Alabama-Georgia title-game rematch unlikely to be repeat of first matchup

Only in college football is the rematch considered an anomaly, a specimen to be poked and prodded, worthy of lab coats and latex gloves. The play of emotions, the strategy of play, everything is different from the norm.

As Alabama and Georgia prepare to play the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday in Indianapolis, only five weeks after the Crimson Tide ran away from the Bulldogs 41-24 in the SEC Championship Game, the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs are trying to figure out how much of that game to carry with them into Lucas Oil Stadium.

Georgia players carry the emotion of that loss with them as fuel, just as Alabama came into Atlanta last month gassed up with indignation for being a touchdown underdog.

“Want the God’s honest truth?” Dawgs strongside linebacker Nolan Smith asked Wednesday. “I cried.”

Weakside linebacker Quay Walker is a senior. “Since being here, I’m 0-3 against them,” Walker said of Alabama. “So that (the SEC Championship loss) felt pretty bad.”

Tell me about it, Walker’s coach said. That loss in Atlanta made Kirby Smart 0-4 against Nick Saban, his former boss. Want some perspective? Smart, in six seasons at Georgia, is 65-11 (.855) against the rest of college football.

Smart is 1-0 in rematches at Georgia, the same as Saban at Alabama. Both coaches lost the first game and won the rematch in resounding fashion – Georgia against Auburn in 2017, and Alabama against LSU for the BCS national title in 2011.

Saban, by the way, went 2-0 in rematches as coach at LSU, and 4-2 in rematches in his two seasons with the Miami Dolphins. That’s 7-2 overall; of the nine rematches, Saban’s team had lost the first game eight times.

A national championship should be enough to motivate any team, no matter what happened in their previous meeting. But forget Alabama and Georgia being the consensus two best teams in the nation. They are SEC rivals.

“I’m pretty sure all those guys will come twice as hard as the first game,” Alabama wide receiver Jameson Williams said of Georgia. “We have to play a lot better than the first game.”

Then there’s the issue of dealing with the Xs and Os of a rematch. College coordinators creating a game plan in a typical week have a built-in advantage: Without rematches, they haven’t shown their cards to their opponents.

“It is a little bit different,” Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “You do get that in the NFL with your division teams where you play them twice. And sometimes you can play them relatively close together like this is. And we played them last year. So we’ve got enough film on them on what they want to do and they’re not going to change.”

But it can look like change. Alabama defensive coordinator Pete Golding described his task Wednesday as A.) showing Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett the same look and doing something different or B.) showing a different look while playing the same coverage.

“You’re trying to make him make the decision of what (the defense) is once he’s got the ball in his hand,” Golding said. “Now he’s got to think.”

That’s easier to do when Bennett hasn’t already run 78 plays against your defense.

Coaches are accustomed to devising a game plan and installing it in a matter of days. The luxury of a Playoff semifinal, or any bowl for that matter, is that coaches get several weeks to study and create a plan. For the push-all-your-chips-in national championship game, though, Georgia and Alabama basically back to the regular-season schedule.

Any coach who has done time in the NFL understands how to handle rematches. Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, who went 12-11 in rematches during his seven seasons as Houston Texans coach, said a rematch creates complexity. Presented the options of pretending the teams have never played or picking up where the last game left off, O’Brien pretty much replied, “Yes.”

“It’s tough. You have to do a little bit of both,” O’Brien said. “You have to go back to the drawing board, so to speak. You got to start from scratch. You have to look at the last game. You got to go back and review the whole season. Your season. Their season.

“It’s a long week.”

Given the quality of the teams, and their familiarity with one another, surprises are likely to be at a minimum. So is the possibility of a one-sided game. This sequel figures to be better than the original.