The Thursday Crunch: Georgia’s Runs Are Getting Stuffed Half as Often. The Defense Is Giving Back Yards.

By the RFA Sports Desk · Written by Pretoria Fields Radio’s AI newsroom (Jarvis) from public game data. Editor: Tripp Morgan.

Sixteen. That is how many of Georgia’s 180 designed runs this season have been stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage, a rate of 8.9%. Across 2023, 2024 and 2025 combined, the figure was 17.1%: 243 of 1,419. Six games in, the Bulldogs are getting stuffed about half as often as they were over the previous three seasons.

Georgia (6-0) hosts Auburn on Saturday at Sanford Stadium, 3:30 p.m. ET, on ESPN. Everything below is Georgia’s side of the ledger. The station’s compiled package doesn’t include Auburn’s numbers, so we won’t pretend it does.

Five findings

1. The margin is 193 points, and it’s shrinking. Georgia has scored 277 and allowed 84, an average margin of 32.2 points. Game by game, the margins run 60, 50, 28, 28, 24, 3. The schedule got harder along the way, with Tennessee State and Western Kentucky early and Alabama last, so the opponents account for some of the slide. Not all of it, though.

2. Gunner Stockton is completing 76.6% of his throws. That’s 95 of 124, for 1,298 yards: 10.5 yards per attempt, 14 touchdowns, 2 interceptions. His worst game was still a productive one. Georgia’s lowest passing total, 177 yards, came against Oklahoma, and Georgia won that game by 28.

3. Turnover margin: plus-6, and lumpy. Georgia has 11 takeaways and 5 giveaways. Eight of the 11 takeaways came in two games, four against Western Kentucky and four against Oklahoma. In the other four games Georgia is plus-2 (3 takeaways, 1 giveaway). The cushion is real. It just hasn’t arrived evenly.

4. Third down belongs to the defense. Opponents have converted 31 of 87 third downs, 35.6%. Oklahoma went 2 for 14. Georgia’s offense is at 35 of 64, 54.7%. Its one bad night was also Oklahoma, at 3 for 12.

5. Alabama: 455 yards, 20 points. Georgia gained 7.46 yards a play in Tuscaloosa, its third-best rate of the season. For the season, Georgia has scored 9.7 points per 100 yards of offense (277 on 2,849). Against Alabama it scored 4.4. The box score doesn’t explain the gap. Red-zone and field-goal detail aren’t in the compiled numbers, so we’ll leave the explaining to the film.

The trend: the defense is slipping

Here is yards per play allowed, game by game: 1.88, 3.04, 4.84, 4.29, 5.75, 5.77. Over the first three games opponents gained 634 yards on 194 plays, 3.27 a snap. Over the last three it was 935 on 180, or 5.19. That’s an increase of nearly two yards per play.

The run defense shows the same thing. Alabama ran for 161 yards, the most of any opponent. The first five opponents averaged 57.

The offense dipped too, from 8.84 yards per play over the first three games to 6.84 over the last three. Put the two together and Georgia’s net edge per snap fell from +5.57 to +1.65. Better opponents explain a lot of that. But the last three games look more like the rest of an SEC schedule than the first three did.

Up front

Our line metrics compare this season against Georgia’s combined 2023–25 baseline, not against last season alone. Each number comes with a range, and the ranges matter.

• Stuff rate: 8.9% (16 of 180), likely range 5.6–14.0%, against a 17.1% baseline (range 15.3–19.2%). The ranges don’t overlap. This is the clearest signal in the package.
• Line yards per carry: 3.77 (range 3.39–4.16) against 3.21 (3.06–3.36). The ranges miss each other by three hundredths of a yard. It’s a real gain, but a modest one.
• Power success: 82.4% (14 of 17) against 76.3%. Seventeen short-yardage snaps give a range of 59–94%, which takes in the baseline easily. We can’t tell yet.
• Sack rate allowed: 3.7% (6 of 163 dropbacks) against 3.5%. That’s flat.

One caution: these are unit-level numbers from public play-by-play, not lineman grades. They also include the Tennessee State and Western Kentucky games. The package has no per-game line splits, so we can’t say whether the stuff rate held up against Alabama.

What to watch Saturday

• The 10% line. Can the stuff rate stay in single digits against an SEC front?
• Yards per play allowed. Two straight games near 5.8. A return toward 4 would ease the main worry in this column.
• Yards into points. After 4.4 points per 100 yards in Tuscaloosa, is Georgia back near its season rate of 9.7?
• Pressure. Georgia has 17 sacks and at least two in every game.

The fine print

None of the six games is flagged provisional. All play-by-play in this package has been delivered by CFBD, with no ESPN stand-ins. Six games is a small sample, and the opponents were uneven. Hurries are charted inconsistently across broadcasts, so we’ve left them out.

— The RFA Sports Desk

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia-Auburn kickoff time
• Georgia Athletics: 2026 kickoff times
• American TV: How to watch Auburn vs. Georgia

Pretoria Fields Radio publishes under its editorial standards and AI policy. Spot an error? Write info@pretoriafieldsradio.com and we will correct it in the open.