ATHENS – Don’t look now but here comes another running quarterback.
Georgia’s defense has been awesome for a long time now and particularly stout during the current four-year run under coach Kirby Smart. But when they’ve had struggles, typically that has been when the Bulldogs face an extremely mobile quarterback with a powerful arm.
That’s exactly what Georgia is going to get Saturday when it meets Florida in Jacksonville at EverBank Stadium. DJ Lagway is just a freshman and he’s starting primarily because Graham Mertz was lost to a season-ending knee injury against Tennessee on Oct. 12. But as the 48-20 win over Kentucky the next week demonstrated, Lagway might’ve been just what the Gators’ offense needed.
“He’s a tremendous talent,” Smart said during his preview of the Gators on Monday. “You know, his arm talent and arm strength itself is elite. He has great size. He can make all the throws. He’s got a couple really wild throws. I think for his age and experience, he’s ahead of his time in terms of his pocket movement management.”
It’s not a huge surprise. Lagway was a consensus 5-star prospect when he signed with the Gators out of Willis, Texas. Mertz, a fifth-year senior, had to fight to beat out Lagway both in preseason camp and after Florida dropped two of its first three games of the season.
As it was, Lagway played in every game before Mertz went down. He got his first career start in the second game of the season when Mertz had to sit out due to concussion protocol. All he did then was set a Florida freshman passing record with 456 yards and three touchdowns in his first collegiate start.
John Raoux
John Raoux
Lagway was equally impressive in his only start since. In the Gators’ last outing, he completed only 7 of his 14 passes, but they went for 259 yards – or an average of 37 yards per completion. Included were passes of 58, 44 and 40 yards. Lagway also had 46 yards on 10 rushes, which includes the lost-yardage from two sacks.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s defense has not been as dominant this season as the last three. Its most notable struggles have come against mobile quarterbacks such as Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and Mississippi State’s Michael Van Buren.
The Bulldogs are not alone in that regard.
“You can look across the league at how a running quarterback affects the game,” Georgia senior outside linebacker Chaz Chambliss said. “Go back to LSU-Texas A&M (this past Saturday). It completely changed the dynamic of the game when the quarterback came in that can run it. It makes you prepare for more stuff. You know, we’ve struggled in the past with running quarterbacks. We’ve got to prepare and know what’s coming. We’ll have to look at the copycats we’re going to get and just try to perfect it this week.”
It helps that Georgia has some extensive video on Lagway, as well as freshman running back Jadan Baugh, who scored five touchdowns against Kentucky. It also helps that they have Mykel Williams back in the fold on defense.
Hampered by an ankle injury since the opener against Clemson, Williams sat out two games and averaged just 8.4 snaps in the other four games before being unleashed in the Bulldogs’ Top 5 matchup against Texas on Oct. 19. All Williams did was earn SEC defensive lineman of the week honors when he tallied three tackles, two sacks and forced a fumble in Georgia’s 30-15 victory over the No. 1-ranked Longhorns.
Williams, a hybrid defensive end/linebacker, played a season-high 38 snaps in that game. Most of those came with fellow hybrid Jalon Walker also on the field. With Williams stunting and blitzing and dropping and Walker spying, the Longhorns never were sure where pressure was coming from.
Look for Georgia to deploy a similar package against the Gators.
“It’s just his talent, his size, his speed,” Chambliss said of Williams. “You can put him at the (defensive end) and stunt him to the A gap or you can you can bring him off the edge. He’s just a versatile player. You can put him anywhere and he’s going to affect the game.”
Said Smart: “Mykel wasn’t all the way back last game; I want to be clear on that,” Smart said. “I think people look at the output against Texas and think he played a lot of snaps. He didn’t play, probably, 100 percent role that he was playing against Clemson. We think he’s going to be much better this week.”
That’s particular good news considering the Bulldogs will be without at least three starters in the game, two of those just for one half. Safeties Joenel Aguero and Dan Jackson must sit out the first half due to targeting suspensions from the second half of the Texas game.
The key will be limiting the Gators’ explosive capability on offense. Georgia did a much better job of that against Texas, though neither Quinn Ewers or Arch Manning are as mobile as Lagway.
“It just came down to execution,” Chambliss said of the turnaround vs. Texas. “We talked about it before the game. … Honestly, coming into that game we didn’t feel like we had played our best game at all on defense. We came out of each game feeling like we lost just because we hadn’t lived up to the standard. We finally played up to the standard in that game.”
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