With a front five as nasty and as punishing as they come, who wouldn’t want to find themselves running behind the Georgia football offensive line this fall?
In a game that has become increasingly passing-centric at all levels, the art of running the football with conviction seems to get lost in the shuffle more often than not. 7-on-7 camps and youth flag football have taken the country by storm, as quarterback play has never been more at the forefront than it is now. But don’t tell that to the Georgia Bulldogs; they still love to run the ball.
No, this isn’t the antiquated triple-option attack that their in-state rival Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets ran up until this year under Paul Johnson. What Georgia can do in the ground game is both beautiful to watch as a spectator, yet utterly terrifying to go up against should your favorite college football team happen to be taking on the Dawgs that particular fall Saturday.
Georgia may have a first-round talent at quarterback and a stable of superior running backs highlighting the offense, but it is with its massive front five along the offensive line that will guide this year’s team to championship pedigree.
“Yessir!” Anybody who follows major college football recruiting has to be familiar with Georgia associate head coach/offensive line coach Sam Pittman’s signature phrase when he lands yet another five-star on the recruiting trail.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is too an elite recruiter, stemming from his days as the Alabama Crimson Tide defensive coordinator under head coach Nick Saban. But Pittman takes it to another level.
Since joining Smart’s staff in 2016 after a three-year stint coaching the Hogs’ big uglies for Bret Bielema’s Arkansas Razorbacks, Pittman has helped transform the Georgia program from a New Year’s Six bowl hopeful to a serious national title contender. He has done this by landing one blue-chip prospect after another.
During SEC Media Days in July, FanSided spoke with Georgia alum and College Football Hall of Fame right tackle Matt Stinchcomb, who is arguably the greatest offensive lineman in the history of Georgia football.
His dominance in the trenches in the 1990s for Georgia, as well as his work as a college football analyst for ESPN, could not make him more qualified to answer the following question: So how good is this Georgia offensive line?
“I think there’s a chance this could be one of the best offensive lines this conference has seen in a long time,” said Stinchcomb back in July. After a 30-6 road trouncing in what felt like a home game against the SEC East foe Vanderbilt Commodores, it is most certainly trending in that direction.
Georgia ran the ball 40 times for 323 yards and two touchdowns in its rout of Vanderbilt. The Dawgs averaged a staggering 8.1 yards per attempt on the ground. Heisman Trophy hopeful running back D’Andre Swift led the way with 147 yards on 16 carries. Brian Herrien garnered 12 carries for 65 yards and a trip to pay dirt in the SEC opener.
Redshirt freshman Zamir White amassed 51 yards on five carries in his Bulldogs debut coming off a torn ACL suffered last summer. James Cook only netted two rushing attempts out of the backfield but went for 21 yards and an impressive 18-yard touchdown run. Even receivers Demetris Robertson and Tyler Simmons got involved in the running game, combining for 39 yards on four carries.
Cook, Robertson and White averaged over 10 yards per rushing attempt. Swift was nearly there, averaging 9.2 himself with the lion’s share of the carries. Even Herrien and Simmons averaged over 5.0 on the evening in a blowout of Vanderbilt in Nashville.
But none of this would have been possible without the biggest offensive line in college football road grading the way for them up front.
Georgia roughly uses a seven-man rotation in the trenches, headlined by three All-SEC-caliber performers: left tackle Andrew Thomas, left guard Solomon Kindley and right guard Ben Cleveland.
Trey Hill mans the center position. Isaiah Wilson handles right tackle. Cade Mays and Jamaree Salyer are essentially super subs, who would start for just about every other team in the country. Georgia could not be more loaded along the offensive line than it is in 2019. Look out, SEC.
Of this most magnificent seven, the best pro prospect is Thomas. The junior from Lithonia, Georgia is a preseason All-American and has the look of a top-10 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. He is elite in pass protection and runs like a gazelle at 6-foot-5, 320 pounds. Running behind him near the left sideline has to be a gift that keeps on giving for Swift and company.
Kindley is a redshirt junior out of Jacksonville, Florida. Often overlooked due to the position he plays, as well as the high-profile nature of Thomas, Cleveland and Mays’ recruitment to Georgia, he might just be the best interior lineman in the SEC.
Quarterback Jake Fromm always has a clean pocket to work with and the fearsome foursome in Georgia’s backfield can pick up first down after first down with the amount of space Kindley often creates in the offensive interior.
Smart can feel comfortable Hill replacing longtime starter Lamont Gaillard at center and rotating Cleveland and Mays at right guard because of Kindley’s continued excellence playing next to Thomas on the left side of the Georgia offensive line.
Finally, we have arrived at the growing legend that is Ben Cleveland. The 6-foot-6, 325-pound junior from Toccoa, Georgia is the epitome of country strong. Recruited alongside former Georgia starting quarterback Jacob Eason, now leading the Pac-12’s Washington Huskies, Cleveland is an absolute grizzly bear that mauls opposing defensive linemen like it’s nothing.
In addition to turning defensive tackles into Hugh Glass, Cleveland is known to hunt squirrels and eat them for breakfast. He was seen eating squirrel on a stick during a recruiting visit by Smart back in high school. The SEC Network crew of Tom Hart, Jordan Rodgers and Cole Cubelic certainly had fun with that story on Saturday night’s telecast, enjoying their southern delicacies…or at least Cubelic did. Rodgers didn’t look that hungry in the Vanderbilt Stadium booth.
https://twitter.com/colecubelic/status/1168554290929123328
Cleveland’s legend grows by the second, much in the vein of his bespectacled placekicking teammate Rodrigo Blankenship, who went 3-for-3 on field goals on Saturday night, including a 50-yard bomb. If Cleveland and Kentucky Wildcats linebacker Kash Daniel can’t one day go on to form the greatest tag team in WWE history, what’s the point of living? America and the world need it yesterday.
Are we getting ahead of ourselves here a little bit? Maybe just a tad. This did feel like a de facto home game for the Dawgs, playing in front of a crowd of 75 percent Georgia fans in Nashville. The Commodores could relate to how the Los Angeles Chargers feel when they play in their soccer stadium on fall Sundays in front of mostly visiting fans. Having to go to the silent count at home, that’s rough stuff.
Truthfully, Vanderbilt isn’t expected to win more than six or seven games this year if it is indeed smooth sailing for Derek Mason’s Commodores. And it wasn’t like Fromm played out of his mind either at quarterback, completing 15 of 23 passes for 156 yards and a touchdown; effectively game managing his way to yet another Georgia victory in SEC play.
That being said, Georgia hasn’t lost a game to an SEC East opponent in over two years. With the way that the division played in Week 1, the Dawgs might cakewalk to Atlanta for the third year in a row. Of course, Georgia still has to play the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a few weeks, as well as the Auburn Tigers and the Texas A&M Aggies to round out their eight-game SEC slate.
With Georgia Tech rebuilding, anything less than an 11-1 regular-season record and an SEC East division title would garner massive disappointment from Dawg Nation. We’ll see what happens at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in early December should Georgia live up to lofty expectations and reach the conference title bout.
Overall, Week 1’s domination of Vanderbilt on the road is a positive sign that this year’s Georgia team is indeed championship-caliber. Of course, the Dawgs are far from a finished product. The pass rush isn’t quite there and the receiving corps is inexperienced with so much talent departing in the 2019 NFL Draft.
Fromm will probably need a game or two where he carries the offense with his precision passing against a middle-of-the-pack SEC secondary. Georgia will also need to overcome losing both of its coordinators to other Power 5 gigs this past offseason. Smart’s smarts will be tested at some point. Just don’t use backup quarterback Stetson Bennett IV on a fourth-and-long fake punt in a high stakes game, please.
But what we do know after Labor Day weekend regarding the Dawgs is two-fold: One, it’s going to be very hard to move the ball on Smart’s defense, especially once the pass rush matures. And two, there is no better offensive line to run the football behind than the Great Wall of Georgia.