Oklahoma’s defense might be a lot better than it appears, but can it slow down Georgia’s run game enough?
The OU defense tends to start slow, but if it can avoid early collapses, it could keep the game in Baker Mayfield’s hands.
You might have to forgive Georgia head coach Kirby Smart if he’s experiencing a little bit of vertigo this month.
On Dec. 20, Smart locked up pieces of one of the most jarring recruiting classes you’ll ever see. Per the 247Sports Composite, the Dawgs signed the No. 2, 6, 10, 16, 18, 22, 31, and 38 prospects in the country, with more potentially to come. They officially out-Alabama’d Alabama in recruits’ living rooms.
Meanwhile, Smart is still hoping to outdo opponents on the field. After all, less than two weeks after the Early Signing Period began, Georgia will play in arguably its most important game in 37 years.
When talking about the Dawgs’ Rose Bowl semifinal battle with Oklahoma, it’s easy to get distracted by the matchup of OU’s offense and UGA’s defense — that’s when Baker Mayfield and Roquan Smith will be on the field, after all. It features an offense that hasn't been held under 29 points all year against a defense that's allowed more than 29 points only once. That’s a pretty sexy battle.
But the other matchup — Georgia’s offense vs. Oklahoma’s defense — will still occupy half the game. And I have some questions.
1. Is Oklahoma’s defense actually good?
We’ll start with something pretty basic. And I’m honestly not sure of the answer.
OU heads in ranked a paltry 95th in Def. S&P+. The Sooners are the only CFP team without a top-10 defense, and they’re not even close to that mark. They’ve gotten away with it because of their absurdly good offense, but it’s safe to assume that Mayfield and company aren’t going to put up 50 points on UGA. The Sooner D is going to need to make some stops.
Despite the overall numbers, OU has spent half the season playing solid defense. The other half, not so much.
- Sooner defense (first 3 games): 4.2 yards per play, 12.3 points per game, 76 percent average percentile performance
- Sooner defense (next 7 games): 6.7 yards per play, 33.8 points per game, 34 percent average percentile performance
- Sooner defense (last 3 games): 4.5 yards per play, 17.0 points per game, 75 percent average percentile performance
In the first three and last three games of the regular season — a sample that includes a win at Ohio State and a neutral-field win over TCU — OU allowed a paltry 15 points per game.
Ohio State has the most efficient run game in the country, but the Sooners played bend-don't-break defense with aplomb, limiting big-play opportunities and shutting things down when they’d leveraged Ohio State into passing situations. Including sacks, J.T. Barrett averaged just 4.4 yards per pass attempt, and Ohio State's passing-down success rate was a mere 33 percent.
Against TCU in Jerry World, they pulled off the reverse, rendering the Horned Frogs one-dimensional by shutting down the ground attack — TCU backs rushed 11 times for just 32 yards — and playing bend-don't-break on the TCU passing game. Kenny Hill was allowed to complete 18 of 24 passes on standard downs, but he averaged under eight yards per completion. Neither Ohio State nor TCU created big plays, and OU snuffed out drives before they reached the end zone.
These were strong defensive performances. During this six-game sample, OU limited big plays by good offenses and shut down bad ones. WVU scored 31 points without quarterback Will Grier, but that was partially a product of garbage time; the score was 45-10 at halftime.
2. So what the hell happened in the middle of the season?
Injuries didn't help.
The Sooners lost second-leading returning cornerback Jordan Parker to a knee injury in the first quarter of the season. Starting corner Jordan Thomas missed two games, starting safety Will Johnson missed two, and safety Kahlil Haughton missed four.
OU leaned on sophomore corner Parnell Motley far more than anticipated, and while he landed some shots (4.5 tackles for loss, 11 passes defensed), he also got picked on, and with unreliable safety play backing him up. Thomas labored to slow down Big 12 No. 1s when healthy.
The defensive line was a revolving door, which meant OU working with a one-man pass rush — Ogbonnia Okoronkwo is the only Sooner with more than five sacks or 7.5 tackles for loss — for part of the season. (Okoronkwo limped off in quite a few games but played in all 13.)
Missed tackles were also a significant issue for a while.
Take a look at the missed tackles data for Georgia and Oklahoma at CFB Film Room. UGA’s top 10 tacklers missed a combined 48; Oklahoma’s: 90.
Missed tackles were such a problem during the Iowa State game that team leaders organized a players-only meeting about it.
“Tackling is effort. You can practice tackling going in, but it’s a want-to. You’ve got to give everything you have to tackle a person,” OU sophomore linebacker Caleb Kelly said. “That running back, he had a good game, but we made him look like the best thing in the entire world.”
Okronkwo was critical of the defense’s effort level after re-watching Saturday’s game.
“I saw a lot of poor execution,” Okoronkwo said. “I didn’t see a lot of effort around the ball. I saw some bad tackling.
“All stuff we can control.”
It’s not stuff you can gain control of quickly, however. The Sooners made enough plays to top Texas, 29-24, the week after but then got torched by Kansas State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and TCU (the first time) for an average of 7 yards per play and 34 points per game.
Their incredible offense scored enough points and played keep-away enough to survive this stretch. But it wasn't until a mid-November trip to Kansas when they began dominating again. The TCU rematch proved renewed fundamentals.
3. Okay, but how will OU handle Georgia’s offense? It’s a different animal, after all.
Over the last two years — Alabama in 2016, then Georgia this fall — we’ve learned you can make a title run with a true freshman quarterback. All you need are a) extreme talent and experience advantages elsewhere and b) minimal must-pass situations. Georgia has nailed both.
The Dawgs rank third in Standard Downs S&P+, leaning on their five-headed running back.
Seniors Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, sophomores Brian Herrien and Elijah Holyfield, and freshman D'Andre Swift have combined for a gaudy 39 carries per game and 6.5 yards per carry. Georgia rushes 73 percent of the time on standard downs (13th in the country).
While Georgia doesn't operate at a heavy tempo (111th in Adj. Pace), the Dawgs are good enough on the ground that freshman Jake Fromm faces few must-pass situations. When he does, he's been dynamite, in part because little has been truly must-pass.
Coordinator Jim Chaney leans heavily on the run on passing downs — the Dawgs run 40 percent of the time on such downs, 30th in FBS — and it's effective enough that, even on second-and-long or sometimes third-and-long, opponents can never totally tee off on Fromm. Fromm has taken advantage, completing 61 percent of his passes with a 174.1 passer rating on third-and-4 or more.
Georgia’s really only found itself behind the eight-ball once all season: in the loss to Auburn. The Dawgs were not only behind schedule because of iffy run success; they were also, by the second half, behind on the scoreboard. They had no choice but to let Fromm throw, and he averaged just 4.6 yards per attempt (including sacks).
OU needs to both slow the run game and get quite a few points, to force Fromm into awkward situations. Easy, right?
Regarding the former, there’s reason for optimism. Georgia ranks eighth in Rushing S&P+. But OU has played five games against teams with top-25 rushing rankings (Ohio State, Texas Tech, WVU, and TCU twice) and fared pretty well.
Opposing running backs in those games averaged 25 carries for 120 yards, under 5 per carry. OU coordinator Mike Stoops would probably offer you his house if it meant holding UGA to 5 yards per carry.
The first quarter will tell us what we need to know.
S&P+ ranking by quarter:
- Q1: UGA offense sixth, OU defense 91st
- Q2: UGA offense 12th, OU defense 50th
- Q3: UGA offense 14th, OU defense 15th
- Q4: UGA offense 60th, OU defense 55th*
* Quarter data is not filtered for garbage time, so the fact that both teams have won a lot of blowouts probably renders fourth-quarter data useful than the other three.
Chaney and Georgia tend to come out of the blocks hot, but they don’t over-complicate things for Fromm. Accordingly, the Dawgs’ offensive effectiveness tends to trickle downward as the game progresses.
OU’s defense tends to adapt. During the Sooners’ slump, they were getting gashed early — they gave up 38 points to Oklahoma State in the first half, 21 to Kansas State in the first half, 20 in the first quarter to Texas Tech, etc. — but found some answers, though they might not have been enough without an otherworldly offense.
If OU keeps Georgia out of the end zone for the first two or three drives, the Sooners’ odds of winning go up immensely, even if their own offense is struggling against one of the country’s best defenses.