We’re two games into the 2022 season, and the Georgia defense has yet to see dropoff from last year’s production… in scoring at least.

While a Glenn Schumann and Will Mushcamp led group have managed to keep teams out of the end zone, one thing they’ve failed to do is get to the quarterback. In the first two games of the 2021 season, the Dawgs amounted 10 sacks compared to this year’s 1. And even though stats aren’t everything, Coach Kirby Smart still said, “If anything, I would say I wish we finished a little better on the ones that we’ve had that got away…”

In regards to getting to the quarterback at Georgia, it’s a whole lot more than just sending three or four guys, asking them to pin their ears back and rush the passer. There’s a science to it. Smart says that they try to create “free runners,” blitzers who are schemed to have a straight, unblocked path into the backfield, “Our goal is usually bat 60 to 70 percent on free runs because you’re not going to get them all.”

Coach Smart is by no means disappointed at the level at which his team is competing though. He said, “They’ve affected the quarterback,” but they haven’t had the opportunity to script these kinds of plays because of the mobility of the quarterbacks they’ve faced. It’s what happens “when you play really good athletes,” and both Oregon’s Bo Nix and Samford’s Michael Hiers fit that mobile quarterback category. 

Less sacks is just the result of less opportunities, and Smart said it plain and simple, “We haven’t been given many opportunities.”

South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler is a great athlete in his own right, but something tells me Kirby N’ Co. have something special cooking for their SEC opener.