ATHENS — For the most part, Georgia’s defense did its job against Kentucky. The Wildcats were held under 300 yards of offense and most importantly kept out of the end zone in the 13-12 Georgia win.
But the Bulldogs had 15 missed tackles according to Pro Football Focus. While head coach Kirby Smart doesn’t always subscribe to their analysis, the Georgia team knows it needs to do a better job of tackling.
It has been a focus of the off week.
“I feel like we had a poor tackling game,” outside linebacker Jalon Walker said. “I feel like, in the past seasons we’ve had, we were a better tackling team. Coming up, this game wasn’t the best tackling game. So going off to our body, we’re getting better thuds, better footwork, and getting to leverage and pursuit the things of that sort. Just better tackling.”
Georgia’s defense held Kentucky quarterback Brock Vandagriff to just 114 yards passing. Smart was proud of how his team limited explosive plays against the Wildcats.
But Kentucky also ran for 212 non-sack yards, much of it running into the heart of the defense. That’s where most of the missed tackles occurred.
That Kentucky was able to average 5.0 yards per carry on non-sack rushing plays put Kentucky into a lot of third-and-manageable situations. That’s how the Wildcats were able to go 9 of 16 on third down and possess the ball for over 35 minutes.
With Georgia’s defense on the field for such an extended period of time, it forced the defense to play more plays than it would like. The Bulldogs had three defensive linemen play over 50 snaps in the game.
If Georgia is better able to wrap up on the early downs, it will force opponents into more third and longs.
“We would get guys at the line of scrimmage that could be 2nd and 7 and it ended up being 2nd and 2 because they just fall forwards,” Georgia outside linebacker Chaz Chambliss said. “And we talked about it. Our tackling was not where it needed to be during the game. We had way too many missed tackles. You know, we’re emphasizing that week and going forwards. We need to emphasize it.”
Georgia has a massive game coming out of the off-week, with the Bulldogs traveling to Alabama. But before focusing on how it is going to attack quarterback Jalen Milroe and the Alabama offense, the Bulldogs know they have plenty of things to improve upon.
Tackling is at the top of the list for this defense.
“It’s always about improvement. I mean, we’re better never rests, like we’re trying to get better all the time,” Smart said. “So I’ve never had a bye week that I’ve ever had in all my years coaching that it wasn’t about improvement. It’s about detailing that improvement and how are you gonna attack it?”
