ATHENS, Ga. — The Jalen Milroe situation escalated quickly for Georgia. Just more than a year ago, he wasn’t even set as Alabama’s starting quarterback. A year later, the way he played against Georgia haunted the Bulldogs defense all offseason, and this week, he’s the focal point of preparation.
“He is as different a football player in college football as I’ve played against in a long time,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Monday.
Just how explosive he is,” linebacker Smael Mondon Jr. said. “He’s a dynamic athlete, but he’s also a good quarterback too, throwing the ball. He throws a really good deep ball.”
Milroe made plays with his arm and feet to win last year’s SEC Championship Game. This week, the hope for Georgia is it benefits from a second chance. For all its problems against Alabama, there’s recent evidence of doing better the second time it faces an Alabama quarterback. See Bryce Young, SEC and national championship games, two years ago.
And Georgia has a lot of experience against Milroe: The Bulldogs return players who account for 62 percent of the team’s defensive snaps in last year’s SEC championship, including 73 percent along the front seven. And the latter will be key.
The trick with Milroe is he’s not only a good runner — he has 193 rushing yards in three games this year, not counting lost sack yardage — but he also throws effectively from the pocket, as Georgia knows all too well. And now Milroe is playing in the Kalen DeBoer offense that helped Michael Penix Jr. throw for nearly 5,000 yards last year.
There is no design to a play that you can draw up and then say, ‘Well, I’m pretty sure this is going to happen on this play,’ with him because you don’t know,” Smart said.
Always keep a spy (or two) to watch the quarterback run? Blitz a lot? Keep defenders back in coverage? There’s no sure strategy.
“Sometimes the worst thing you can do is cover everybody with him, and sometimes the best thing you can do is cover everybody,” Smart said.
What happened in SEC championship
Some lessons from last year’s game:
• Spying Milroe for his running ability can be exploited. On the first play of the second quarter in December, a second-and-10, Georgia kept two linebackers — Mondon and Chaz Chambliss — in the middle, spying the run, and Milroe ended up hitting an open receiver over the middle for an 18-yard gain.
Milroe has good instincts in the pocket. The key play of the SEC championship was probably a fourth-and-4 pass late in the first half, which led to Alabama going up 17-7 at halftime rather than giving Georgia good field position trailing only 10-7. On that play, Milroe stayed in the pocket, in fact backing up, as Georgia brought a five-man rush while keeping a spy in the middle. Milroe made a good pass, Isaiah Bond got just enough separation, and Georgia cornerback Daylen Everette didn’t cover to the end. (And yes, the ball might have hit the ground.)
The touchdown on the next play came with Milroe in the pocket, against a four-man rush with a fifth man back spying. Jermaine Burton didn’t have much separation from Everette, but Milroe got the ball in there anyway. So, good instincts plus accuracy.
• The secondary can’t let up until the play is over. The underrated play of the game was midway through the fourth quarter when Alabama led 20-17 and had third-and-2 at its own 35. Milroe dropped back against a four-man rush with a fifth spying, and after the pocket collapsed, he moved forward and flicked the ball to Bond coming wide open across the middle.
Alabama eventually scored a touchdown, set up by yet another pass when Milroe dropped back and hit an open Bond on the left for a short pass that went down to the goal line. Again it was a case of someone in the secondary losing his man.
• But for all that, the run was still what broke Georgia’s back last year. Trailing 27-24 with 2:50 left and needing to get a stop, Milroe opened the drive by running to the left side for 30 yards.
“Do you look at last year’s game? Well, you always look at things like that from a personnel standpoint, matchup,” Smart said. “You see guys in that game, our game, that overlap. But with him, the challenges are immense because he’s an incredible football player.”
But it’s not all bad news from last year’s tape.
Georgia sacked Milroe four times, using blitzes like Jalon Walker coming untouched from Milroe’s left side on third-and-4 in the third quarter. There was another sack in the fourth quarter when Georgia rushed four with two spying and got to Milroe, who held the ball too long. Thus, good coverage too.
And despite all the big plays Milroe made, Alabama only led 20-10 early in the fourth quarter, with half of those points coming after a (disputed) fourth-down conversion and Georgia’s fumble deep in its territory.
What Michigan did
Georgia could try to glean lessons from what Michigan did in the Rose Bowl when Milroe was held to 116 passing yards, and though he rushed for a sack-adjusted 112 yards, there were six sacks.
Michigan blitzed 42.9 percent of the time, well above its season average to that point (24.4 percent). The Wolverines did it without sending the house, rather with stunts and just one-on-one pushes. The secondary played a lot of man coverage, and it didn’t matter as much because of the pressure Milroe faced.
Alabama had just one explosive play, a 29-yard pass to Bond. (Bond is now at Texas, so that’s not a problem for Georgia for another three weeks. But freshman Ryan Williams is a problem this week.)
Bad snaps and a Milroe fumble helped Michigan’s cause, and Georgia obviously can’t count on that.
The moral of the story, as it so often is these days: The other team will score, but the best defense is a good offense. Georgia probably won’t shut down Milroe, Williams and company. It can hope to contain him and hope its offense picks up the slack.
