Todd Monken, Offensive Staff Deserve Credit For Offensive Line Turnaround

Todd Monken and the rest of his offensive staff cleaned up dozens of mental mistakes from a week ago to help the offensive line play clean football.

Georgia's offensive line struggled to create space for the backs for the overwhelming majority of the opening game a week ago. They averaged 2.9 yards per carry on the ground and allowed the Razorbacks to flush their quarterbacks out of the pocket several times. 

The worst part about the offensive line performance from a week ago? For the most part, it wasn't guys just getting beat; it was numerous mental mistakes and blown assignments that created run-throughs from the Razorback defense. 

So, what did Todd Monken and his offensive staff do? They went back to the basics. Saturday night against Auburn, Georgia rushed for 202 yards on 45 attempts, for a 4.5 yards per carry average while running mostly the simple inside zone. The most basic run play in the playbook. 

Though that's not the only adjustment, early on in the football game, Monken did some creative things to stretch the Auburn defense. He called jet sweeps to George Pickens, he ran bubble screens off the run-heavy action to lighten the box, and they took play-action shots when needed. 

It wasn't just the play calls or play design, either. Monken opened the game in 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends) to add quality blockers like Darnell Washington and John Fitzpatrick into the fold to help get a push at the point of the attack. 

It doesn't stop there. Not only did he make things much more straightforward for the offensive line in the run game, but he also helped them out in pass protection. When Georgia did throw the football early in the football game, Monken dialed up deep shots while maintaining six and even seven-man protections to sure up the pass protection and provide Stetson Bennett the time to go through his reads comfortably. 

So, credit goes to Monken for the play design and play calling, but give credit to Matt Luke and that offensive line staff as well. That was a completely different offensive line group than what we saw against Arkansas. They pushed people around, but most importantly, they didn't make mental mistakes. 

We also had questions about the continuity of this offensive line unit with all of the moving parts against Arkansas. Saturday, they had success with the first unit early, and left them in the ball game for the majority of the first half and limited the interchanging parts. 

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