The SEC Championship is today, and Georgia is clearly nervous. After all, they’re trying to solicit help from Gators fans to take down the behemoth in Tuscaloosa.
And…….no https://t.co/BqC95WZYWR
— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) November 30, 2018
The thinking goes that Georgia took Alabama down to the wire last year, so this year they can get over the hump. But is that realistic?
Game analysis
No, it’s not. The reason is specific to the one player who turned the tide in the championship game last year: Tua Tagovailoa.
Tagovailoa came into the game in the second half with Alabama down 13-0 and struggling to get anything going on offense. Alabama did score 20 points in the second half, but it wasn’t all Tua.
The play after he threw a really bad interception, his defense got the ball right back. Had Georgia just gained 6 or 7 yards and settled for a field goal while running 3 minutes off the clock, the 23-7 lead was likely insurmountable.
Instead, Alabama was able to kick a field goal after a 15-yard drive to bring the score to 20-10, setting the stage for the special comeback.
You can use just about any metric to look at this game and arrive at the same answer. But I’m going to use my yards above replacement (YAR) metric because I think it really illustrates the difference between these teams from last year to this year.
A short primer. YAR attempts to look at a QBs play, not just through the air but on the ground as well in relation to his peers. I originally tried to quantify this because Dan Mullen had so much offensive success at Mississippi State with Nick Fitzgerald, who wasn’t very effective through the air. But Fitzgerald did run at a way more effective clip (6.1 yards per rush in 2017) than most FBS QBs.
So for a season, an average YAR of 0.0 is an average QB, or “game manager”. A YAR of 0.5 is good, but not great, a YAR of 1.0 is really good, and a YAR of 2.0 is typically Heisman worthy. The same applies in the negative direction as well.
For reference, Feleipe Franks YAR in 2017 was -1.45. In 2018, it was 0.13. He improved from really, really ineffective to slightly better than a game manager. That feels right.
For this exercise, I’ve split YAR into three categories. oYAR is the offensive performance for a team. dYAR is how that defense played against every QB that it faced. That allows for the calculation of a delta, which says how much better a team’s QB was than the opposition over the entire year.
If we look at Alabama and Georgia and compare 2017 vs. 2018, we clearly see the Tagovailoa effect.
Alabama and Georgia per-game offense, defensive and overall yards above replacement (YAR) for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
This year, the Alabama defense has been almost as good as last year, posting a defensive yards above replacement (dYAR) of -1.8 per game compared to -2.2 (remember that for defense, more negative is better). The Georgia defense has likewise been just as effective (-1.5 vs. -1.4).
Thus, if the offenses both improved from 2017 to 2018, you would expect a close game again.
But that’s not what has happened. The Alabama offense has exploded, with an average oYAR of 4.1 in the 2018 season compared to 1.9. That difference of 2.1 is the equivalent to adding a Heisman-level QB.
Conversely, Georgia’s offense has slightly regressed, with a oYAR of 1.8 compared to 2.1 in 2017. The result is that while last year, Alabama was favored (ΔYAR = 0.6), it was by a margin where a poor performance by its QB or a really good performance by the opposition could mean defeat.
That’s how you get the Tide’s one loss last season to Auburn, where Jalen Hurts had a YAR of -0.61 while Jarrett Stidham had a YAR of 1.09. Basically, Hurts was pretty poor and Stidham played at a borderline-elite level. That’s how you used to beat Alabama.
Alabama and Georgia oYAR and dYAR over the 2018 season. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
This chart shows the Alabama and Georgia offenses (left) and the defenses (right) this season. The Alabama defense has been better than the Georgia defense, with more elite performances (dYAR > -3 six times).
But look at the offenses. This year, the Tide had an oYAR above 3 nine times. Georgia did that twice and one of those was against UMass.
Prediction
The Tide were already National Championship level last season. Tagovailoa has added a Heisman Trophy-level QB to that mix. The result is that Alabama is hands-down the best team in the country.
None of this is news to anyone who has watched Alabama play. But what it suggests is that even if Tagovailoa just puts up a below average performance for him, Georgia is still going to need elite-level play from Jake Fromm.
Fromm is capable of that kind of game, but not on a regular basis and the likelihood goes down against this Alabama defense. It also isn’t likely that Tagovailoa plays below average. He has a season YAR of 4.04! So just an average performance from Tua and the Tide win big even if Fromm plays out of his mind.
There’s a reason that the Georgia alumni are begging for support from their biggest rivals. They’re going to need it.
Alabama wins, 37-10.
Gatormiami
You make a lot of sense here. That UGA fan makes none.