I don't think Georgia was as well built to play with us as Notre Dame.
Georgia may be running the same scheme as Notre Dame and Alabama, but their personnel are all more tilted towards making big plays over consistent plays. They're aggressive in the secondary for ball separation, their front seven folks like to "stand-up-n-strip" over bringing a guy to the ground upon contact, and they like to get to the quarterback. If we didn't spend most of the first half playing a tempo pass-first spread offense, I feel we could have exploited their defense earlier in the SECCG.
It's not like we were passing to setup the run. We opened up with a lot of 3 and 4 WR multiples that we basically abandoned midway through the 2nd quarter. Once we went into the twin-tight singleback/pistol, they didn't stop us with any consistency the rest of the game. There was no setup for running in the twin-tight looks by opening with passes out of it. We started out playing a lot of shotgun spread with tempo, abandoned it, then went to running out of base personnel.
Notre Dame is probably better equipped to handle a gameplan like what we did against UGA the rest of the game than most give them credit. We're going to need better balance and we're going to need it out of the gate. Personally, I think Nussmeier's plan to start in our three biggest games have left a lot to be desired. Little balance, the defense anticipating a pass-focused attack, and a disregard for building the run game into the early script. The LSU and UGA games stick out to me because neither were committing a safety to the box to open the game and we insisted on passing the ball regardless. We had to run for 200 yards in the 3rd quarter to even get UGA to bring their safety into the equation. In the LSU and TAMU games, we controlled the second quarters of each by getting the run involved and abandoned it in the second half.
Nussmeier so far has struck me as a clear upgrade at QB coach but his gameplans have been head scratching at times in year one. A quality gameplan here can go a long way for my opinion of him.