Georgia-Ole Miss is poised to be a College Football Playoff blowout

The final College Football Playoff quarterfinal on Thursday night is a rematch from earlier in the season when Georgia takes on Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl down in New Orleans. The Rebels aren’t big fans of the state of Louisiana at the moment, but an upset of the Bulldogs would make them feel a lot better.

Georgia won the first matchup between the two teams 43-35 in Athens in a great game that featured seven lead chances. Ole Miss scored touchdowns on its first five drives of the day and took a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter before Kirby Smart and company turned up the dial and raced back in front.

Of course, a lot has changed since that loss. Lane Kiffin is no longer with the Rebels after bolting for the LSU job at the end of the regular season, and a number of his assistants are now doing double-duty until Ole Miss’ season ends. Charlie Weis Jr. is calling the plays for Ole Miss in this game and Pete Golding is the new head coach, so the Rebels have a different feel about them.

But things have also changed for Georgia. The Bulldogs were still finding themselves on both sides of the ball back when that first meeting took place on Oct. 18, and they routinely played close games with just about everyone in the SEC.

Now, Georgia is playing their best football at the right time. Smart’s squad is coming off of its best performance of the season, a 28-7 win over Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

While Ole Miss was impressive in its first-round win over Tulane, all signs are pointing toward a rout in New Orleans on Thursday night. Let’s get into why.

Georgia’s offense should have its way

Georgia’s offense dominated the Ole Miss defense during the first meeting between these two teams, especially in the second half. In that game, the Bulldogs racked up 510 yards in total, including 221 on the ground, against an Ole Miss front that was completely helpless. On top of that, Georgia faced only 11 third downs in that game, converting six of them, and converted 34 first downs on the day.

Since then, Georgia has only gotten better and better on that side of the ball. Mike Bobo’s unit ran up the score on Texas after a good day against Mississippi State. Only Georgia Tech was able to slow Georgia down, holding it to 16 points in the regular-season finale, but the Georgia offense got right back to work in its win over Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

This Georgia group doesn’t excel in one area or have one single star player that it likes to go to. But Gunner Stockton is protecting the football with just five interceptions on the season, Nate Frazier has emerged as a quality lead running back, and Zachariah Branch leads a diverse group of pass-catchers on the outside.

On the other sideline, Pete Golding’s responsibility has increases since the last game against Georgia with Kiffin no longer there. With Golding’s responsibility now divided between calling the defense and being the head coach, does that change the level of preparation that this Rebels defense has? If it does, it could be a long night for a team and a defensive front that already looked overmatched in this game.

How does Ole Miss fare on offense without Lane Kiffin?

This side of the ball is where the gap has been widened in the last few months. Sure, Ole Miss is still running the same plays and concepts as it has been all season, and it still has great players running it like Trinidad Chambliss and Kewan Lacy. Charlie Weis Jr. is a quality play-caller, but to pretend the loss of Kiffin didn’t hurt would be naive.

The new LSU head coach is not only one of the best play-designers in college football, but he is one of the best game planners and play sequencers in the sport as well. In the first game between these two teams, Kiffin had this Georgia defense on the ropes for the first three quarters before time and score turned it into a pure dropback game and the Bulldogs could start to dictate the terms of the game.

Without Kiffin, this Ole Miss offense is almost surely going to be a little bit more basic and predictable. While the roots of this unit are still strong, specifically the running game and the RPO series with Chambliss and Lacy, the creativity that made it so great with Kiffin is going to be hard to replicate.

On the other side of the ball, Kirby Smart has this Georgia defense playing its best football of the season, and there’s an argument to be made this is one of the very best units in all of college football at the moment. In its last four games, three of them coming against ranked opponents (Texas, Georgia Tech and Alabama), the Bulldogs have given up just 29 points in total.

In Georgia’s most recent game, Alabama picked up just 11 first downs on the day and was held to negative-three rushing yards for the game. Linebacker CJ Allen is playing with his hair on fire, safety KJ Bolden is wreaking havoc in the middle of the field and defensive tackle Christen Miller is one of the best interior linemen in the nation.

With the way this Georgia defense has been playing, it should have enough answers against an Ole Miss offense that is due to run out of them at some point.

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