‘Stop rate’ shows Georgia needs rapid improvement, sense of urgency
ATHENS — Kirby Smart has plenty of film cut-ups to keep his team humble and hungry during the bye week, even as the fan base rallies around another top 5 ranking and marquee victory.
Georgia has proved itself a strong, resilient team. But as Smart will be sure to convey to the public this week, a great deal of work needs to be done.
Smart, in fact, put that sentiment out mere moments after scoring a 43-35 win over Ole Miss on Saturday thanks to a dominant fourth quarter against the previously unbeaten Rebels.
“Your question is, are we a fourth-quarter team? I mean, we have to be because we’re behind,” said Smart, whose team has trailed at halftime in four of the five SEC games it has played — as well as being behind in three of them entering the fourth quarter.
It’s important the takeaway resonates: This isn’t the Georgia team of 2021, 2022 or even 2023 that ran through the SEC schedules those seasons as unbeaten.
There won’t be 15, 13 or maybe even 10 players selected off this Georgia team in the next NFL draft, and it’s fair to wonder if UGA currently has a bona fide first-round pick, even if CJ Allen and Zachariah Branch are having All-American seasons.
Smart has called out the elephant in the room more than once, very aware the Bulldogs have led at halftime in only one of the past 11 games against Power 4 competition.
“You know, we’ve got to find a way to play better earlier,” Smart said. “I’ve always felt like we’ve got good fourth-quarter teams. We’ve always been a good, physical win-the-game-in-the-fourth-quarter team.”
But for the past year, things have been different — playing from behind coming out of the locker room after halftime tied or trailing against relevant opponents.
“We just have had so many leads in the fourth quarter (in previous seasons) because we have been better than everybody else,” Smart said. “We’ve had this distance and this margin that the game didn’t come down to one little thing.
“Our margins are smaller. The margins are tight everywhere.”
Indeed, and that has accentuated Gunner Stockton’s clutch plays and the Georgia coaching staff’s process-driven preparation and in-game adjustments and play calls.
A look at the defensive stop rate, through ESPN’s advanced metrics, reveals why it’s too early to celebrate the 2025 Georgia football season.
If the standard is playing in the SEC championship game — Smart’s teams have done so seven of the past eight seasons and are the defending champs — more hurdles must be cleared.
Also, the success to this point of the season must be qualified.
Georgia could be undefeated if not for a couple of plays in the 24-21 loss to Alabama, but it’s also fair to suggest the Bulldogs could have as many as three losses if a few plays turned out differently in wins over Tennessee, Auburn and Ole Miss.
The Georgia defense, which has come under scrutiny for its uncharacteristic lack of success pressuring quarterbacks (last in the SEC and 120th in the nation with eight sacks), remains a work in progress.
This, even though the Bulldogs rank eighth in the SEC and 36th in the nation with a 66.1% “stop rate” — which is a measure of a defense’s drives that end in punts, turnovers or turnovers on downs.
Texas, one of five opponents remaining on Georgia’s regular-season schedule, leads the SEC and ranks third in the nation with an 81.7% stop rate.
Alabama, third in the SEC and 16th in the nation, has a 72.3% stop rate.
Auburn has the highest defensive stop rate of the teams the Bulldogs have beaten — 66.7%, seventh in the SEC and 34th in the country.
The stop rates for the other Football Bowl Subdivision teams Georgia has topped this season:
- Kentucky, 62.7% (57th in the nation)
- Ole Miss, 62.2% (65th in the nation)
- Tennessee, 57.5% (91st in the nation)
- Marshall, 55.7% (102nd in the nation)
A look at what’s ahead for the Bulldogs suggests Smart is very much on point when emphasizing the need for faster starts as better defenses, with better stop rates, are ahead on the schedule:
- Florida, 65.2% (42nd in the nation)
- Mississippi State, 63.6% (52nd in the nation)
- Texas, 81.7% (3rd in the nation)
- Charlotte, 54.4% (110th in the nation)
- Georgia Tech, 63.5% (53rd in the nation)
The Bulldogs’ offense, for all its late-game heroics, remains largely mediocre, from a statistical standpoint:
- 36th nationally, 6th in the SEC in rushing offense
- 28th nationally, 7th in the SEC in third-down conversion rate
- 37th nationally, 7th in the SEC in total offense
- 42nd nationally, 8th in the SEC in scoring offense
- 42nd nationally, 8th in the SEC in pass efficiency
“The one thing we are, we’re hard to kill,” Smart said of his team’s ability to overcome its shortcomings this season. “We won’t go away, (but) we’ve got to keep getting better.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Georgia has eight sacks so far this season.
About the Author
Mike is in his eighth season covering SEC and Georgia athletics for AJC-DawgNation and has 30 years of collegiate sports multimedia experience, 25 of them in the SEC including beat writer stops at Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee and now Georgia. Mike was named the National FWAA Beat Writer of the Year in January, 2018.
