GAMEDAY: SUGAR BOWL - #2 GEORGIA BULLDOGS VS. #7 NOTRE DAME FIGHTING IRISH

Well here we are, sitting at the beginning of another run at a National Championship run.

A lot has changed in 3 weeks, hasn't it? The Carson Beck era at Georgia is over, finishing 24-3 as a starter and ending his career in the most unfortunate of ways. Now he's decided that one more year in college isn't in the cards, so he's headed to the draft and will cheerlead on the new face of Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl: Gunner Stockton. There has been analyses of Stockton ad nauseaum since the SEC Championship game, so to go on a long tear about what I think about Gunner seems rather tiresome at this point. What I will say is the same thing I said in my previous comments on here about Gunner stepping in at this juncture of our season: I'm not worried about it, at all. Losing both Robinsons for the playoffs hurts us, but in usual fashion, its next man up. We are no stranger to this and I think the next 3 games (yes, I said 3) will show Nate Frazier to be Georgia's #1 stud heading into the 2025 season, as I've said all season that it is my belief he's our best horse in the stable. 

So what about this game, how do we matchup? Its funny, if you watch the betting odds from when they opened on 12/8, there was a huge statement made by bettors: In the first 13 hours, Georgia went from a +1.5 underdog to Notre Dame to a -1.5 favorite. The spread has tightened up to almost even, and on paper, I understand it. These two teams match up really well, and are built quite similarly. ND is a run-first program with both Riley Leonard and Jeremiyah Love sharing the heavy lifting and averaging less than 200 yards putting the ball in the air for their passing game. I think their game plan will be quite similar to ours in that they're going to want to establish the run early with a lot of designed QB runs against a Georgia defense that -- let's face it -- has been given fits with scrambling QBs who have wheels and can gain large yardage. Expect to see ND challenge us with Leonard's legs, I'm quite sure they licked their chops watching film of Haynes King running half way across the damn state of Georgia on us last month. Make no mistake about it: ND's defense is 100% legit and honestly, could well be the best defense in the CFP this year and I think will be the best defense we've faced all season. I'm quite sure that ND's game plan is to make Gunner beat us in the air, lots of swarm and blitz packages out of the gate to gain some momentum and force quick 3 and outs.

For us and Gunner? I think Bobo leans heavily on the ground game attack and takes the pressure off Gunner, but that's not to say that I think Gunner shrinks from this stage at all. I expect to see a lot of RPOs and designed QB runs, short passes for mid yardage gains, and swing passes to the backs in the flats; in other words - pretty much the same stuff we saw Bobo drawing up for Beck. If you listened to Bobo's presser this week, he all but admitted that they wouldn't be changing much of the playbook for Gunner since they've been running the same practice reps on the same playbook all season. The biggest difference to me will be the mobility aspect of Gunner. This will be a game won by the time of possession and who turns the ball over the least. 

I think we win this game, and we do it with players and coaches. Kirby is now a seasoned veteran coach with two playoff runs and two national championships under his belt. We have seen him step up to the big leagues with some massively important calls in our playoff run (think the 2022 Peach Bowl time out against OSU) and has shown himself to exhibit incredible poise and maybe most importantly, has become a master at half time adjustments.

I'm taking us in this one, but I do think its a relatively low scoring affair and we sweat it out til the end.

(Author's note: one final thought: I want to have a talk with the geniuses at ESPN that thought starting this game at quarter to 9 at night on the east coast was a good idea. I'm still salty about this.) 

GO DAWGS! GATA! SIC EM'!

2025 ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL PROGRAM (pdf)

Game & Broadcast Info

• Kickoff: Wednesday, January 1 – 8:45 p.m. ET
• Location: Caesar's Superdome (83,000) | New Orleans, La.
• 2024 Records: Georgia (11-2, 6-2 SEC), Notre Dame (11-1)
• 2024 Rankings: Georgia #2, Notre Dame #7
• TV: ESPN (Sean McDonough (PxP), Greg McElroy (Analyst), Molly McGrath (Sideline))
• Video Stream: ESPN
• Radio: 95.5 FM WSB – Bulldog Network |   Affiliates   | Scott Howard (PxP), Eric Zeier (Color), DJ Shockley (sideline)
• Audio Stream:   georgiadogs.com
• Satellite: SiriusXM (80) ESPN Radio
• Web Stats:   georgiadogs.com
• Twitter: #NDvsUGA
• History:  Georgia vs. Notre Dame All-Time Series Results: UGA 3-0
• Last Meeting: UGA won 23-17 in South Bend, Indiana, 09/21/2019

Alas... this just wasn't a NC caliber team.

Just too many issues to overcome and they've been there all year.

An O-line that couldn't block.
A non existent running game.
Receivers that couldn't catch.

Hate to harp on the o-line so much, but a missed block on a DE led to the Etienne turnover that cost us points.

A missed block on a DE led to the Stockton turnover that gave them 7 right before the half.

An inability to move a line we outweighed by 40-50lbs per man led to an ineffective running game.

Sadly I think we will continue to have O-line issues as long as Stacy Searels is the coach.

Stockton did fine all things considered, but we have got to find an X receiver and some complimentary guys that can actually catch.

I was pretty disappointed with the offensive game plan as we knew the running game might struggle and we did little to have short passes offset that. It seemed almost all of our passing plays took forever to develop.

Bobo is a far cry from Monken and Searels is an eternity away from Sam Pittman and/or Matt Luke.

We've just been markedly different on offense with the current guys.

Literally nothing I can add to what you said, Wart. 

exactly 

Wart is correct. A Pittman OLine would never be this bad. The problems start and end with the O Line. Catching the damn ball would help too.

The O-linemen themselves are saying it. Monroe Frieling who got schooled all afternoon said his technique was terrible. Both tackles showed terrible footwork and were flat out whipped by agile DE's. Frieling gave up the strip sack that led to 7 for ND right before half, and whoever was at RT at the time got beat allowing Etienne to get drilled in his fumble in the red-zone. There were numerous other times where the RT was faced with a choice of taking the inside rusher or the outside one, and ended up taking neither.

LT and RT were whipped all game, and almost never did we offer a chip or max protect to cover for them. This issue was magnified by the fact that our pass plays were all intermediate to deep and extremely slow developing.

We also could have trapped and ran inside the DE's to slow them down, but Searels lines rely on mass and straight ahead blocking over all else. That might work in the ACC, but it wont work at the level Georgia aspires to be playing at in January. 

I'm sorry to say that will not change with SS as O-line coach. There were things that could have been done even with our current personnel to mitigate their shortcomings, but that's the difference between a Bobo and a Monken. If Georgia had a dominant line then Bobo can call a fine game out of the existing playbook, but if he has to scheme a game-plan up to overcome a problem like that... not so much.

Having to overcome the line issues, Georgia had to play an almost perfect game in all other phases. No turnovers... no drops... no big plays given up on special teams, and we saw how they fared in those areas.

TEtienne's fumble.. points lost.
Bell's drop... points lost.
Stockton's fumble... points given up.
KO return.. points given up.

The fumbles were a direct result of the O-line.

Being down by 13 points late leading to turnovers going for it on 4th down.. points lost.

Just the facts.