Five things to know about Georgia-Tennessee SEC showdown in Sanford Stadium
Unbeatens Georgia football and the Tennessee Volunteers collide in a 3:30 p.m. CBS game Saturday in Sanford Stadium. Here are five things to know about the matchup.
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Slowing down Vols explosive attack
Tennessee will ride into Sanford Stadium Saturday with some offensive numbers that pop off the page.
No. 1 in yards per game (553.0). No. 1 points in per game (49.4). No. 1 in passing efficiency (198.5). Second in passing offense (353.4).
The Volunteers are averaging 3.25 passing touchdowns a game. Georgia has allowed 5 passing touchdowns all season.
So Kirby Smart, how are you feeling about your secondary heading into this one?”
“We're excited to see them go compete,” the Georgia coach said. “I think they've gotten better each and every week. Grown some depth in the secondary playing some other guys. I'm looking forward to the opportunity.”
Georgia limited quarterback Hendon Hooker to 244 yards on 24 of 37 passing with a touchdown and interception last season. Wide receiver Jalin Hyatt had 5 catches but none longer than 7 yards.
This season Hyatt is averaging 20.2 yards per reception with a nation-leading 14 touchdowns.
He finds a way to get so wide open at times a truck can drive through him and the nearest defensive player.
“Sometimes it’s like, ‘Wow. No way they left him open like that’” Hooker told reporters.
Those busts by the defense comes with some preparation by the Volunteers during the week.
“We see what safeties are what, how they play,” Hyatt said. “Are they flatfooted? Do they get out of their breaks? What coverage were they mainly in?”
Tennessee amassed 567 yards of total offense in its 52-49 upset of Alabama, passing for 385 yards. The Crimson Tide are 5th in the nation in yards per play at 4.3 while Georgia is ninth in yards per play allowed at 4.6.
Hooker is second nationally in passing efficiency and tops the SEC in completion percentage at 71.2.
“They have a perfect storm: they've got really fast, elite wideouts, a quarterback with a really strong arm,” Smart said. “You know, if they have a quarterback that couldn't throw it, you'd say, 'Well, they're one-dimensional.' But they have kind of a perfect storm going for his offense, and when he has that it's really, really, really hard to stop.”
Said safety Chris Smith: “They have tremendous receivers, a great quarterback, a great running back, good O-line. They have the whole package. We’re going to have to take steps that we need to take.”
Georgia is 13th in the nation in pass defense at 177.1 yards per game with Florida’s 271 last week the most an opponent has posted.
“We had two really good quarters last week and then we had a really bad one,” Smart said. “We have to stack those positive quarters together.”
Tennessee and coach Josh Heupel presents challenges not only in personnel but in formations. Wide receivers are split out near the sideline.
“It doesn’t allow you to hide and disguise things,” Smart said. “It makes you play. It’s been that way a long time with him. He did a lot of the same things at Missouri.”
The Bulldogs rank second in points allowed per game at 10.5 and 4th in total defense at 262.5
“It’s a great test for us,” Heupel said. “You’re going to have to win one-on-ones. That’s out on the perimeter. That’s in the offensive line, in the trenches, and you’ve got to be able to sustain drives.”
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About that other offense
For all the hype about Tennessee’s offense—probably deservedly so—Georgia isn’t far off from what the Vols are doing.
The Bulldogs rank right behind Tennessee at No. 2 nationally in yards per play at 7.24 and yards per game at 530.1.
Georgia produced 555 total yards of offense last week in its 42-20 win against Florida, its most ever against the Gators.
Brock Bowers leads all Power Five tight ends with a 17.7 average per catch. He’s had four games with five catches this season and set a career-high with 154 receiving yards last week.
“Obviously it’s a mismatch in a lot of ways whether he’s on a safety or a linebacker,” Tennessee linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary told reporters. “Runs great routes and has excellent speed. You match all that with a guy that will get in the line of scrimmage and still block defensive linemen, you have a complete tight end.”
Quarterback Stetson Bennett completed 17 of 29 passes for 213 yards with a touchdown and had a 24-yard run against the Volunteers last season.
“When it’s not right in the pocket, he extends plays,” Heupel said. “That can be him throwing on scrambles, but also him tucking the ball and making plays. He made a couple against us last year that changed the game. You’ve got to do a great job of bottling him up.”
Tennessee is 127th nationally in passing defense at 300.8 yards per game and 39th in pass efficiency defense. The Volunteers gave up at least 300 yards passing in four straight games before holding Kentucky to 98 in a 44-6 pasting last Saturday when it picked off three passes.
“That gives us a lot of juice, the whole defense, man,” linebacker Aaron Beasley told reporters. “When we’re out there making plays, when we’re out there having fun, that ups our confidence and just our play itself.”
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CFP rankings a backdrop to pivotal matchup
Block out the noise. Trying to go 1-0 this week. The only rankings that matter are the last one.
Those are common responses when talk of where a team stands in the weekly polls or in this week, the first College Football Playoff rankings reveal.
Tennessee is No. 1 in the first CFP pecking order. Georgia is No. 3.
Saturday’s game will sort all that out and the winner will no doubt be on top in next week’s ranking.
Yet Bulldog players may find motivation in being a couple of spots lower than in the two major polls.
Smart didn’t sound like he would make it a big deal with the players.
“Not really,” he said. “I know players see it — they have to. They’re all on social media. We practice in a bubble. We’ve dealt with this so long now with last year going on and knowing it really doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It matters how you play. We try to put our focus on things we can control and we can’t control anything to do with that. All we can control is how we play. That’s the ultimate goal this week for us to play our best.”
For his part, Heupel said on ESPN’s rankings show he did talk to his team about rankings early this week.
“We talked about it earlier in the week knowing that the rankings were going to come out,” Heupel said. “Didn’t know where we were be ranked but figured it would be somewhere near the top. At the end of the day, one of the things our players have done is we’ve tried to enjoy the journey and take moments of pause to reflect and enjoy what our players have built here.”
The winner of this game is in great shape to reach the SEC championship game and has an inside track for a spot in the College Football Playoff. The loser will need some help to be among the final four teams.
“This is a big opportunity for us,” Hyatt said. “For us, we’re trying to take that next step in our team and go where we want to go.”
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Bulldogs hope to keep cooking at home
Tennessee has played six of its first eight games at home, but won at Pittsburgh 34-27 in overtime and routed LSU in Death Valley 40-13.
Now the Volunteers come to Athens where Georgia has won 16 straight games.
“Playing between the hedges is overrated,” former Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge tweeted this week. “Not that loud and definitely not intimidating. It’s nothing like playing in Neyland. Vols will be just fine in Athens!”
Tennessee lost in Athens in 2004 and 2006 when Ainge was playing.
Smart sent a message to fans on Twitter and at his Monday press conference about wanting them to make an impact.
They certainly did in a top 10 matchup with Arkansas last season when the Razorbacks had false starts on each of their first two offensive snaps.
Two plays later, Devonte Wyatt sacked KJ Jefferson.
“I just remember the crowd going crazy,” Bulldogs defensive lineman Tramel Walthour said. “It was electric. It was just so wild. We love that feeling. It just hypes us up and makes us play better as a defense.”
Since the start of the 2017 season, Georgia is 32-1 at home.
“Any offense that goes on the road, it’s a little bit different in your communication,” Heupel said on ESPN. “You have to be super-efficient. You have to communicate extremely well. Obviously, you’re going to be on a silent count. That’s something we use at home as well. It will be important for us to get the chains moving, stay ahead of things and not let the crowd get into it in some of those third-and-long situations.”
Bulldogs brace for Tennessee Vols' uptempo pace
Georgia’s defensive players will need to pivot from one play to another rather quickly against Tennessee when it goes uptempo. It may snap the ball 5 to 10 seconds into the play clock.
“There’s other teams that can go tempo. nobody goes tempo like they go tempo,” Smart said.
He cited pace of play metrics that he said has Tennessee at No. 1 this season and last.
“They go so fast,” safety Chris Smith .”It’s going to be a tough week of practice for us and we’ve got to be ready for that.”
“It is a great challenge for us,” nose guard Zion Logue said. “The tempo, we are not going to let that affect us. We are going to play our game and stick to the things we have been taught all season and just play football."
That fast-pace doesn’t just help Tennessee’s passing game go. Smart has taken pains to say the Volunteers aren’t a one-trick pony.
“They are a running team that chunks it deep and does a really good job with explosive pass play,” Smart said. “They commit to the run now. There’s a toughness out there. Their backs run really tough.”
Snapping the ball quickly makes substitutions for sub packages on defense a difficult proposition.
“It’s hard to get them in,” Smart said. “You have to be strategic about how you go about getting them in. …We year-round practice subbing.”
This game may provide a gauge of just how well conditioned Georgia’s defensive players are.
“So we've been building towards this week in terms of -- since week one, the conditioning level of our players has been a concern every week for me,” Smart said. “It's one of the major concerns, Are you in good enough shape? … Unfortunately, we haven't had a lot of games where we've played a lot of snaps. So that goes back to, If you're not playing them in the game, you better get it done during the week. And, you know, we've worked hard at it. We're going to find out on Saturday if we're in shape or not. I can promise you that because they're going to try and get a lot of snaps in.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia football vs. Tennessee Volunteers: 5 things to know
