8 “garbage time” charts vs. Wisconsin

Let’s start with the Play Map this week: it took a few plays to really get going, but these drives were taking off in no time. As soon as he got a few unsuccessful passes out of his system (short pass to Kevin Riley, incomplete to Germie), Ty Simpson was ready to sling it. 6 explosive pass plays in the first half had us riding pretty high going into halftime, but then we followed it up with a huge passing plays to open the 2nd half … and then another 3 explosive passes in the 3rd quarter.

What a rally. This was a passing clinic against what appears to be a pretty respectable defense (at least considering levels of talent).

The Wiscy Play Map is essentially the opposite. While Alabama slowed down going into “garbage time”, Wisconsin finally found some efficiency in the second half — perhaps against backups and some vanilla defense, who knows). But, indeed, we were already into “garbage time” coming out of halftime given how Alabama’s offense was scoring (special teams TD’s nonwithstanding).

And those trajectories are why the overall efficiencies look funny in this one: technically, Wisconsin was almost as efficient as Alabama in this one. They just had three problems: it was too little, too late, and their explosiveness was basically dead on arrival (look at that line anchored at 0% XR until partway through the 2nd quarter.

Like I said, Alabama actually started a little inefficiently on offense — and, honestly, I felt like the refs game us plenty of wiggle room to get warmed up — but things were peachy once Ty and co. Go their legs under them. And that Bama XR line just climbed with it, enough to where even after garbage time we settled into a cumulative Explosiveness Rate >20%. That’s big. That’s, like, feels-like-a-Tua-game big. Really nice to see that, especially, translate from the ULM game.

Look, the Alabama Rush Rate chart looks amenable to the average (average reasonable?) gump: we tried running the ball early and had a >50% rush rate until midway through the 2nd quarter. Surprisingly, garbage time just saw this team passing more, and we had a <40% rush rate right before the final few plays.

But what else are you supposed to do when you get these results? The running game struggled to get off the mat until the end of the first quarter — funny enough, that first successful rush was that Germie Bernard carry for 2 yards into the end zone, not even a conventional RB play — and never reached a cumulative average SR even after some success later in the game.

But that passing offense was an absolute rocket! Like I said, Ty and the offensive staff found something working after a few plays and just spammed that “pass” button, to great success. Heck, even during garbage time Bama’s Passing SR was climbing, peaking at nearly 80% passing Success Rate (!!) before a little slide at the end.

Is that what the idealized Grubb offense looks like? And are Gumps ready for it? (Let’s revisit this question in a few weeks after Athens).

I just threw this one in to call out (a) how handsome this hear drives chart is, with six Alabama drives in a row delivering above-average (and often very high) efficiencies; and (b) to call out that we have another week with a few double-digit-play count drives from this team, which is remarkable.

I’m starting to wonder if the longer drives thing is a Ty Simpson thing. He distributes the ball better, is more careful and uses his options, and is fairly practical (though not perfect) when choosing when and how to scramble. And honestly, there were a few Ty scrambles yesterday where I found myself saying … yeah, the passes would’ve been worse, but Jalen Milroe would’ve taken that to the house.

For now I’ll take this tradeoff year over year — if for my heart health alone — but I wonder if starting a QB like Milroe just means you’re gonna have shorter drives (boom or bust) whether you like it or not.

Funny enough, Richard Young was kinda supposed to be our starting back with Jam Miller out. But here he is with a 1-for-4 efficiency, another tepid line this season. Even our emergent darling Kevin Riley had an inefficient 1-for-7 outing as our leading rusher on the day (albeit with a few catches, including an explosive, too).

Ty Simpson wasn’t efficient on the ground but broke through once or twice, including delivering Bama’s only explosive rush on the day.

I’ll take a silver lining of seeing Dre Washington and A.K. Dear doing well in mop-up time. We also saw some creativity in getting Germie the ball close to the end zone. But otherwise, it feels like we’ve got a bunch of capable backs, but not a particularly capable run game. I wonder if Jam Miller will fix it (or if Jaeden Roberts and Michael Carroll already have, per Josh’s note on Initial Impressions).

But let’s end on a happier chart: Ty Simpson distributed the heck outta that thing and gave the receivers plenty of chances to make highlights. The familiar patterns emerged:

Plus, some newer names have started showing up in the table: Isaiah Horton is apparently healed up and showed some solid hands and decision making. Lotzy Brooks is really, really making a case for playing time with his consistent efforts. Plus: Dre Washington caught and explosive out of the backfield, and freshman TE Kaleb Edwards brought some of that fall camp energy we’d heard all about.

All of the charts from Bama vs. Wisconsin are here. And, listen, overall the charts are a little kinder to the Badgers than the traditional box score was, but outside of a few foibles — plus some potential warning signs on the running game — this was a satisfying beating of a P4 foe.

Plus, this happened …

Roll Tide and enjoy the bye week. I’ll see you here on the other side of UGA.

0 Comments