Dawgs Daily

New Rule Changes Are Affecting Georgia's Offense Drastically

The Georgia Bulldogs scraped by with a comeback victory against the South Carolina Gamecocks, but new clock rules affected their chance to have a solid offensive start.

Ethan Offutt

New Rule Changes Are Affecting Georgia's Offense Drastically
New Rule Changes Are Affecting Georgia's Offense Drastically /

Kirby Smart and his Georgia Bulldogs had a scare between the hedges Saturday when his team was down 14-3 at halftime, but eventually came away with the victory, 24-14. The offense for Georgia has received its fair share of criticism for the halftime deficit and what appears to be a three game history of slow starts, but new rule changes to college football are affecting the game drastically. 

There were plenty of rule changes made to the landscape of college football this offseason from the NCAA and NAIA levels, but the most important rule change is the clock no longer being stopped whenever a team's offense gets a first down. Early in the season, we are seeing the effects of this rule change, and we saw it firsthand yesterday in the first half of Georgia's game. 

South Carolina and Georgia had four offensive possessions in the first half of the game yesterday. South Carolina had a possession time of five minutes and four seconds on their first scoring drive, then two minutes and twenty-seven seconds on the next. On Georgia's two drives that put them in scoring position, they had a drive worth seven minutes, fifty-four seconds, then six minutes and three seconds. That amount of time is a total of 21 minutes and 28 seconds, which is equal to about a full quarter and a half of football. 

In the second half, each of Georgia's touchdown drives averaged a drive length of about three minutes and sixteen seconds. In their 48-7 rout of South Carolina last season, Georgia averaged about three minutes and thirty-four seconds on those same types of drives in the first half. Seemingly, the new rule changes aren't affecting the teams who usually have had an up-tempo offense, unlike what Georgia has historically had. For example, the USC Trojans defeated the Stanford Cardinals this past weekend with a final score of 56-10, and both teams shared 15 first-half drives because of nine drives that lasted around the 1-minute range. 

Georgia quarterback Carson Beck 

Although there weren't many drives for either team in the first half of South Carolina vs. Georgia, both teams had their fair share of reps in the second half, where the Bulldogs' offense began to roll, and the defense pitched a shutout against the explosive Gamecock offense, and Georgia ended the game leading in total possession time, possessing the ball for 37 minutes and 13 seconds compared to S.C.'s 22 minutes and 47 seconds. 

Here are Kirby Smart's thoughts about the first-half drive stats for Georgia: 

What may be crazier from this game is how both South Carolina and Georgia only had one possession in the first quarter, a trend that seems to be often for Georgia this season. Against UT Martin, Georgia only had three total possessions in the first quarter and six in the first half. Then, against Ball State, Georgia had two first-quarter possessions and six in the first half. But, in the second halves of all three games, Georgia also had six possessions in the second half. 

So, how do you counter this? You could either try and play quick with big hitting plays, or like Smart said, you could play with a "pace" and really wear out a defense for opposing teams and the play clock as well. More often than not, the winning team usually comes away winning the time of possession battle. Texas and Alabama saw a similar trend in their game in their Week Two matchup, where both teams had about five drives per half. 

The Dawgs will be back for a night game next week against a UAB squad that has undergone some changes this off-season. The Dawgs will be looking to open the season up 4-0 in their home stadium at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 24th. 

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Ethan Offutt
ETHAN OFFUTT

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