Georgia Three Keys: Florida

Three-keys-Georgia

The 6-1 Bulldogs take on the 6-1 Gators in a battle of teams that – along with Kentucky – have designs on winning the SEC East this season. Georgia is seen as the favorite going in, but Bulldogs fans don’t need reminding that anything can happen in Jacksonville, especially against a Florida side that is red hot.

By Steve Wright

Here are the three keys:

Establish the run

The LSU game was lost because Georgia tried to be too cute. This is a team with an offensive identity that centers around running the ball. While the backs might not have the same name recognition nationally as in the past, the likes of D’andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield are more than good enough to carry the ground game and keep the chains moving.

Those two backs combined for 128 yards against LSU, but they only carried the ball 19 times between the two of them. Georgia needs the backs to run the ball upwards of 30 times per game. This will allow Kirby Smart to control the tempo of the game, control the clock, and dominate the scripting of the contest.

Win the contact battle

Smart stated that this was one of the keys to the game in one of his press conferences earlier this week. If the Georgia head coach recognizes this as a pivotal part of the game, then we are not going to disagree with that assessment.

The SEC is a contact league not a finesse league. This means that the team that dominates the contact point most throughout the game will likely win the contest. On defense the bulldogs need to make square hits, stopping the Florida players in their tracks and nullifying yards after contact. On offense the opposite needs to happen, with Georgia players making themselves the aggressor in the contact situation, fighting though the initial hit to make a potential third-and-6 suddenly a much more manageable third-and-3.

Be better on third and long

This plays into the previous two keys in many ways, but Georgia simply has to be better on third and long.

The Bulldogs were winning comfortably at the beginning of the season, masking this issue that reared up in a big way against LSU. Jake Fromm is a horrible 3-of-20 on the year in third-and-9 or longer situations. In addition to that miserable 15-percent conversion percentage, Fromm has also thrown three picks and been sacked four times in such scenarios.

Fromm hasn’t exactly pushed on this season as Georgia fans would like. His inability to complete these passes and sustain drives is a major reason why. The Florida defense is stout enough to stack Georgia up – especially if the Bulldogs have penalty issues – so the third down battle could be vital in Jacksonville.

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