Who steps up in Atlanta: Clemson or Georgia? | Always College Football

let's start with Georgia Clems it be noon Eastern Time on ABC I'll be on the call alongside sha MCD and Molly McGrath should be awesome this is a game that is featuring two teams that have combined to win four of the last eight national championships the only other national title for each program actually came in the 1980s Georgia won it in 80 Clemson won it in 81 and these two teams used to play each other just about every year so it's really cool to see him on the field we saw it a couple years ago and it should be really exciting other big picture item in this game it's only three active FBS head coaches who have won a national championship that's the fewest by the way the fewest active coaches with an AP or coaches Championship entering the season since 1942 of course Davos Sweeny has two Kirby Smart has two but are these two programs that are heading in different directions there's some perception that they might be just based on how things have looked the last couple years for Clemson and Georgia people think one's on the way up or is at very least at the top of the sport other people seem to think it's going in the wrong direction I don't know if I agree with that but over the last three years I mean Georgia has as many losses as they do national championships they have two championships they have two losses their only loss is over that span came against B so they've obviously done quite well Clemson by comparison has lost three games in each of the last three seasons they went nine of four last year and it's the first time that they won less than 10 games since 2010 the reason why people think it's not going so well for Clemson is because they have been slow to adopt the modern era of the sport Clemson in 2023 and 2024 brought in zero transfers uh they are one of four FBS programs with that distinction the other three are service academies Air Force Navy and army they also have 0% total starts from Clemson players that have come from transfer portal so that's obviously the lowest can't get lower than zero but people think George is like going into the Portal Georgia doesn't have that much of a differentiation in Philosophy from Clemson just 12% of their starts come from the portal which is 119th in the FBS so both really lean into High School recruiting but Clemson has not added the few pieces that Georgia has the last couple years to kind of fortify their roster and maybe cover up some weak points doesn't mean that Clemson hasn't tried they just haven't landed some of those players let's get down to the questions that will determine the outcome number one can Clemson's heavy pressure affect Carson Beck Clemson blitzed on nearly half of their opponent's dropbacks last year that was the second highest rate in sport for those of you that had Western Kentucky as the most Blitz heavy team congratul ulations I didn't but you did congratulations terrific stuff that's the highest rate by Clemson since ESPN began tracking this 15 years ago they also heated up quarterbacks on a pretty regular basis I mean they recorded pressures on nearly 40% of the dropbacks which is among the top 10 to top 15 in the sport so they can get after the quarterback here's the thing nobody gets the ball out faster than Carson back in the sport he released it and under 2.4 seconds he's one of three quarterbacks that did that last year all three of which were at 2.38 that's number one in the sport so Carson Beck sees it he identifies it and he takes advantage of it because when you Blitz him he wears you out his numbers actually improve against the blitz so blitzing him is not going to necessarily get you the W what could get you the W though would be making a move in the pocket force him to shuffle his feet make him feel uncomfortable it's a little bit like Tom Brady when his feet are set he's going to tear you apart but when he moves his qbr drops by 65 points that's significant his completion percentage drops from 77 to 49.2 when you make him move can you pressure Carson Beck Clemson Ken they have a chance of slowing down this offense let's go to number two Ken Georgia beat man coverage when you look at Georgia they didn't see a lot of man last year last year most of what you saw against Georgia was Zone coverage partly because they have such talented white outs and who the heck were you going to cover Brock Bowers with in man coverage you didn't have a chance so you had to Zone it up and they didn't see a lot of guys that would go up and challenge you Beck was extremely efficient against Zone but against man there really isn't enough a sample size to really acknowledge it but they have great weapons we know that Dominic love it uh the addition of osic from Stanford the tight end transfer LW and lucky at tight end is also healthy so they have guys that can beat you up and man but can they do it consistently enough because that's what they're going to get from Clemson nobody plays more man than Clemson except for Purdue and Notre Dame so pretty much everybody plays a lot of man but no one plays quite as much as those three number three Ken Clemson run the football I mean Phil mafa down the stretch became the featured back last year he had never had more than 16 carries in the game before the Notre Dame game that last year he had 36 that day and then averaged over 23 carries a game the final four games the regular season now he lives between the tackles he doesn't do a whole lot on the perimeter his productivity drops considerably when you get him to the outside he's a big bodyb that wants to keep his shoulder square and wants to get downhill a gap to a gap now Georgia's run defense took quite a bit of step back last year and people look at the numbers say well they were still in the top 20 in the sport yeah well for a while there from 19 to 22 they allowed 76 rushing yards a game last year they allowed 113.5 rushing yards per game so from a fouryear span 2019 to 22 to last year was about a 40 yard Gap per game another key area too is they allowed one full yard more per Rush before contact and they gave up an awful lot of yardage outside the tackles they gave up over five yards a carry outside the tackles that was 77th and they gave up over five yards a carry on on Zone Reeds that was 90th so can Clemson run the football and then finally question number four can Clemson create big plays last year they just didn't manufacture a whole lot just 46 plays that gained 20 plus yards that was 998th in the sport just 9.9% of their completions went for 20 plus yards that was 131st in the sport now kumnick didn't push the ball downfield but they also didn't really have a deep arsenal of weapons at wide receiver because guys were beat up all throughout last year whether it was Antonio Williams or Cole Turner they had a bunch of guys that were beat up so that's something to be mindful of as well we know George is going to rush the quarterbacks going be hard to create plays on a on a regular basis but when their chances to be made downfield you got to make them if you're going to beat the Georgia Bulldogs couple Trends in the game the under is 8-0 in Georgia season openers under Kirby Smart that's since 2016 the under has hit in each of Clemson's last four season openers so common sense would lead you to believe this going to be a low-scoring game this would be the third time that Clemson is a double- digit Underdog under dbos Sweeney and the fifth time he is an underdog of more than seven points they lost outright in each of the previous four instances but they covered in three of the four instances so a couple of Trends to think about I will not be taking a side in this game because I'm on the call but I hope you enjoy it there noon Eastern Time on ABC