Spring football roundups: Georgia and the two most dominant positions in college football
Georgia has become a sort of default champion by leaning on consistently overpowering trench players. Can they add the other Championship component in 2023?
After their 2017 National Championship I called Alabama the “default champions.” Essentially, if there was a team who had a lethal pro-style passing game and a complete overall team they’d win the title, but if no such team existed it was going to Alabama.
The Crimson Tide were always in the mix with their defense and talent stacks in the trenches and defeating them was going to require that you had a dimension they didn’t.
That proved to be the last season this was true.
The departure of Daron Payne (and Minkah Fitzpatrick) left the Tide no longer able to dominate the middle of the field the same way on defense. From then on they didn’t field dominant big bodies but tended to rely on athletes in the box. On offense they kept moving toward more of an aggressive attack before ultimately landing on Bill O’Brien’s pro-spread system in 2021 and 2022. They became the sort of team Alabama would have worried about, while ceasing to be Alabama as we knew them.
Meanwhile Georgia replaced them. Under Kirby Smart the Dawgs have consistently recruited huge, elite athletes on the offensive and defensive lines and the program is defined by this fact. If you don’t have an elite space force or the tactics to beat a team with skill, and it just comes down to trench play, Georgia will whoop you.
At least that’s how it’s been the last few years. One difference this year could be the emergence of a team who can move the focal point away from the trenches like Ohio State ALMOST did against the Dawgs. Another difference could be Georgia not having the same stuff in the box.
Or, Georgia could add the final missing piece and really blow everyone away.
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