Georgia vs Notre Dame: What the Bulldogs Can Expect from Notre Dame

What the Georgia Bulldogs can expect from Notre Dame during the Sugar Bowl.

The Georgia Bulldogs will be taking on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1st in the quarterfinal round of the playoffs. This is the third time that Georgia will have faced Notre Dame under Kirby Smart since his arrival in Athens. The Dawgs are 2-0 in those games so far. The Irish however do not have the same head coach that they did the first two times against Georgia though, so what can Georgia fans expect to see from Notre Dame?

Let's start on the defensive side of the ball. This is a man-coverage football team. They have solid defensive backs all the way from the nickel defender, to the two cornerbacks and the safeties. They rely on their cornerbacks to hold up in coverage while playing a single high safety which allows them to flood bodies into the box to stop the run. It's a well-coached defensive unit and they play sound football, but the next question is where are they vulnerable?

As far as the passing game goes, it relies on the coordinator and the quarterback to draw up and find winners. Find ways to put the wide receivers in winnable situations without forcing them to just beat their guy clean without any help. For the run game, Georgia likely will be able to find creases. Notre Dame has solid defensive line players, but they're not the typical size of the majority of interior defensive line players Georgia has seen this year.

On top of that, their linebackers can get a tad over-aggressive. That leaves the potential for Georgia's running backs to press a gap and then jump cut to find the empty void left by a linebacker over pursuing the ball.

Offensively, Notre Dame does a lot of what Georgia does. It's inside zone runs led by the likes of Jeremiyah Love with some occasional quarterback run mixed in. The Irish utilize 12-personnel in the run game a good bit as well. They didn't incorporate too much quarterback run in their game against Indiana, but with how much Georgia has struggled to stop QB run this year, they should expect to see more of it in this game. Especially down in the red zone.

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