If you read my final preview of the national championship, you’ll notice that I got two factors spectacularly wrong while predicting a Georgia victory. The first was in assuming that it particularly mattered which LBs and Ss were playing behind the Bama DL and how much experience they had in the Saban system. They all had “enough” experience (I bet bowl practices helped a lot) and of course they were all plus athletes except Keith Holcombe who didn’t have to play.
The Tide DTs Raekwon Davis and Da’Ron Payne proved impervious to the size and power of the Georgia front and dominated the game.
I also missed big on something that didn’t come up in the article. Namely, I didn’t consider that Hurts’ flaws were as obvious and troubling to Saban as they were to me and that he’d already been working to have Tua Tagovailoa ready to go to rectify these issues.
The result was another Alabama win, which I broke down over at SB Nation. Tua is obviously going to be a big player for them. Hurts should be a dominant WR or DB if he wants to be, if they get Da’Ron Payne back next year they are probably your favorites.
Tbf, it was an incredibly close game, not just on the final score. The final stats are pretty close, too.
Ian
Any thoughts on a more detailed look at the “back away” run schemes?
I thought in the end the AL corps and secondary outplayed the GA units. No doubt
Kirby will fix that in recruiting.
Well the Coach A did a nice breakdown on some back away runs from the perspective of how to defend them:
https://matchquarters.com/2018/01/05/defending-bash-concepts/
I’m not going to say anything better than that. He thinks the key is having the DE stay home and I agree and feel the same about Matt Canada’s jet sweep offense.
Kirby was probably shocked they were already so close to winning, just as Saban was shocked when they won in 2009. I bet Georgia takes a step back next year and then comes roaring back in 2019 with veteran Fromm throwing to veteran TEs and then a mauling OL blocking for Swift or whoever.