Georgia defensive coordinator and new Oregon head coach Dan Lanning was asked point-blank during his Zoom session to preview Monday’s National Championship: after failing to get much pressure on Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, is it a matter of attempting a different strategy, or simply doing a better job of executing last month’s plan?

Per Lanning, it needs to be a combination of both.

“Ultimately, we want to create pressure. We want to be able to get after Bryce. As far as how to do it, I don't want to give away our secrets yet, but wait until the game to figure that out. We want to generate pressure,” Lanning said. “Certainly, there's a lot of different ways you can do that. And he's really good at avoiding the rush. And they did unique things to protect him. We have to attack it a little bit differently, but how we do that, there's a lot of different ways we can do it.”

It was not for a lack of trying last time. The Bulldogs used numerous pressure packages in an attempt to get to Young. They just did not work out.

Emulating what LSU (a 20-14 Alabama win) and Auburn (24-22, OT) did against the Crimson Tide earlier this year at least deserves a look.

According to Pro Football Focus, Young in both games combined, completed only nine passes for 131 yards and one touchdown with one interception over 39 dropback attempts (as opposed to rollouts, sprints, etc). He was sacked 10 times.

Over two-thirds of LSU’s pressures came on blitzes. The Crimson Tide struggled with extra men in the box, allowing a season-high nine unblocked pressures.

Auburn, meanwhile, went about it a different way but had great results with seven sacks.

The Tigers were able to get pressure rushing just four players, using various stunts to confuse Alabama’s offensive front.

“I don't know. I think we watched the film pretty close and tried to see what's successful against their team. And I think they had good answers and played better than we played that day,” Lanning said. “To go back and look at that game, we tried to attack in a lot of different ways, and they were more successful than us. You're going to have answers, and they had better answers that day than we did. But we'll build off that.”

Linebacker Quay Walker blamed a simple lack of defensive execution as opposed to some sort of schematic failure.

“That's it,” Walker said. “That's the only thing we have to do, is worry, about us, tackle well, rally to the ball, communicate, whatnot, so we won't have these types of busts that we had in our past game. Something we have to do is just play our game and everything else should take care of itself and play out fine.”

It had better.

If Georgia wants to win its first national championship since 1980, doing a better job getting pressure on Young is an absolute must.

“We say all the time here the best rush is the best coverage, and we've got to get to the quarterback. There's nothing else about it,” outside linebacker Nolan Smith said. “That last game, we did not do that. And I know a lot of people felt hurt after that one.”

Humbled would be another way to put it.

“I hold myself and my room accountable and also the D line. It's our job as pass rushers to get after the quarterback and we didn't do that,” Smith said. “The difference between this game and that game is we just have to do it. We have to find a way. I believe in our coaches. I trust in the plan that we now are talking over still to be able to do that.”

Lanning agreed.

“We’ve just got to play the brand of football we're able to play. Our guys take a tremendous amount of pride in the way we work and the work we've put into this season,” Lanning said. “But it doesn't take anything exceptional or extraordinary, just do what we know how to do.”