Game Analysis

Alabama (-13)  34   Georgia  26

Alabama is better than their very impressive scores indicate, as the Crimson Tide would be even more impressive if they had to play their starters the entire game -as they’re likely to do here. I go through the play-by-play of each game and note the plays and yards for each team with and against backups and Alabama’s offense rates at 2.7 yards per play better than average with their starters in the game (8.4 yards per play against teams that would combine to allow 5.7 yppl) while the Tide defense is 1.6 yppl better than average when you exclude garbage time stats.

Georgia, meanwhile, is 2.1 yppl better than average offensively and 1.4 yppl better than average defensively when excluding garbage time stats. The total difference is  just 0.8 yppl and even with Alabama expected to run a few more plays that difference is not enough to justify the nearly two touchdown spread on this game. Alabama is only 8 points better than Georgia, assuming Tua Tagovailoa and Jake Fromm take all the snaps at quarterback for their teams and I like the Bulldogs plus the points here.