Georgia defense hungry for turnovers down stretch
Lost in the conversation about how Georgia has struggled to take care of the football recently is the fact that the defense isn’t exactly getting its fair share of turnovers. The offense has given it back seven times in the past three games, all decisive Bulldog victories. The defense has responded by grabbing just two of its own.
Both of those came against Tennessee and Georgia was able to overcome a turnover margin of -5 against Florida and Mississippi State. It’s not something that an elite Georgia defense is happy about. It’s not something that is being shrugged off.
“Our coaches stress that every day in practice,” sophomore inside linebacker Smael Mondon said after Tuesday’s practice. “Whether it’s if you’re a DB, playing the ball better or just anybody tackling, trying to strip out the ball, punch out the ball. We have drills on that and we talk about it every day in meetings and practice. It’s something we’ve been emphasizing.”
The potential is there. We saw it to start the season. Georgia turned Oregon over twice, Samford once, and South Carolina three times. The offense was also stellar at taking care of the ball in that three-game stretch with no give backs.
Then Kent State rolled around and it has been chaos on the turnover front since. Georgia has gained just five turnovers in the past seven games. It has turned it over 13 times in that span, an average of nearly two turnovers per game. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out the difference there. The Bulldogs are minus eight in turnover margin in the past seven games.
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The 10-0 record and unanimous No. 1 ranking tells us that it hasn’t risen up and bitten the Bulldogs yet, but Kirby Smart is always quick to talk about how humility is a week away. Georgia is explosive offensively, stingy defensively, and one of the most physical football teams in the country. Adding the sometimes-boring-but-always-good-to-hear, “they just don’t beat themselves” to that list of attributes might be all it needs to repeat as National Champions.
But forcing fumbles and picking off passes would go a long way toward gaining that same desired result.
“We talk about it a lot,” Smart said on Tuesday. “We try to change up drills. We show NFL clips of turnovers. We show all SEC turnovers. We talk a lot about it, and I thought that we actually did our best job this year of trying to punch balls out and strip balls out on these guys (Mississippi State) because they had a lot of loose plays where the balls out in the open. We just didn’t get any. We certainly got to do that to offset of our own.”
