If I remember correctly we held a double-digit lead for a big part of that game. I've watched the game since watching it live and honestly, outside of a few moments, that game never felt in question. The main reason I saw was that when we had to move the ball and move their DL, we did. That is winning football. It's not perfect every snap, but throughout the game, if your team can get first downs when it needs to, score when it needs to, and keep a double-digit lead for the bulk of the game, they've done their job. A successful outing isn't always going to be 200+ yards rushing and 400+ yards passing. But it does what is most important and that's win football games. Was our line perfect? No. But when they had to move UGA, they did and they did that the entire game with several times laying pancake blocks all over the right side of the OL.
Were we perfect? No.
Was Milroe perfect? Far from it.
Was there room for improvement by the team and the QB? Absolutely.
Did we win an SEC championship against a very very good team that was the two time defending national champion? Yes.
Will I be happy if we beat UGA this coming season in similar fashion? Absolutely.
Will I be kicking rocks and moaning about how we could have beaten them by 20 because our QB should have had 400 yards passing and 5 TDs? Absolutely not.
We had 11 drives in that game.
4 of them were three and outs and another was 4 plays for 1 yard, but thankfully the 4th play was FG (this was off the recovered fumble). Net, just under half of the drives went NOWHERE.
Taking out kicks, and the 2 kneel downs at the end of the game, we ran 64 plays. 25 plays were for 1 yard or less and another 9 went for only for 2 or 3. That's 39% percent of plays going for 1 yard or less and 53% of plays being 3 or less. that's also being generous giving us credit for positive plays that were the result of a penalty.
There were 38 plays that were either passes or Milroe runs. 20 of them went for 3 or fewer yards. that's 52%+ of the time that we didn't get a positive play.
Now, do I think we should score on every drive? No, not at all, but we should hope to have very, very few 3 and outs. We need to at least get 1-2 first downs per drive to continue to win the field position battle, especially against the better teams we play.
Are we going to get 4 yards on every play? Of course not, but when over half your plays are 3 or less, that means you're playing behind on down and distance very often, and making the defenses job a good bit easier. With close to 40% of the plays being 1 yard or less, that's really, really behind the sticks on down and distance.
Two things can be true at once. I can be really happy that we beat UGA, and also be realistic about JM not playing that well overall. The team, and JM (give credit where it's due), rallied across the last two drives to seal the deal, but UGA really had all the momentum in the second half until we scored the last TD.
Remember, 1 starting WR was out, another was very limited, and Bowers was very limited due to injuries. Realistically, that's why we won. Their entire passing game was built around Bowers and how him just being out there and full speed dictates what the D does and opened up other stuff. It's just like JAMO and Metchie being out for us.
