The coordinators weigh in

Defensive coordinator Todd Grantham said Georgia was lax in its fundamentals, namely tackling.

“We have to tackle. When you tackle, on third down you have to get off the field,” Grantham said. “From that standpoint of it, we got to do a better job mentally of finsishing off tackles. We got to a do a better job in the run game, and when you get them to third down you have to get them off the field, and you have to make plays on the ball.”

Grantham was asked to explain Marcus Lattimore’s huge game.

“When a guy has success like that, I don’t think it’s one thing. I think it’s a few things,” Grantham said. “I think what we have to do is continue to work. It’s along season, and improve on the things that happened today. If we do that, we’ll be fine moving forward.”

Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo was overall pleased with his unit, but not the amount of points it put up.

“We had enough in the red zone, to come away with six points in three trips, that’s disappointing,” he said.

Bobo was asked about the absence of A.J. Green.

“We’re gonna run our offense. He’s not here,” Bobo said. “I thought our receivers stepped up and did a nice job. You’ve gotta give South Carolina credit, they did a nice job of stopping us.”

Bobo also seemed to stick by the gameplan. Georgia finished the game with 253 yards, 192 of them passing. The Bulldogs averaged just 2.3 yards per rush.

“We felt going into the game that we were gonna play to our strength: The play-action pass and the running game,” Bobo said. “The running game was a little bit inconsistent, but I thought the play-action pass worked well when we used it.
And you wanna protect a guy on the road, you wanna do things to give him confidence. The bottom line (is) we were still in the football game.”

The Bulldogs also burned three quick timeouts, two of them on offense, early in the second half.

“Not good. Not good,” Bobo said. “That happens early in the season, but we’ve got to do a better job of getting the right personnel in the game. … It’s the little things that are gonna cost you on the road. Not converting in the red zone, turnovers, and burning those timeouts.”