Georgia took down Clemson on Saturday night by a score of 10-3.
No offensive touchdowns were scored. The lone touchdown of the game came late in the first half when Georgia defensive back Christopher Smith took an interception 74 yards to the house.
So that’s good news but it’s also not-so-good news.
The good news: Georgia’s defense is the best in the nation.
The not-so-good news: Georgia’s offense, which was expected to be highly explosive, has some work to do.
Now, it’s important to remember that the Dawgs were missing some of their top firepower on offense. Tight end Darnell Washington and wide receivers Arik Gilbert, Dominick Blaylock and George Pickens were all out. Starting offensive guard Tate Ratledge injured his foot early in the game and is now sidelined for the rest of the year.,
It’s also important to remember that right behind UGA, Clemson probably has the nation’s second best defense.
But there were certainly some things that were frightening.
Now I may be wrong, but I don’t recall Georgia taking a single shot downfield all night. Where was the passing game? Superstar quarterback JT Daniels only had 135 yards, no touchdowns and 1 interception. It just felt as if something was off.
On Monday, Kirby Smart spoke to the media, covering topics regarding the Clemson win and discussing the upcoming game against UAB this Saturday.
Here we compiled a few of his quotes about Georgia’s offense in the win over Clemson. Overall, it sounds like Kirby is not very concerned with the offensive performance, which is good news. See what he had to say below…
On the performance of the offense…
“Well, I think, you’ve got to be careful, because with the receptions, you’ve got to score touchdowns, and we didn’t. So, we’re a very matter of fact judgement and it’s like ‘okay so we didn’t score but, why? Why did we not?’ You go through the reasons why and you go through each play. A lot of it was attention to detail, not converting on third down, missing a couple of explosives.
They played us very different than what you would normally say a Clemson team would play. They prepared for speed breaks and shots and fast balls because that’s what they had given up. They did a good job of defending that. But, to say that we didn’t function or didn’t run the ball well – I mean, we ran the ball well at times. Any time you can run the ball down someone’s throat in four minutes, it’s pretty obvious that they knew we had to run the ball there and we were still able to, so we did some really good things offensively.
Hey, I’m excited to see what our guys can do moving forward. The greatest jump you make is from Game One to Game Two, so we got to find a way to be more explosive. You can see on tape that it’s there, so I’m glad we got the attention of those guys.”
On Brock Bowers, who had 6 receptions for 43 yards in his debut…
“Well, several of those were right targets just for Brock, he was the open guy. Some of that was get the ball out quick against a really good pass rush, and not being able to see… how long are we going to be able to protect? Are we going to be able to get vertical down the field? What’s the easiest way to throw a short pass to the tight end? Who do they probably least expect? Brock Bowers. So, a lot of that is happenstance, but he’s certainly a good player, and not every play that he got the other night was designed for him. It just ended up that way because some of those RPO’s, some of those were boots, and there’s two or three options.”
On wide receiver Jermaine Burton, who had a great freshman season in 2020 but a quiet night on Saturday with only two catches…
“We’ve had roughly 45 practices. Out of the 45 practices he’s practiced 10-15 times. He missed a lot of time, and he was already a young player last year who grew. For him, he knows the upside. His best football is in front of him, and he has done everything we asked in terms of getting well. Rehab and pushing himself, but he’s not in game shape. He’s not in game speed. We’ve got to improve that and work on it. He’s certainly a very talented football player that were excited about. And he will help us be explosive. He’s just got to practice more.
On JT Daniels and the game plan against Clemson…
“All the talk about the weapons that he does and doesn’t have is a moot point. That’s what everyone wants to talk about and you can make excuses for me, for JT, for coach (Todd) Monken, but we’ve got good football players. We have to take the football players we have and be explosive. It doesn’t matter who is out there. That’s just pity or something. We have to be explosive. We have to get better at it. The way they played us and what our game plan was… Protect JT and get the ball out, have some different protections, and some different things. The game plan was to not get in third and longs. We didn’t get in many third and longs. How many sacks did we give up guys, one. Check Clemson’s average (sacks) per game. The game plan was to be efficient and be in manageable down and distances. Get the ball out of JT’s hands. I feel like we did a good job of doing that. We didn’t do it consistently enough to score points.”
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