Georgia made it to the Playoff by preventing Auburn from executing The Blueprint

Georgia made it to the Playoff by preventing Auburn fom executng The Blueprint

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t is hard to beat a good team twice in football, and plenty of teams figure that out the hard way.

Georgia left Auburn, Ala., on Nov. 11 battered and bruised. The Dawgs went into the matchup as the unbeaten No. 1 team in the country, and they left with a 40-17 blemish on their resume that stood out like an eyesore. It’s not just that the Dawgs lost that day; it’s how they did it. It was lopsided, and Georgia looked like it couldn’t do much of anything right.

Almost a month later, the tables have turned, and Georgia snuffed out the Tigers to the tune of a 28-7 SEC Championship victory on Saturday.

The loss in November was certainly not a death knell for the UGA’s Playoff hopes, but it was a destructive example of how the Dawgs could be beaten.

Georgia didn’t let it happen again.

Auburn’s win was simple and dominant, and it preyed on Georgia’s inefficiencies. The Tigers found the blueprint and executed it perfectly: shut down the run on early downs and force freshman QB Jake Fromm to throw long. Florida and South Carolina players had publicly called it out as the way to beat UGA, but neither could do it.

The Dawgs were three-of-14 third downs, with an average distance of eight yards to gain. Nine third down situations were 9-plus yards, and only three were with 4 yards to gain or fewer.

Fromm was four-of-11 passing on third-down attempts, converting three third downs through the air. A penalty gave the Dawgs the other conversion.

UGA rushed on one third down to no avail (losing 1 yard), and got sacked on two others.

In the rematch, Auburn actually did the same thing to Georgia on third down. The Dawgs were even worse in this game, going two-of-11 on the crucial down with an average yards-to-gain distance of 7.2. The difference is what Georgia was able to do on the other downs.

While the Dawgs had only one rush over 10 yards in the first game, they had eight in the rematch, rushing for 238 yards. Besides Alabama — which rushed for 211 yards last week — Georgia’s rushing total was by far the most by a Tigers’ opponent this season.

The run game combined to mitigate what was a big Achilles’ heel for the Dawgs in the first game: the passing game. In Round 1, Fromm looked like someone who was in high school football just last season. The run game wasn’t helping him out, and it was time for some regression to the mean anyway.

On third-and-4 or more — semi-obvious passing situations — he's 37-for-64 for 656 yards, eight touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 175.8 rating. That's impossibly good.

And there was bound to be some regression to the mean. Against Auburn on third-and-four or more, Fromm was 4-for-10 for 100 yards and two big sacks for a loss of 21. And honestly, gaining a net 79 yards on 12 pass attempts against Auburn in those situations isn't bad. But 28 of those yards came on the first third-and-long of the game. His next five produced one completion and two sacks, and by the time he found a rhythm, the Dawgs were down 23.

But Fromm wasn’t getting help like this in the first game: