Georgia Football: Can Bulldogs overcome ultimate bad matchup?

The Georgia Football team will get a second swipe at the big, bad Alabama Crimson Tide in the National Championship Monday. Can they do anything with it?

The Georgia football team is about play in its second national championship game in five years come Monday. The Bulldogs opponent in this game is the very same team that won that game five years ago.

In fact, these very two teams played five short weeks ago. Georgia football got embarrassed. Yet, once again, Alabama stands in Georgia’s way of that elusive championship. It’s been a bad matchup, historically, for Georgia. It still is on paper. Can they overcome it this time?

Now, some of you dear readers might be confused or angry at the notion of Bama as a bad matchup for UGA. After all,  the big buildings in Las Vegas have Georgia favored to win by more than a field goal. That means something, right?

Yes, but not that much. It just means they needed to generate action in an otherwise static, and possibly apathetic, public after everybody watched this game five weeks ago.

Can Georgia football make the outcome different?

It is also true that this incarnation of the Georgia football team is the best Bulldog team in the last 40 years. Top to bottom, it is better than that 2017 team that took Alabama to overtime the last time they were in this position. In fact, this writer doesn’t think that the UGA team that lost 42-21, just five short weeks ago, is that much worse than that Alabama team.

One can make a case that this Georgia team, top to bottom, is more talented than this Alabama team. Frankly, those are tough words to write. Never thought it would be possible or necessary. Bama “out talents” everyone. But, it is very possible.

So, where is the mismatch? What is the mismatch? Who is the mismatch?

Most, here, would start screaming from the backbench about Saban vs. Smart. And they wouldn’t be wrong. Saban is the greatest modern college coach, regardless of sport, in modern times. But that conversation is obvious and boring.

Smart is not as good of a head coach in his 6th year as the greatest coach of modern college sports history. Noted. Thank you for pointing that out astute observers.

Now, we could get into X’s and O’s and personnel groupings. We could get into the seeming disparity between quarterbacks in this game.  This writer thinks it is bigger than that, though.

Certain teams, in a certain year, are built a certain way. Each team takes on its own personality. The 60-minute games they play are the chapters of that team’s life.  They write it and define it.

This writer’s belief is that the Georgia football team that just molly wopped the Michigan Wolverines 34-11 in the Orange Bowl isn’t that much better.

It was just a really bad matchup for Michigan. Meaning, the very thing that Michigan is built to do, Georgia is built to defend and attack.

Georgia has better players in most spots, and more of them, but that game was a consequence of strength vs strength. Think Captain America vs Spider-man. Georgia has been built for six years to beat a team like that Michigan team.

Bama, however, is different. Now think Batman vs Superman. And Superman has Lex Luthor as his head coach. Batman will beat most foes. He’s built to withstand punishment and dish it out. And he has all those wonderful toys. Georgia’s toys come in the fashion of generational NFL talent all over the roster.

The only thing, however, that can beat Superman is kryptonite, and 2021 Alabama’s kryptonite is sacking their quarterback. Every team that has kept it close with Alabama this year, or beat them in Texas A&M’s case, was QB pressure and sacks. TAMU had four sacks.  Arkansas had four sacks. Auburn had four sacks. All of those games were within a touchdown.

Georgia had zero sacks the last time these two teams met.

This is a bad matchup for Georgia. Defense is their strength. The very thing they are built to do on defense is negated by the very thing that Alabama does better than anyone. If this Georgia defense can’t find a way to harass and sack Alabama’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Bryce Young, the game is over before it begins.

Batman comics debuted in December 1939. He finally beats Superman in the “Dark Knight Returns” series in 1986. It took him a while. But he also needed Green Arrow’s help with a kryptonite arrow.

Alabama, and their Lex Luthor coach, is the Superman, have no doubt. Can this Batman team in the Georgia Bulldogs find that kryptonite?

Like Jimmy Buffett sang, “Come Monday, will it be alright” for the Dawgs? The matchup is a rough one, but there is a way. They might need some help from that yellow kryptonite, if you know what I mean, though.