Georgia Dominated Tennessee's High-Powered Offense, but Did They Leave a Blueprint?

There were a lot of predictions ahead of No. 1 Tennessee’s visit to Athens. The Volunteers were an underdog, though many expected them to scorch Georgia’s defense with their high-powered offense. Entering Saturday, Tennessee was averaging 49.4 points per game. They mustered 13 against Georgia.

Hendon Hooker, the Heisman front-runner, didn’t score a touchdown. Jalin Hyatt, who toasted Alabama for 206 yards and 5 touchdowns, was held to just 63 yards.

How was Georgia able to do what no other defense has this season? Did they lay out a blueprint for others to follow in the future? Yes and no.

Simple, yet effective.

For coaches scouring the tape of Georgia-Tennessee, it may be a quick film study. Defensive coordinators Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp kept things incredibly simple, especially on the backend. Georgia’s secondary was in their typical two-high for a majority of the afternoon, keeping safeties over the top, and allowing their corners to lock up in man-to-man coverage. This helped to avoid the coverage miscommunications that doomed Alabama. Keeping the decision-making to a minimum is key when you’re facing an offense that goes as quickly as Tennessee’s.

Those corners can only hold up for so long in coverage, so the Bulldogs paired that with an aggressive blitz package that saw Georgia blitz as many as seven defenders at a time. This forced Hooker to look for his check-down routes for a vast majority of the game and saw Georgia get home to the quarterback more than they have at any point this season.

Hard in the paint.

Kirby Smart described Georgia’s game plan in his postgame press conference "If they have a layup, we're fouling them. We're not giving them layups." The ‘layups” Smart was referring to were the long touchdowns Tennessee was able to seemingly pick up at will all season. Other opponents seemed to accept the fact that they were going to give up at least a couple of those a game. It was a given. Not to Kirby Smart and company. Georgia wasn’t going to give Tennessee an easy look. They wanted to keep everyone in front of them and make tackles, forcing the Volunteers to methodically work their way down the field. To say it worked would be a vast understatement. Tennessee’s longest play of the game came in the form of a 28-yard pass to Jalin Hyatt when the Volunteers were already down 21 late in the fourth quarter. The second longest was a 17-yard pass to Cedric Tillman in the second.

Not for everyone.

The plan seems simple enough, so everyone should be able to emulate it, right? Not so fast. Kirby Smart and his defensive staff built this game plan with a key factor in mind: Georgia had the better players.

Jalin Hyatt, Bru McCoy, and Cedric Tillman represent the best wide receiver group in America, outside of maybe Ohio State. Georgia countered with former 5-stars Kelee Ringo and Malaki Starks. When Robert Beal went down, Georgia plugged in Marvin Jones Jr. and Trezman Marshall, both former top recruits. Saturday showed the nation the embarrassment of riches Georgia is sitting on.

Kirby Smart said it before and it bears repeating now: “I don’t care who you are. The best coach to ever play the game better be a good recruiter because no coaching is going to out-coach players. Anyone will tell you our defense is good because we’ve got good players.”

Simple, yet effective.

Hard in the paint.

Not for everyone.

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