Although Alabama’s offense at times made it look awfully easy to score during its 41-24 win over Georgia Saturday night, linebacker Azeez Ojulari said the Bulldog defense remains as confident as it ever has.
“There’s definitely a lot of things we need to work on this week,” Ojulari said. “But we’re going to improve and continue to do what we need to keep that dominant defense. We’ve just got to fix it and be ready for next week.”
Sophomore Nakobe Dean agreed.
According to Dean, this week has basically been the same as any other, one where assessments and corrections made in an effort to keep them from happening again.
“We’re looking at it as we do any other game,” Dean said. “We’re going to assess everything we did wrong, everything we could have done better, so we can play as good as we can in the future.”
Of the 564 yards of total offense piled up by the Crimson Tide, 417 came via the right arm of quarterback Mac Jones, who completed 24 of his 32 pass attempts.
Explosive plays were his specialty.
Wide receivers Jaylen Waddle and Devonte Smith combined for 17 catches good for 323 yards, with Waddle scoring on a 90-yard play and Smith snagging one for a 34-yard score.
John Metchie III, meanwhile, hauled in a 40-yard touchdown.
However, head coach Kirby Smart seemed to bristle at the notion that his secondary, touted before the season as one of the best in the SEC, was somehow to blame for Saturday’s loss.
A question regarding the “state” of his secondary certainly did not sit well.
“The current state is you’re an SEC defensive back playing man-to-man against really good players. The state of Tyson Campbell after he gave up a touchdown pass against Tennessee is not going to be different than a touchdown pass given up to Alabama,” Smart said. “When you play in the secondary, you assume the risk. It comes with a note: when you play man-to-man, you will get beat. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is going to play a perfect game; nobody is going to play a perfect season. Turn on the NFL every Sunday—the best corner in the NFL gets beat. It’s going to happen.”
The trick, Smart said, is limit the busts, like the Waddle’s long catch that pushed Alabama ahead 27-24 in the third quarter.
“What you don’t want to do is get beat by a bust and give up a 90-yard touchdown when you don’t have great communication. That, to me, is a problem—not when I am pressing a guy and I have got this guy and I get beat,” Smart said. “That is going to happen from time to time, and you accept that, and you’ve got to win more than you lose. We have got to hit some of those. We have got to score some of those to make big plays. Our DBs are fine. They understand they go against good players every day in practice. They get right back out there and compete.”
Dean said the memory of what happened in Tuscaloosa could actually benefit the Bulldogs moving forward.
Unlike last year’s SEC championship when LSU exposed Georgia’s defense in a similar fashion, this time, the Bulldogs can go back and attempt to make corrections to keep the same mistakes from happening again.
“Of course, you don’t want that taste in your mouth again, in any kind of fashion,” Dean said. “We’ll continue to play with a chip on our shoulder and continue to work hard.”
Smart acknowledged it's going to be up to defensive coordinator Dan Lanning and the rest of Georgia’s defensive coaches to help the players out the best they can.
“There are definitely things that we can do better, schematically, defensively to help our players. I do not know if Alabama is the best offense in the country, I have not watched everybody else. So, I can’t say that,” Smart said. “They certainly have a very good offense, in terms of their quarterback knows where to go with the ball, they have a talented offensive line, every one of those offensive linemen will be in the NFL one day, and they have really good skill players. We have really good players too on defense. When we execute pretty well, we do pretty well."
It's when they don't that the problems occur.
“We probably lost more 50-50 balls, and what I call 50-50 balls is not just fades and touchdown passes, it’s situational third down where can we get a ball out. We’ve probably lost more of those than we have in a long time," Smart said. "Even going back to the LSU game, we did not have as tight a coverage on them as we did on Alabama. We had tight coverage a lot of times against Alabama, we just did not get the ball out. You have to give them credit for that. It does not cause alarm for me because I know that we have good players. We have kids that care. It bothers them. We have to do a good job as coaches to try to help them in other ways.”
