Stats Crunch: Georgia vs Alabama

Georgia and Alabama meet once again and this time it is in Tuscaloosa. The last time Georgia won at Bryant-Denny Stadium was in 2007 and Kirby Smart was in his first season as the Crimson Tide’s defensive back coach. That is also the game where ESPN’s Mike Patrick asked Todd Blackledge about a famous pop star and what is she is doing with her life (Here is more story and what was said courtesy of Honorable Mention Sports.)

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Here are a couple of notes on the history of the series:

Alabama has a 43-26-4 advantage in the series. Georgia won the first game back in 1895 in Columbus, Georgia and its coach at the time was the legendary Glenn “Pop” Warner. Georgia once had a 9-4-3 series advantage through the 1921 season.

There were three ties in the first seven meetings and two of those three had a final score of 0 to 0.

From 1959 to 1965, Georgia’s season opener was Alabama. The Bulldogs only won two of those battles (the first and last in that stretch).

Hall of Fame coach Wally Butts has seven wins against the Crimson Tide as the Bulldogs’ top man (7-11-1) and fellow hall of famer Vince Dooley has three (3-5). Jim Donnan never faced Alabama as a head coach. Mark Richt faced them six times – winning the first three and losing the next three.

Five of Kirby Smart’s 16 career losses are against Alabama (31%) including the only two since the beginning of the 2021 season.

Those games came against Nick Saban…

Kalen DeBoer is now Alabama’s leader and several times Georgia has faced a first-year Bama coach and more times than not, the Bulldogs have been successful. Here are the last five that faced the Dawgs in Season One as the Alabama head coach.

Ears Whitworth was also an assistant coach for Georgia's football team and the head coach for the baseball team. He passed away in 1960 in Athens, Georgia.

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Georgia has failed to score a touchdown in the first half in two of its first three games this season. It is a small sample size, but check out how the Bulldogs offensive output has fared in both halves of the game.

Second half totals tend to be skewed when a team has a large lead late in the game.

In the 2000s, Georgia quarterbacks have had mixture of success in Tuscaloosa.

Last season, Carson Beck completed 21-of-29 passes for 243 yards against Alabama. He did not throw a touchdown nor a pick. That was in a neutral site in Atlanta. Overall, his numbers don’t vary to much throughout his career when it comes to location.

Beck struggled in the Kentucky game. His 160 yards passing were his fewest as a starter. Statistically, his yard total in Lexington put him over the 5,000 mark in his career. This Saturday, he has a chance to climb in some other impressive categories including one that could pass his coach.

You can tell Brock Bowers is no longer with Georgia. Here is a breakdown on position-by-position on who Georgia is throwing the ball to this season.

In terms of running the ball in this series, both teams have struggled recently. Here is a look at the combined stats head-to-head since the beginning of the 2020 season.

Currently, Georgia is the only school in the FBS that has not allowed a scrimmage touchdown this season. In fact, Alabama is the last team to score a six-pointer against the Dawgs. If you go back even further, Georgia has a commanding lead in this stat.

Another interesting stat to look at in this series is penalties. In the last ten meetings, Georgia has had 73 penalties combined for 636 yards. In those same ten games, Alabama has had 47 penalties for 374 yards.