running an Air Raid does not allow a receiver to have that evolved of a route tree. It is a major downside to running that type of attack. There will be nothing Heupel's offense does that Smart's defense has not seen before. It has been able to handle other quarterbacks like Hendon Hooker and Joe Milton III, too.
Overall, Smart is going to scheme up a defense to force Aguilar to beat his team with accurate, downfield passing. He is not afraid to let it rip, but just know that Georgia's defensive backs are in a completely different stratosphere than what former Bulldogs defensive backs coach Fran Brown now leads at Syracuse. If Georgia can pick Aguilar off twice, the Dawgs stand a chance to win this easily.
For now, Georgia has to be more about the ball than Dan Quinn in an opening week press conference.