Previously: Georgia Offense 

On Tuesday we covered the Georgia offense, which is a good unit that is not known for being elite or high powered. The defense though? Well, that's a different narrative. Through 12 games, the college football world was marveling at the Georgia defense that was allowing just 6.9 points per game. They had given up just seven offensive touchdowns total and were only allowing 229.7 yards per game on average. Articles were written at major publications with headlines such as Georgia's Defense Isn't Just Good — It Might Be 'Best Ever' Good. The narrative of Georgia's impenetrable defense was robust and firm but then crumbled in the blink of an eye over the course of a few hours in Atlanta in early December. The Alabama offense and Bryce Young gashed Georgia for 536 yards on 7.7 yards per play and a whopping 41 points, a collapse of a once-mighty defense so dramatic that it had your author tweeting about Don Brown. So which Georgia defense is the real Georgia defense? And how much can Michigan replicate what Alabama accomplished against the 'Dawgs? Let's dive in: 

 

The Film: Sticking with the same two from our offense piece, Alabama and Auburn. Georgia's defense has been torched once this season, and it was against the Crimson Tide, so that's a must-watch. Auburn, on the other hand, is simply a representative of the other 12 games where Georgia dominated its opposition. That said, I chose Auburn specifically because while it was a game that Georgia's defense played very well in, it also wasn't a total annihilation (Auburn gained over 300 yards), which should prove useful for hunting for soft spots in this defense. I also watched the extended highlights of a few other UGA games for more information on the defense and insights from that have been pooled into the writing of this piece, with a few clips being dropped in too. 

Personnel: Seth's chart. 

Hoo boy, that's a lot of stars. Of course, that's to be expected for a defense that has held opponents to 9.5 points per game on the season and is first in SP+ defensive efficiency by a significant margin. We'll get more into how the defense sets up schematically in the next section but their "defensive line" is technically three guys, two "ends" and a nose. The WDE and nose are both big boys (true defensive tackles) while the SDE is a bit lighter and more pass rush(y) (more of a defensive end). The WDE/nose rotate between three main options, all of whom are stars. The starter at WDE is Devonte Wyatt, a monster who graded out as +10/-2 against both Auburn and Alabama, capable of pass rushing and stopping any running back dead in his tracks. Similarly, former 5* Jalen Carter rotates in behind Davis and received the exact same grade against those two teams. Dominant.

The starter at nose is one of the top physical specimen in all of college football, 6'6", 340 lb. Jordan Davis, who is the kind of player that 3-4 defenses dream of having at the NT position on their defensive front, a consensus All-American this season. Beyond those three there's also Warren Brinson, Zion Logue, and Nazir Stackhouse, but they play quite a bit less than the main rotation guys and are also significantly worse. The SDE spot is held by another former 5* in Travon Walker, also receiving a star on our diagram as a pass rushing menace. The three primary "ends" of Walker, Carter, and Wyatt have combined for 21 TFL, 9.5 sacks, and 62 QB hurries in 13 games this season. Tramel Walthour is a backup at SDE and was definitely on the verge of receiving a cyan. 

Though Georgia has a three-man DL, they use a JACK who typically lines up at the line of scrimmage to be used as either an additional pass-rusher or someone who can drop into coverage. The starting JACK is none other than former #1 overall recruit Nolan Smith (2019 class), an edge terror who fits that role in the defense perfectly. Robert Beal Jr. is the backup behind Smith and he's fine. The other hybrid position is the STAR role (their HSP) which is currently more defensive-back oriented. Earlier in the season Georgia aimed to make that role more linebacker-like and had Adam Anderson play it. Anderson was an immensely effective blitzer who racked up five sacks in just eight games, but his season came to an end after he was charged with sexual assault and has not played since late October. In Anderson's absence, the STAR spot has been played by a player who is otherwise a DB, first Latavious Brini but also William Poole, who started against Alabama. Christopher Smith has played some STAR too and sometimes they omit the STAR for a true three safety look. 

The two traditional linebackers are headlined by WLB Nakobe Dean, who won the HS edition of the Butkus Award in 2018 as the nation's top HS linebacker en route to 5* status and then won the college version of it this season en route to being 1st team All-American. Dean is a sideline-to-sideline beast (think Devin Bush) and will be drafted in the first round of April's NFL Draft. Quay Walker holds the other starting LB spot, who is quite good too, if not Nakobe Dean good. Backing him up is Channing Tindall (also starred) and those three suck up nearly all the snaps at this position. 

In the secondary, the talent is plentiful as well. Your starting corners are Kelee Ringo and Derion Kendrick, both of whom are former 5* guys. Ringo impressed me in my viewings and Kendrick is good as well (Kendrick is a Clemson transfer, we should point out). Reserves Ameer Speed, Javon Bullard, and Kamari Lassiter lack the blue chip talent of Ringo and Kendrick, but neither are weak spots in my eyes. There's a pretty significant gap in the snaps between the usage of Ringo, Kendrick, and Brini (from the STAR position) and their backups. The three starters have all logged more than 500 snaps this season, while none of these reserves have played more than 200. 

Finally, at safety Georgia is starting Lewis Cine at the FS position, who earned All-America honors from one publication. I was not as enthusiastic about his effort against Alabama, but that was a blip on the radar of a very strong season, so star status is maintained. Opposite him at SS you have walk-on Dan Jackson, but he has actually received fewer snaps in totality than Christopher Smith, who I liked more in my viewings. These three consume virtually all the snaps at safety, but we'll throw the name David Daniel out there just for the heck of it. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: finding the Death Star exhaust port]

Base set: Georgia runs a base 3-4 but it behaves more like a 4-2-5 with considerable flexibility. As I briefly wrote about in the personnel section, the Dawgs have a three man defensive line of a nose with two "ends". That makes up the base defensive front, but the JACK outside linebacker lines up at the line of scrimmage in a stand up position on most plays, which is why the DL behaves like a four-man line. Similarly, the STAR outside linebacker is more of a DB than a LB, which is why I say Georgia is more like a base nickel team that lays out like a 4-2-5 rather than a Wisconsin-esque 3-4. Here's the base set: 

Three DL + the JACK from a stand-up position. Two traditional LBs policing the middle of the field, with the STAR in the slot (lined up at the 36 yard line towards the top of the screen), and then two deep safeties, which is also part of Georgia's base defense. When facing five wide they line up like this: 

Look how far the traditional LBs are from their base position, shadowing the slot guys with six yards of cushion, but knowing that they have the athleticism to cover the middle of the field, with safety help behind them. 

Georgia occasionally lines up pre-snap in something like this: 

That player over the middle is jogging across to cover that receiver (#1) who is in motion. So basically you've got three DBs covering three receivers, two deep safeties, and then all six players in your front six crowding the line to show pressure. The way that Georgia shows and also disguises pressure is a major area of discussion when you analyze the Bulldog defense, so buckle up. 

Man or Zone coverage: Georgia has a lot of different coverages they can throw at you. The Dawgs played most of this season with two deep safeties before moving predominantly into Cover 1 (one high) against Alabama and it did not go great. The versatility of this defense means they can line up with the same personnel and play both man and zone, be it Cover 1, Cover 2, or Cover 3, often out of the same shells, depending on the situation. So, really, it's a mix of both which hinges on the play you're watching and the opponent that Georgia is facing. 

Pressure: Quick preliminary note, but this metric was charted and calculated solely against Auburn. Against the Tigers, Georgia rushed more than four guys on ~22% of snaps, which is a pretty dramatic departure compared to Ohio State and Iowa, who clocked in around ~35%. We'll dig into this momentarily, but Georgia's approach concerning pressure is based around the talent of the front six, and the way it is normally able to get pressure with only four rushers, making blitzes often an unnecessary overkill. On the flip side, Georgia rushed less than four on ~11% of snaps in the Auburn game, which is pretty typical for teams we've tracked this season. So, not a blitz-heavy team but that's because the Dawgs normally don't need to blitz to generate pressure. 

Dangerman: There are so many players I could choose for this designation, but LB Nakobe Dean is the one who deserves it the most. The 6'0", 225 lb. linebacker symbolizes the broad personnel changes that Kirby Smart has made to his defense compared to the early Saban-era 'Bama defenses he coordinated, going from big and hulking to smaller and faster. Dean is certainly fast and the definition of a do-it-all 'backer. He can hit: 

LB #17

He can blitz: 

in addition to a whole bunch of other stuff -- Michigan will get a taste of what life was like for those who had to block Devin Bush Jr. in college when they see 17 in a few weeks. pic.twitter.com/IHrqdWvZPN

— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) December 10, 2021

He can cover: 

He can even do acrobatics: 

The comparisons to Devin Bush are plentiful and their importance to their respective defenses are equal. What most impressed me about watching Nakobe Dean was not the incredibly flashy plays, but the ones where he cleaned up the mistakes of his teammates, using his IQ and athleticism to be a football custodian on clean up duty: 

LB #17 to middle of the field 

That's not the most dramatic play, but it encapsulates what Dean means to the larger Bulldog team. Brini misses a chance for a TFL but before the Auburn receiver has any opportunity to gain real positive yardage, a horde of white jerseys are there, led by Dean, who has come over from the middle of the field to make the stop. On a defense filled with superstars, Nakobe Dean is the biggest star of them all, a phenomenal player, consensus All-American, and future first round NFL Draft pick. 

 

Overall 

Any discussion of Georgia has to start with looking at its crushing front six, which generates pressure with remarkable consistency. They're allowing just 81.7 rushing yards per game, mostly because they allow a stingy 0.5 yards rushing before contact, the best in the nation. That stems from having down linemen who simply do not move on the vast majority of plays, eating multiple blocks and not giving an inch. The Georgia rushing defense is best summed up in my mind by this clip: 

NT Jordan Davis and DT Devonte Wyatt do not move and then you have one of your linebackers (in this case Quay Walker) quickly identify the hole and then plug it with lightning quick speed. Davis has made film guys salivate all season in part because of his routine ability to not budge in run defense. Of course, not budging isn't all that he can do. On some plays, he throws off his blocker like a raincoat and delivers a thundering stuff: 

NT #99

Davis earned his star for plays like that and his gargantuan size has gotten a lot of the attention among Georgia's three down linemen, but I actually liked the tape of Devonte Wyatt as much as I did Jordan Davis. Here's a very similar looking play from Wyatt: 

DT #95

Those humongous bodies are the meat up front that Michigan's interior OL will have to deal with on a down-to-down basis and are why Georgia is such a grueling, physical defense to play. After all, those two clips are Davis and Wyatt abusing Alabama offensive linemen. Without question, UGA presents the best interior defensive linemen that Michigan's OL will have seen all season. When one of Wyatt and Davis have to come off the field for a breather, Jalen Carter isn't a significant downgrade. He'll be a stud next year when those two are in the NFL, because he's already a stud now: 

DT #88

Running against the Georgia defensive front between the tackles on short yardage is a slog and even "successful" runs that pick up first downs typically look like this: 

And again, even when you get past that meat up front, you then run into the very well-trained LBs, who recognize holes well and don't miss many tackles. This play is second-string LB Channing Tindall, who has a star on him on our diagram: 

That Georgia defensive front six is also responsible for generating the vast majority of all the pressure that the Dawgs will get on opposing QBs, given the non-blitzy nature of Kirby Smart's approach. Those same beefy three names of Davis, Wyatt, and Carter are also quite capable of getting after the QB, in addition to stuffing the run. This is the very next play after our previous clip, where Carter shoots into the backfield, pressures Nix, and blows up the play: 

Here you've got a stunt with Carter and the lighter DT (technically a 3-4 SDE) Travon Walker that gets home on 3rd & 10: 

When you're able to rush four and have your two DTs get home and force an incompletion, that's a pretty damn good sign. When Georgia doesn't get pressure from its DTs, it has plenty of ways to get pressure from the rest of the pieces in the front six. The most common way is through a creeper blitz from the second level, where you have a linebacker rush while your JACK drops into coverage. It's still a four-man rush, but it's trickier and more disguised than a standard four man rush where you send only the guys at the line of scrimmage. It's a familiar tactic that base 3-4 defenses use when you have ends who can drop into coverage, one that Michigan has seen before. It just tends to be more effective when the guy you're sending from the LB group is as athletic and ferocious as Georgia's linebackers are: 

Here you have backup Robert Beal Jr. (#33) playing JACK at the top of the line of scrimmage. He shuffles off the snap and is actually supposed to drop into coverage in the flat (biting too hard on PA and he would've been burned by #19 had the blitz not gotten home), while the fourth rusher is really from the second level (Tindall), finding a gap created by Jalen Carter eating the RG/RT, and Tindall thumps Bryce Young. There are a lot of plays from this defense that remind you of the Doom Squirrel era of Don Brown's defenses at Michigan, when you could fling Khaleke Hudson or Devin Bush at opposing QBs on any given play. 

PFF wrote about Georgia's defensive approach earlier this season which I'd recommend if you want to learn more, but I'll throw their X's and O's diagram here because I think it's very helpful to understand my point: 

The JACK (S on this diagram) drops into coverage, while a LB (M) blitzes. What's great about Georgia's creeper rush package is that even when the blitz doesn't get pressure, it often creates the illusion of pressure. Stopping a UGA creeper rush often requires a crisp and physical blitz pickup from your RB, but for the second or two before the pickup happens, the QB sees a 220 lb. man sprinting straight at him in his peripheral vision. That, predictably, causes the QB to speed up his decision-making process and can force mistakes, meaning that Georgia can (on some occasions) rush four, not get home, and yet force the QB into a mistake because he thinks pressure is coming a split second before said LB is chopped down by the RB in pass pro.

Similarly, on passing downs, Georgia often shows blitz with six men crowding the line, only to drop a couple into coverage. This has the effect of disguising the pressure extremely well, because it's coming from somewhere, but you don't know which of the LBs (between MLB/WLB/JACK) are rushing and which are dropping into coverage:

The trickiness behind the blitz alignments, combined with the high caliber of player throughout the front six, is the primary reason why Georgia feels very comfortable rushing four and dropping back into coverage, still affecting the rhythm of the opposing offense. No matter how good your pass protection is, they're going to get home from time to time, and even when they don't, the blitz pickups will be bruising. Beating Georgia requires your QB standing in there, trusting that a blitz pickup is coming, and being willing to take a shot and still complete a pass if the blitz pickup doesn't come in time. 

Looking at the rest of the individual pieces that comprise Georgia's front six beyond the true DTs and Dean, they're all very good too. The other traditional LB Quay Walker is a little bit heavier and less athletic than Nakobe Dean, but he can do a lot of the same things that Dean can. Here they work in tandem, with Dean's rush opening the hole for Walker to shoot through and sack Nix. 

Starting JACK Nolan Smith has all the hyper-athleticism you'd expect from a former #1 overall recruit in his class. He flashes it as a speed rusher off the edge, in space while covering running backs, and look at it in this clip, tracking down a RB from behind: 

#4 DE to the bottom of the DL 

I showed you one clip of the SDE Travon Walker earlier, but I want to show one more of him as a passrusher too, to tie together this section on the front six: 

#44 DE to the top of the line 

He gets off his block and runs into the backfield in a hurry and forces a drive-ending incompletion. Every member of this front six has speed and power, strong in the run and generally quite strong in pass rushing, generating pressure from four man fronts with a little help from Kirby Smart's scheme. Through 12 games that was enough to crush every opponent, when combined with a pretty good secondary. Things changed against Alabama, which we'll get back to in a bit. 

 

So what about that secondary?

I came away less impressed with the Georgia secondary than I was expecting to. They have some really good pieces, but there were more mistakes than I was expecting to see from a vaunted defense. I do like their corner Keele Ringo, who impressed me at times in man coverage: 

CB #5 to top of the screen

But, he also wasn't perfect. Up against a superstar WR in Alabama's Jameson Williams, this happened: 

CB #5 to bottom of the screen

Ringo had a very rough day at the office trying to contain Williams, but again, he's a superstar. To me, what seemed to be a bigger theme when vulnerabilities emerged in the secondary were guys open over the middle, often in that 5-15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage range. Against a team like Auburn, it was often the case that Bo Nix just couldn't hit them, especially in high leverage moments like this: 

That's a receiver with a step on Ringo over the middle for a first down and Nix throws it behind him. You can't beat Georgia when your QB plays like that. Bryce Young didn't play like that and Alabama was able to take advantage. Against Alabama's speed, Georgia played in off coverage and plays like this next one were open pretty often: 

And then alarming coverage busts haunted the Bulldogs against Alabama. Disastrous coverage busts weren't there against Auburn, but perhaps the speed and talent of the Crimson Tide dazed the Georgia defense: 

There's not a white jersey in the picture frame when that ball is caught! That just cannot happen against a top five opponent and it was occurring more often than I anticipated from a defense with this reputation. When Georgia's four-man rushes did not get home, their seven men in coverage did not do enough to stop what Alabama's offense was trying to do. There were holes in their zone when they played zone and their corners were being beaten in man by Jameson Williams, with no real solution on how to deal with that. When they played off coverage to deal with the "corners getting toasted in man", 'Bama picked up easy chunk yards underneath. My central takeaway of watching the Alabama-Georgia game was about the UGA secondary. If the Dawgs' defensive front wasn't throwing the play off, their secondary was not providing much help to cover up. Of course, sometimes they did everything right and Alabama still got a big gain because that's what having the Heisman winner at QB and elite skill position talent can do: 

Sure, Metchie has maybe a step on the Georgia DBs (Ringo and S Dan Jackson), but that's a tiny window nearly forty yards down the field and Young's one second from being hit and he drops it in. What more can a college defense do there? NFL throw from a future NFLer. This is how Alabama did it: they relied on the star power of Williams and Young to hit Georgia early when the game was tight, and then once the Dawgs were reeling, they started making mistakes in coverage with regularity and Alabama was content to abuse that over and over again. 

Of course, this was contingent on Alabama picking up Georgia's pressure, which they did better than any other team Georgia has seen. Against every other opponent, the front six was so suffocating that any minor issues in coverage didn't matter and for the most part, this secondary is good! But it started to matter when the four man rushes that UGA expects to get home on a regular basis suddenly weren't getting home. If we go back to that deep ball to Williams, notice how Young has all day to throw: 

A theme popped up in many of the big Alabama passing plays, where the Georgia four man rushes weren't affecting Young enough, partially because of Alabama's strong OL and partially because Young is an exceptional NCAA QB who isn't going to be fooled by the illusion of pressure. One more example: 

It seemed like Georgia rolled into Atlanta believing "we have the best defensive front in America, if we let our horses out of the barn, we'll get pressure on anyone" and then that didn't happen, and Smart was too slow to adjust. Whether he ramps up the percentage of five/six-man pressures against Michigan is something I'll be watching in Miami tomorrow night. 

Before we exit the secondary section, I do want to shout out S Lewis Cine, who is a good football player. He had his lumps in coverage against Alabama, but he earned an All-America designation because of plays like this: 

S #16 towards top of the screen

The secondary can help out in run defense too. Their excellent tackling, speed, and IQ in the run game is why Georgia has been so good at bottling up long rushing plays: they've allowed just three rushes of 20+ yards this season. But even though the secondary carries a lot of weight in run defense, they need some help from the front six when in coverage against a high-powered passing offense and that's what I hoped you learned from this. 

 

Any other vulnerabilities to discuss?

There were two other areas that jumped out at me for Michigan to exploit that seem to be ripe for targeting. The first was screens to the boundary, often with orbit motion pre-snap, getting playmakers into space. Georgia has a fast defense, but because of the off-coverage they were playing against Alabama, if you can get your WRs to set strong blocks on the perimeter (something Michigan has gotten quite often this season!) there are plenty of free yards there. Example: 

Look at that play pre-snap: three DBs on that side of the field, and only one of them is lined up within five yards of the LoS. All you need is one guy to set a block (hello, Mike Sainristil) and there's an easy 5-8 yards available. Alabama schemed those plays for Williams and feasted. 

The logical flip side of that is the QB run game: if you're targeting the edge and pushing the defenders to the perimeter, then having a QB who can scramble up the middle and capitalize on all that green grass in front of him is extremely advantageous. Georgia refused to spy Bryce Young with a LB and the results were ugly: 

I guess that Jalen Carter (DT #88) is the spy there but there's no way that a 300 lb. man is going to track down Bryce Young in that situation. You need to use one of Walker or Dean to do it. 

The development of the effective QB run game was rather interesting to me to discover considering that Dawg Sports wrote this summer about how Kirby Smart had solved the QB run problem with his evolving 3-4 MINT front. Didn't seem that way against Alabama! Obviously, Michigan is not really the team that is the most ripe to exploit this possibility, but if you remember that QB draw play Gattis ran for Cade McNamara against Iowa with all the receivers split out wide, that seems like something to trot out against a team like Georgia. Give Cade the option to read the MLB and if he doesn't have his eyes on you, see if you can pick up a chunk gain on the ground. Anything helps against this defense. 

 

How to beat Georgia's defense 

Let's now circle back and talk about Michigan's matchup with Georgia specifically. The way these two teams play is a strength on strength matchup, with Michigan wanting to run the football and UGA wanting to stifle the run. Even with their explosive passing game, the Crimson Tide's RBs rushed for just 3.5 YPC (this doesn't count the Bryce Young runs) on the Bulldogs. Go week by week of Georgia's results, you're not going to find any teams who were able to consistently pave this defense on the ground. That's not to say you can't get wins; Michigan's the best rushing offense the Dawgs will have seen and I have no doubt that Michigan will get its wins in from time to time. I would just be extremely surprised if they are able to hammer Georgia on the ground the way they did Ohio State. 

Beating Georgia is going to take a balanced, well-designed gameplan with a high level of execution. When Georgia is stifling Michigan's runs, they're going to need to have plans ready to get chunk gains through the air and more importantly, are going to need Cade McNamara to step up and rise to the occasion. I'm not sure they need him to be Bryce Young-good to win, but it feels like McNamara having the best game of his career is a prerequisite to win this game. Similarly, Josh Gattis needs to be equally as good for the Wolverines to win. All the speed in space stuff we've seen this season feels notable here, targeting the boundary with Henning end arounds, screens to Donovan Edwards off orbit motion, QB design runs for McNamara with the receivers split out wide + the JJ package all needs to be meshed in along with the typical Harbaugh power running base offense. I'd like to see plenty of tricks too, including another flea flicker. 

Quality pass protection is absolutely crucial too. I like Michigan's chances of picking up a lot of the Georgia four-man rushes, given what we've seen from the Wolverines on tape this season. But they won't pick up all of them and that's where Cade's ability to stand in the pocket and get the ball out the moment before he gets popped is big. We saw him do that pretty well against Michigan State back in October, and he'll need to do it again. Getting the ball out in a hurry has been one of Cade's signature traits and it's absolutely essential that that continues tomorrow. He can't get unnerved by the illusion of pressure, and he has to be willing to take a beating. Everyone has to. This is going to be a physical football game and every player on Michigan's roster has to be ready for that. 

I think the ideal Michigan game plan looks something like this: targeting the off coverage when it's there to get easy yards underneath through the air, crafting a pretty balanced-run pass mix that includes jet sweeps and other run plays in space outside the tackles, to then create the ability to hammer it more on the ground up the middle. Once you get a couple wins on the ground, perhaps take a PA shot down the field, looking to generate a big play. The scripted drive needs to end in points, and as we pointed out on Tuesday, getting a lead early in this game is really crucial.

Minimize the big negative plays (I don't want to see a lot of sweeps/tosses that require the OL to try to get into space and block UGA's athletic LBs, frankly), protect the QB, and hope for a big game performance from McNamara. This is a great defense, even if Alabama made them look vulnerable. A lot of the ways that Alabama made them look vulnerable (Heisman QB and legit first round NFL WR) aren't super applicable to Michigan. But there is enough on tape to believe that an incredibly savvy game plan from Josh Gattis and superb execution from the players can lead to this game ending the way we want it to. And hey, it would be nice if the defense/special teams could help the offense out through good field position or even banking a few points straight up.