Georgia Football: Regression to the mean coming in 2022?

Reigning national champion Georgia football will attempt to repeat in 2022 after losing 15 players to the NFL Draft. It seems like an impossible task.

The 2021 national champion Georgia Bulldogs football team is attempting to repeat as national champion in 2022, which is something that only Nebraska and Alabama have done in the last 40 years. Bama is the only team to accomplish that in this century. It’s not easy.

Many are skeptical as to whether it is possible, due to losing a record 15 players from that Georgia team to the NFL draft. Nine of those players were on defense. Five of them were first-round picks. The thinking goes that, surely, Georgia’s defense regresses in 2022, and therefore, they take a step back to earth, as it were.

The 2022 Georgia Bulldog defense will regress, and do so significantly, and if we look at the past, we can peer into the future to glean how much that unit will recede.

In statistics, “regression to the mean” is defined as the phenomenon by which extreme examples from any set of data are likely to be followed by examples that are less extreme; a tendency toward the average of any sample. In short, when there is an extreme outlier in a set of stats, it is statistically certain that the extreme will eventually go back to something closer to what has been normal. Normal is defined as the “mean”.

In other words, with regards to Georgia Bulldog football and its defense, we know that the defense will be worse than the historic defense in 2021, but by how much? Because, let’s face it, if the defense doesn’t regress, then college football has a problem on its hands. That means that Kirby Smart and Co. have replicated the Saban Method, and (12-0) is the “new normal”.

This writer doesn’t believe that will happen. In fact, I would bet hard-earned greenbacks on it. Lots of them. The 2022 Georgia defense will get worse. But, by how much? How bad will it get? What does that mean for the 12 teams on their schedule?

A quick look at the stats and you can peek at averages and get a solid sense of what will happen. There will be a regression to the mean, but that mean, or average, or normal, isn’t bad.

Kirby Smart has been Head Coach at Georgia for six seasons now. In those six seasons, his defense has averaged giving up the following in terms of points per game: 24.0 (2016), 16.4 (2017), 19.2 (2018), 12.6 (2019), 20.0 (2020), and 10.2 (2021). Statistically, the best year was the national champion 2021 defense, and the worst was his first year as head coach in 2016.

So, assuming that coming off of a historic, record-setting year on defense, the Georgia Bulldog defense regresses to the mean, which would include 2017 through 2020 stats, the mean, or average of points given up per game for Georgia over the last six years is (17.4) points per game.

That is a full touchdown difference from one year to the next. In most cases, a Defensive Coordinator would be on the “hot seat” if his unit fell off that much from one year to the next. See: Todd Grantham.

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However, that won’t be the case here. Why? Because if the 2022 Georgia defense averages giving up (17.4) points per game, or an approximation thereof, that team will win its fifth division title in six years, and will have a chance to make another CFP playoff.

Is there a Jordan Davis on this 2022 Georgia defense? Uhhh, no. Is there a Nakobe Dean? Not that we know of. Is there a Lewis Cine? Not that we know of. Is there a DeVonte Wyatt? Not that we know of. A Quay Walker or Channing Tindall? Not that we know of.

But statistically speaking, Kirby Smart defenses at UGA have been top-10 defenses. There will be significant regression on that side of the ball in 2022, but not the kind that materially changes the outcome of games, save playing the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, and maybe a few other teams.

What opposing folks and fans need to worry about is the Georgia offense. During that 2017 to 2020 period, the Georgia offense averaged scoring (34.1) points per game. In 2021, that offense averaged (38.6) points per game.

We’ll leave this for another article, but if that 2021 offensive “points per game” stat isn’t an outlier, but is a new “mean”, that changes the calculation for opposing teams.

That is conjecture, though. What we do know is that (17.4) points per game is a drastic regression, year over year for Georgia, but nothing that is prohibitive, in terms of championship play, or winning their division.

In fact, 2022 could look a lot like 2018, in terms of numbers. The Georgia offense averaged scoring (37.9) points per game that year and averaged giving up (19.2.). That was an (11-1) season.

If you want to question the 2022 Georgia Bulldog football team, by all means, do it. And you may be right. It is possible that this defense could revert back to the level of the 2016 defense, but it is statistically unlikely, and I would not bet on that.