12 TAKEAWAYS GEORGIA VS KENTUCKY - "And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late?"

1) I know what I watched from the press box on Saturday night. Georgia, winners of 41 consecutive games, was very much in danger of losing a tackle football game to the same Kentucky team who lost by 25 points to South Carolina a week earlier. What I want to understand is how it really happened. How, precisely, did we arrive at Georgia 13 - Kentucky 12? The Bulldogs averaged just 4.7 yards per play on offense, and a 0.8 Net YPP advantage after having a 3.9 Net YPP advantage over Clemson... Huh? How did we look up at halftime and see Georgia with its lowest number of total yards in a first half since one Joseph Howell Cox was taking snaps under center in 2009? How did this all occur? Did Georgia get exposed by Kentucky? Did Georgia expose itself? Is this repeatable? Over the last 48 hours, I have tried to dissect the Georgia-Kentucky game from every angle possible. I have spoken to sources, rewatched every play, and tried to look at this game from both 30,000 feet and ground level. What follows are my thoughts on what happened. Let's start at the beginning...

2) "He scares me. Yeah. See, if he dead, you know, I could carry it better. Comin' up the way we did, you know, you kind of expect that. Waitin' on it. See, the thing is, you only got to f**k up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late? You can't plan through no shit like this, man. It's life." - Avon Barksdale, The Wire

One of my favorite television series of all time is The Wire. It's a crime drama series that takes place in Baltimore and examines institutions and their relationships to law enforcement. It was the first show on TV to actually develop the characters of the bad guys (read: criminals) with the same detail and attention of the good guys (read: police). It was written by a former newspaper reporter and a former police officer. It was, and still is, lauded for its realism. 

The quote above comes when the leader of an organized drug ring, Avon Barksdale, is talking to his nephew, D'Angelo. The nephew oversees part of the gang's territory for his uncle. D'Angelo has been summoned by his uncle to visit the hospital, and he arrives reluctantly. As the two men walk towards the hospital room flanked by their own security, Avon tells him how important family is to him. The patient they are visiting is Avon's brother. He was shot in an act of drug related violence years earlier, and here he sits, not totally alive, but also not dead. For a moment, it seems like the importance of family is the lesson of the visit, but it soon becomes clear that there is another purpose for the trip. That's when the quote above is uttered.

Looking at his brother, Avon admits that the repeated visits to the hospital have taken a toll on his psyche. Each time he comes, he is reminded of the dire consequences of even the tiniest mistake. His success in the drug trade has made him a target for both law enforcement and rival gangs. One moment speaking on a wire tapped cell phone can put him away for life. One moment on a sidewalk without protection can lead to his shooting. Anyone can be an undercover cop or a potential assassin. Only through his own unceasing vigilance does he remain alive. The unpleasant meditation is reminder of how fragile his place is, but it is also likely responsible for him getting to this point. Appreciating the full weight of his crown is the only path to keeping it.  

It's human nature to look for a moment to let your guard down and sigh. Avon Barksdale never sighs, and for that reason he is the king of the drug trade on Baltimore's violent and impoverished west side. 

3) Georgia looked unready for the moment from the beginning on Saturday night. From the first snap, Kentucky was the more urgent team. I have seen all sorts of performances from Georgia during the Kirby Smart era. I have seen them look sloppy. I have seen them look out of sync. This might be the only time I remember looking out in the first quarter and thinking they looked flat. 

From the moment the stadium jumbotron showed UK's team walking down the tunnel, you knew they were out to prove something. That's the difficult thing about being Georgia in the year 2024.

Every college football game has a result, but not every college football game tells us something concrete. That's especially true in September. Kentucky got embarrassed by South Carolina in Week 2, and Georgia presented them with one of the rarest opportunities in the sport. When you beat Georgia, nobody questions whether or not you did something worthwhile. 

As I write this, it has been 1,409 days since Georgia last lost a regular season game. There is a reason that nobody has achieved a win streak like Georgia's since Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Sooner of the 1950's. 

"And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late?"

Kirby Smart is fighting the same flaws of human nature that Avon Barksdale was. 

Throughout the first season of The Wire, we see Avon's paranoia increase. He has the phone lines taken out of his apartment after a caller rings and hangs up when he answers. He refuses to conduct business on the same pay phone twice. He eventually has people killed because he fears they know too much. 

Avon brought D'Angelo to the hospital and confided his fear in him with the hopes that his nephew would also be instilled with the same type of urgency that he possessed. Not only does Avon have to stay vigilant at all times, he also has to remind everyone in his organization to do the same. One mistake by an underling could land him in prison. It's a monumental task. Helping his nephew understand that perfection is a constant requirement is the point of the visit.

Avon brought his nephew to the hospital to show him what can happen when you don't operate with the proper level of urgency.

Kirby Smart brought his team to Lexington, and they found out what can happen when you don't operate with the proper level of urgency. They came out looking a little slow, and a little late, and it nearly cost them a football game.

If they had lost as a 21.5-point favorite it would have been the largest point spread upset for UGA since at least 1950. Teams improve the most after losses. They can be a tremendous gift to a team and a staff if they are channeled properly. Georgia goes out every week and tries to match the urgency of teams that have lost without having lost themselves. That's damn hard to do. 

What we should get out of the way is this- Georgia is going to lose a regular season football game at some point. I don't know when it will happen, but I know it will happen. You, a Georgia fan, have become so conditioned to winning that you are probably now conditioned to overreact to bad things. Whenever the loss comes, it does not mean that the UGA dynasty is over. It does not mean that Kirby Smart has lost his edge. It does not mean that multiple assistants need to be fired. 

In the same vein, what happened at Kentucky on Saturday night does not mean that UGA is doomed for failure. Did we see things that were concerning? Oh yeah. We also saw UGA figure it out in the end when things looked dicey. It's Week 3 of the longest college football season in history. There is a lot to come. How we judge this team and staff will ultimately be determined by what they learned from this adverse experience, not by the fact that the adversity occurred. 

To drive that point home, I will remind you that UGA hasn't scored 20 points in a game at Kentucky since 2018. They scored 16 points there on November 19, 2022 and then scored 50 on LSU two weeks later in the SEC Championship. Kirby has always used this game and this opponent for a greater cause of sorts. 

4) There was an air of "I told you so" about Smart when he took the podium on Saturday night in a tiny cinderblock walled room in the bowels of Kroger Field. "You know, I think I’ll open with (the) an immense amount of respect for Coach Stoops and the atmosphere and the culture he’s created here. I tried to tell everybody all week, but nobody would listen to me."

From the jump, UGA just looked... off. On the opening drive, the Bulldogs gave up an easy QB pressure against a three-man rush. It set the tone for everything that came after. Kentucky knocked the Georgia offense onto its heels, and it didn't really get back into a punching stance for the rest of the half. 

Moments like that are what I am struggling with in the aftermath of this game. 

You all probably know that I have my long con theory about how Georgia manages seasons. The Bulldogs don't burn their best stuff onto tape until they need to, and they don't chase positive press by digging into their playbook to blowout overmatched opponents. I have said that they use games against lesser teams to practice things that the staff feels they haven't perfected yet, and I believe that to be true. 

Where I am caught up, and why it has taken me so long to write this piece, is trying to decide whether this Kentucky performance was a product of the long con gone wrong. I know that there were some moments of awful execution. I also know that I saw a different offense on Saturday than the one I saw the first two weeks of the season. 

5) I have lots of questions about the offense we saw on Saturday night. Back in 2022, I became convinced that Georgia went to Kentucky and essentially wanted to play a close, hard nosed game where it leaned on its zone run concepts and readied its players for the stretch run to a title. Since Saturday, I have talked to a couple people who insinuated that the offense that Georgia runs in practice is different than the one they ran against Kentucky. So, a few possibilities emerge... 

Against Clemson, UGA ran motion on 40.5% of its snaps. Last week, that number was basically cut in half. Considering the FCS opponent, I thought that made good sense. It also signaled to me that UGA's flavor of vanilla is still pretty exotic. There are only a couple other teams in the SEC who have ran that much pre-snap motion in a game this season against any opponent, much less one from the FCS. Against Kentucky, UGA's pre-snap motions all but disappeared until the game got tight late. UGA ran just 10 motion snaps on Saturday night (6 run/4 pass) despite averaging 9.75 yards a pass when doing so. The motions on run plays came in short yardage more often than not, and 4 of them were literally just variations of Inside Zone. There was one Outside Zone run for 2 yards off motion and an Inside Power carry that was a disaster. The motion runs produced a 50% Success Rate despite only averaging 3.0 YPC... That is a LARGE departure from the offensive identity that was being established over the two weeks prior. 

Was this a long con game, or a case of bad gameplanning? Was Georgia willing to play with fire against Kentucky in order to avoid putting anything on tape for Alabama and others? 

The WR usage and passing concepts pointed to some similar themes... Arian Smith had been force fed at times through the first two weeks and established on tape, with much of that coming off of motion. We saw him targeted 3 times in this game with all 3 targets coming between the numbers and behind the line of scrimmage. It was as vanilla as it gets. 

There's the play-action too, but more on that in a minute.

6) Let's talk about this performance from Carson Beck. I would go so far as to say this was the worst performance of his career. I continue to wonder if the early protection breakdowns from the offensive line got him feeling jumpy from the start and things snowballed from there. Beck was pressured on 9 of his 27 dropbacks, an even third of Georgia's pass plays in this game. His time to throw on those 9 dropbacks were 3.56 seconds, and he attempted 7 passes when pressured. His Avg Depth of Target for the full game was 6.5 yards, which is more or less in line with his ADOT from the Clemson game. What jumped out to me is that Beck's ADOT on those 9 dropbacks when pressured was 16.8 yards downfield. Essentially, when Beck did let things develop downfield he had to pay the price of throwing under pressure. He completed 3/7 passes for 43 YDS (6.1 YPA) when throwing under pressure in this game, but the question of being able to stretch the field without getting your QB hit is a real concern. 

The pressure was a problem... Beck's completion percentage on Saturday night was 62.5% on 15/24 passing for just 160 yards. What's interesting was his Adjusted Completion % was 72.7%, a full 10 percent higher. Adjusted Completion factors out throws that are dropped, batted down, or occur when a QB is being hit. The idea is to create a formula more indicative of QB accuracy. We can give Beck the benefit of the doubt on some level and rightly say that bad pass protection hurt his performance.  

There were also throws where Beck just didn't get it done. The 3rd & 7 pass to Lovett that initially looked like a bizarre pick-six was just a bad pass in the face of the blitz. UK was bringing pressure and Lovett and Bell were both open to the right side of the field. Beck delivered an inaccurate ball that Lovett had to dive for. An accurate ball results in Lovett catching the pass and turning upfield for an easy first down. Beck probably had another half second to let the route develop, and he also had space to step into the throw. He didn't step into the pass and it resulted in the inaccurate delivery. 

I noticed on Saturday night that Beck seemed to be shrugging his shoulders a lot between plays. He also warmed up more between series than I've ever noticed in the past. He would throw through TV timeouts over by the sideline like he was trying to stay loose. Frankly, I am curious if he was dealing with some discomfort in his throwing shoulder or somewhere else on his body before he had the awkward fall on his non-throwing shoulder at the end of the game. Maybe he took a hit early on that caused something to feel off for him, but he never looked totally comfortable in the pocket at any point on Saturday night. 

That may have been due to seeing three men get home right from the start of the game. That had to be jarring for a QB who has played behind one of the most consistent OL's in the country for the last 17 games. 

The tackle position has become a real problem for Georgia all of a sudden. It was supposed to be RT that was a question, with Truss maybe being replaced by Freeling. On Saturday night, Earnest Greene looked borderline unplayable at times. He allowed 4 pressures on just 23 pass block snaps, which was the most pressures he's ever allowed in his career. I am rarely shocked by much with UGA football, but that was shocking and unexpected. He just looked totally out of sorts. The problem was that his substitute wasn't much better. Monroe Freeling gave up 2 pressures on just 7 pass block snaps. 

I've questioned Xavier Truss a lot over the last year, but damn if he didn't deliver in a major way in this game. He had 1 pressure allowed in the game, and UGA's only TD drive started with him lined up at LT and Freeling at RT. After Freeling whiffed a block badly on 2nd & 2, UGA switched Truss back over to RT and ETN busted the run on 3rd and short where he almost tight roped the sideline to get to the end zone.

Of all the things that we saw vs Kentucky, the tackle situation is the most concerning to me. With how Greene played after his first few starts last year I thought he'd be a high-round draft pick next spring if he wanted to. Now, I'm not sure if UGA can play him in Tuscaloosa. He killed multiple drives. 

7) I talk often about how quick of a processor Beck is. That actually started to work against him on Saturday night. The discomfort in the pocket had him wanting to get the ball out quick, and I think it actually caused him to fly through reads that were going to come open and throw them too early. He did this at times early in his career, most notably in the first half of the South Carolina game last season. He'd just rifle the ball out short or check it down instead of getting it downfield. One example of this was the throw to Delp that was almost jumped for a 90ish yard pick-six after Damon Wilson's fumble recovery set UGA up in scoring territory. It was a bad decision, but it was also a bad decision that came way earlier than it had too. I think Lovett could have had a chance to score on a slot fade to the back right corner of the end zone. There were a lot of other things that were developing on that play. Beck should be savvy, pump faking and influencing defenders, but he wasn't. 

The biggest failure of Beck is this number- 20 dropbacks, 9/17 for 55 YDS, 3.2 YDS per attempt... That's Beck's stat line on regular dropbacks without play-action.

The biggest failure of Bobo is this number- 7 dropbacks, 6/7 for 105 YDS, 15 YDS per attempt... That's Beck's stat line on dropbacks with play-action. 

If this was a long con style performance, then I suppose this makes sense on a certain level. Georgia ran play-action on just 25% of its passes after using it 38.9% of dropbacks vs Clemson and 42.3% of dropbacks vs Tennessee Tech. You could argue that UGA wouldn't want to run play-action with the issues it was having at tackle, but I would argue the contrary- Motion, play-action... These are things that help blockers and quarterbacks and freeze defenders. Beck's time to throw on play-action was 3.2 seconds on average. He was only pressured once. His time to throw on those 9 pressured dropbacks was 3.56 seconds. 

EIGHT) It's a no-brainer that Bobo should give Beck more play-action than he gave him on Saturday night in two weeks. What Georgia also needs is to figure out its WR situation. I have been sounding the bell on the wideouts for awhile now, and I am still trying to figure out what to make of the situation. Here's some rapid fire thoughts on different guys...

• There is only one WR on this roster who I feel certain is elite at the moment, and that is Dom Lovett. He emerged in a HUGE way on Saturday night. Beck had 3 attempts of 20+ YDS and Lovett caught both completions. I said this offseason that sending him vertical would lead to more YAC and it did. He had 66 YDS on his two 20+ yard targets with 24 of those yards coming after the catch. Throw him the damn ball. He's the only dude getting open with real consistency right now. He had 4.26 Yards Per Route Run on 21 receiving snaps. That's elite type stuff. 
• Colbie Young... That kid is good. He and Beck seem to have their timing down on the stop fades. The one they hooked up on was gorgeous on Saturday night, and they have shown they have chemistry in the red zone. Why did he only play 7 receiving snaps? Is that hamstring from fall camp not fully healed? What are we doing here? 2.86 Yards Per Route Run
• London Humphreys looked like a real weapon against Clemson- Zero targets since. If that isn't long conning then I don't know what the hell we're doing. He probably needs to block better. Young probably does too, but guess what? The perimeter blocking sucked on Saturday night anyways. London was in the game for 7 pass snaps. I'm hoping for Georgia's sake that this all makes sense when he's sprinting through the Bama secondary in a couple weeks. 
• Oscar Delp ran more routes than any Bulldog on Saturday night and had 4 targets with 2 catches and a fumble. He's been a great blocker this year so far, but struggled mightily in run block during this game. Why isn't he staying in more to help out with the tackles who are struggling? He had 1 pass block snap. That fumble could have cost Georgia the game as well. I appreciate the effort, but he has to be smarter... We know Beck loves the seams, but he and Delp haven't gotten into that groove yet. 0.55 Yards per Route Run.
• Benjamin Yurosek wasn't targeted in this game, but his poor blocking single handily blew up a possession early in the game. Lawson Luckie is explosive as a receiver and can at least block as well as Yurosek. If the Stanford transfer doesn't show something different soon this experiment needs to be over. 
• Arian Smith was fed for two weeks then disappeared. Mentioned him earlier, but yeah... He was coming open deep down the sidelines at one point and then didn't get the ball because Beck was under duress. I think we'll see him more next game. 0.62 Yards per Route Run
• Dillon Bell is the guy I remain most conflicted about. He didn't look great against Clemson, and I saw him running go routes from the boundary at times Saturday where the CB was just running the route for him without ever really straining. Where is the separation? Still think he's valuable but I don't know if he should be out on the boundary at X for 20 snaps a game. He has shown great contested catch ability in the past, but it's not being utilized yet. Will that come soon? What I can say is that he is the only dude in this offense who has consistently blocked well on the perimeter... 1.05 Yards per Route Run. 

In general, the route combos in this game were the biggest mystery upon rewatch. Kentucky plays a ton of zone, and there are a lot of general zone beaters that you can run to take advantage of that. A lot of that involves working outside the numbers on curls and stop fades. Beck had 4 attempts outside the numbers all night. UGA also managed just 6 yards on 5 screen passes. The perimeter blocking was poor, and did Beck no favors and put UGA behind the sticks. 

Things like Wheel/Post + Dig that UGA often runs a lot were curiously absent in this game, and we only saw it once. The jet motions they ran a ton versus Clemson are great for defenses like this one and it wasn't noticeably there except for the goal line run on Branson's TD. In the end, the Passing Success Rate was just 40.7%. That's a solid 10-15% less than your average UGA performance. 

For all the struggles, Beck was actually 5/7 for 114 YDS on his attempts of over 10 yards downfield. It just felt like a lot of the routes UGA ran in this game were short crossers over the middle. Pass catchers could do a better job sitting down between defenders in zone, but Beck could also do a better job of seeing some of those as we discussed above. 

9) It was noticeable how UGA suddenly turned things on in the 3rd quarter offensively. The first drive of the second half equaled the entire total yardage of the first half. I thought Bobo showed some formational variability and good play calling when UGA actually looked at risk of being in trouble in this game. The goal line formation with Arian Smith in the backfield was cool. So was the stacked receivers over the slot at one point. It did feel like a switch got flipped. 

The run game was just as vanilla as the pass game. 19 zone runs to 6 gap scheme runs. To be fair, the Kentucky fronts were overhanging at times and UGA's gap scheme stuff was getting eaten up pretty consistently when we did see it. I only saw one gap scheme run that was successful. The OL has gotta be better with that. 

There isn't a ton to say about the offensive line in run block. I thought the middle three of Fairchild-Wilson-Morris were pretty damn good all night in both run and pass. Credit to Micah for stepping in there and replacing Ratledge without much drop off. I wouldn't be concerned about UGA managing that injury, especially with Calhoun and Drew Bobo also around. 

As for ball carriers, this was the Etienne show. Give him credit. He got a whole lot of HARD yards in this game, and did it despite having a shoulder issue that caused him to leave the field late in first half. He's tougher than I thought, and he fell forward a lot in a game where falling forward made a big difference a lot. UGA's rush success rate was 40%, which wasn't bad when considering that Kentucky came in giving up just 25%. There was an air of predictability to some of the early down runs, and UGA ran the ball 63% of the time on 1st and 2nd down. They created just 7 first downs on 41 plays that happened on 1st and 2nd down. Three of UGA's four runs on third downs were able to move the chains. 

I didn't find myself impressed with the run game, but it also felt like UGA never passed Kentucky out of some of their defensive looks. Trevor racked up 45 yards after contact and forced 4 missed tackles on his way to 88 yards and 4.6 YPA. UGA will have to be better with its gap scheme blocking when tackles pull into the point of attack. The zone blocking was pretty good to my eye, particularly from Freeling, but there were too many runs where all but one guy did their job. You can't bust big plays with four guys blocking well. 

10) When you consider the offensive struggles and how thin UGA was up front, I thought this was a pretty fantastic defensive performance. Georgia kept Kentucky to a 42% Offensive Success Rate despite the Wildcats running 85 total plays and 73 plays from scrimmage (UGA only ran 54 scrimmage plays). 

The run defense was hit at times, but they never gave up the long play. Kentucky had a 52% Rush Success Rate, which is way over what we normally see UGA allow. The number versus SEC opponents is normally in the 30's or low 40's on a bad day. The culprit for UGA in all of this was far too many missed tackles. Kentucky RB's forced FIFTEEN missed tackles, which is actually insane. Clemson only broke 2 tackles against the Bulldogs. That the Wildcats broke that many is a credit to them. Don't be mistaken. Those backs ran hard as hell, and you gotta tip your cap to that. What is wild is the fact they broke 15 tackles and had a long rush of 17 yards on the night. They still averaged 5 yards a carry without taking out sack yardage, which isn't a huge number. All and all, it was a testament to UGA's defense swarming to the ball even though the first man missed far too many times. 

UK used a mixture of 20 Zone Scheme runs and 15 Gap Scheme runs on the evening. What really hurt Georgia was the inside runs. Kentucky had a 61% success rate on 18 Inside Zone Read attempts, and averaged 4.3 YPC on those runs. Inside Power was run 6 times for 6.5 yards a pop and 5 of the 6 runs were successful.

The missed tackles were a team issue- 10 players missed at least one. The guys who missed multiple were Daylen Everette (4), KJ Bolden (2) and Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins (3). This was a welcome to the SEC game for Bolden. He got outphysicaled on a couple of plays in the hole. He pitched in 5 tackles however and is the type of kid who will be challenged by those plays and turn them into a positive. 

Everette made 6 tackles, which is a credit to his work rate in this game, but seeing him miss that many tackles is surprising. His emergence last year as CB #2 and this year as CB #1 has always seemed tied to his reliability in that department. 

This game was fascinating because UGA got leaned on in a way they rarely do. They usually game script opponents into nightmare scenarios, but this time they got caught in their own. 

Kentucky was 9/16 on third downs, and the Bulldogs were also flagged 9 times. That kept them on the field way too much early on, and it added up late.

The 3rd down stat could make one argue that Georgia was not sound on key downs, but I'll offer you this as a way to refute that. Kentucky never got into the red zone in this game. 

Kentucky Yards Per Play

• 44 plays in own territory - 5.6 YPP
• 29 plays in UGA territory - 1.3 YPP

11) On the defensive line, Ingram-Dawkins can be forgiven for his tackling errors in my opinion. He was on the field for 63 snaps, which is far and away the most I can ever remember seeing from a UGA defensive lineman. He wasn't great as a tackler versus the run at times this week, but that was because UGA seemed to have him shooting gaps more than two-gapping. He was textbook last week, and he turned in SIX PRESSURES for his efforts. Those are like Devonte Wyatt pressure numbers, and he did it without Mykel or Brinson on the field to occupy attention. He is a STAR. He will be 1st or 2nd round pick. He is the interior havoc maker that Georgia has been missing since Jalen Carter left town. He changes everything up front. 

Stackhouse really hung in there too despite playing 52 snaps. Ditto for Christen Miller, who played 58 and recorded 3 tackles on the night. Miller had never played more than 29 snaps in a game for Georgia prior to Kentucky. Ingram-Dawkins had never played more than 35. I don't recall a game where Georgia tested the conditioning and durability of its interior defenders like this under Kirby Smart. Georgia's pass rush in this game was PHENOMENAL. It was as good as I have seen since probably 2021. The Bulldogs put 30 pressures on Vandagriff over 37 dropbacks. You will win every week doing that. Vandagriff was 5/15 for 49 YDS (3.3 YPA) when pressured. Georgia also blitzed him A LOT. They went after him on 23 dropbacks and he was just 6/16 for 56 YDS on those plays. 

Jalon Walker is a bonafide star as well. 8 pressures from him, which led all of FBS football this week. He was amazing in this game, and I don't have proper context to explain the work rate I witnessed from him. So many Kentucky plays were foiled because he flushed Vandagriff. His pressure on the second to last UK possession likely saved the game and kept them from getting into field-goal range. 

One of the more eye popping stats from this one- Chaz Chambliss had 5 solo tackles and 3 assists with 0 missed tackles. Kentucky was running a lot of stretch plays where he had to play down the line and then was being held when he tried to get back outside, but he played a good game at his spot. He did all of that playing just 41 snaps. It was notable to me that Damon Wilson played 45 snaps in this game while Chambliss played 41. They were both out there at times, but Wilson started too.

One other thing from up front, I will still offer you a little Gabe Harris stock if you ask nicely. We knew he was physical in run defense, but I did not know he had that pass rush in him. 4 Pressures for him in just 11 pass rush snaps, and he got himself a sack to top it off. Having him and Damon Wilson in the same cycle seems a bit unfair. 

12) More back seven... NFL people can't stop talking about Raylen Wilson. The way he moves at his size is unique. Go back and watch the move he puts on that poor UK TE when he comes on the delayed blitz and forces that fumble. It's unfair. He had 2 Pressures in just 4 pass rush snaps and the sack/strip of Vandagriff was part of it. Something tells me we're going to see much more of him blitzing next time Georgia plays. Wilson also had 4 solo tackles and 2 assisted as a run defender in this game. 3 of those were failures for Kentucky's run game. 

On the whole, I am not reading a ton into the run defense issues because a point came where UGA started taking bigger risks up front and shooting gaps more to try and create a tackle for loss and get off the field. I did have concern about how hard the LB's bit on some of the moves by the UK backs. They weren't getting clean beat to the edge like last year, but they were giving up too much on cutback lanes after the defensive line had collapsed towards the ball. I thought Mondon struggled the most, but again, credit UK's running backs and their overall plan. 

The secondary was phenomenal once again, and I was impressed with how easily Aguero stepped into his first real SEC game and imposed his physicality. From a coverage standpoint, Starks, Bolden and Aguero were all really good. I thought Dan Jackson was excellent as well. He played some things perfectly. The most impressive DB on the night was Julian Humphrey though. He closed impressively on multiple occasions and he was more physical than I thought he could be. He chopped down a ball carrier alone out on the edge at one point, and that wasn't a play he would have made a year ago. 

The Everette question still lingers however. He gets crap for stuff he shouldn't sometimes, but he was a bit too turned around in zone coverage at certain moments in this game. He can run with most anyone and he is usually in position, but the field awareness still needs to be cultivated. He gave up 5 catches on 6 targets for 48 yards in this game, but he also battled and fought throughout. 

As the year continues it will be interesting to see the staff's evaluations of the position. Could a time come where Humphrey sees snaps at the #1 corner spot? 

BONUS: We're unlikely to ever definitively know what of this game was orchestrated adversity and what was plain old fashioned adversity. Kentucky certainly held up all night, and Georgia had to find its footing. It did, and that is what really matters. The Bulldogs showed they can fight through mistakes and problems and win a game when a lot of things are tilted against them. The answers to the offensive problems are there, but they have to be implemented and executed. The answer to the defensive problems are simple- Tackle better. Georgia under Smart has been the sport's best tackling team, and I don't expect that to change in the big picture. The bye week will help with that I'm sure. 

Whether Kirby Smart intended to or not, he learned a lot more about his team on Saturday night. My hunch is that on some level that's what he wanted. All that matters moving forward is what they do with this lesson. Can they learn from a loss without suffering a loss? If so, this game might go down as the most formative of the season. 

UGA gets the benefit now of loud public doubt. The last two times the Bulldogs face Alabama in Atlanta they lost. Those games came after Georgia had beaten Georgia Tech comfortably with the Tide having narrowly avoided disastrous losses to Auburn. This time, UGA gets to come into the Alabama game as the questionable party. 

Maybe that's exactly what Kirby Smart wanted. Perhaps Georgia's trip to Lexington will give them the proper amount of urgency. My guess is they don't look a little slow or a little late when they get to Tuscaloosa.