Georgia will play Ole Miss on Thursday night in a rematch of their previous regular-season game. This time, the stakes are much higher as it is the Sugar Bowl and a chance at making the quarterfinals in the College Football Playoff. The game is being played in New Orleans and will kick off at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Zach Berry of the Ole Miss Spirit recently wrote a piece about how the Rebels have the blueprint to beating Georgia. His main points were that Georgia’s pass rush isn’t great and that having to blitz could open up opportunities for Ole Miss’ TEs.
The last time Georgia and Ole Miss met, UGA won 43-35 in a thriller from Athens.
But Georgia’s pass rush has shown great improvement
The season-long numbers cited are accurate, but they don’t fully reflect where Georgia’s pass rush is trending entering this matchup. While Georgia’s non-blitz pressure rate sits at 22.8 percent on the season, that figure has climbed to 28.2 percent over the last four games, signaling a unit generating disruption far more consistently down the stretch. That improvement aligns with recent personnel usage and timing, and it matters more than early-season averages when projecting how much time a quarterback is likely to have right now.
That same trajectory shows up in Georgia’s front-seven Havoc Rate. On the full-season sample, Georgia ranks 108th nationally, which feeds the perception of a passive front. Over the last four games, however, the front seven ranks 37th in Havoc, a substantial jump that reflects increased tackles for loss, pressures, and drive-disrupting plays without relying solely on heavy blitzing. When pressure rate and havoc rise together, it indicates that a pass rush is creating consequences, even when it doesn’t immediately result in sacks.
It’s also worth separating past results from current conditions. Trinidad Chambliss had success in the first meeting, and Alabama’s Ty Simpson was effective in Georgia’s lone loss, but those games came before the recent uptick in disruption. Georgia’s defense has shown a greater ability over the past month to compress pockets and force quarterbacks to operate on tighter timelines, reducing the margin for extended plays and second-reaction throws.
The assumption that Georgia must blitz heavily, thereby opening up lanes for quarterback scrambles or downfield shots, is increasingly questionable based on recent data. Georgia has been generating pressure and havoc more efficiently with its front seven alone, which limits the need to overextend in coverage. That doesn’t eliminate Chambliss’s ability to create, but it does make the path to replicating earlier success far narrower than season-long metrics alone might suggest.
And Georgia has shut down opposing TEs all season
Attacking space over the middle is a logical way to stress any defense, and Dae’Quan Wright has been productive when put in favorable situations. That said, the results against Georgia haven’t supported the idea that tight ends are consistently able to exploit that area of the field, even when opponents attempt to do so deliberately.
In the first meeting, Wright was held to 34 receiving yards, a performance that aligned closely with how Georgia has defended the position all season. On the year, Georgia is allowing just 31.2 receiving yards per game to tight ends, a figure that reflects a broader pattern rather than a one-off result. If linebackers were routinely being exposed in space due to pressure schemes, tight end production would be a natural byproduct, and it simply hasn’t materialized.
Georgia’s ability to limit tight ends has forced offenses to look elsewhere to sustain drives, often pushing production to the perimeter or requiring extended quarterback improvisation. While Wright’s recent outing against Tulane highlights his skill set in space, translating that success against Georgia has historically been far more difficult due to how well those intermediate windows are contested.
That doesn’t mean Wright won’t be involved, but the data suggests his path to being a “major factor” is much narrower than against most opponents. Against Georgia, tight end success has required near-perfect execution rather than schematic advantage, which is a very different challenge than simply finding space over the middle.
David Pollack comments on the blueprint to beat Georgia
David Pollack recently joined Brad Logan of the Ole Miss Spirit podcast and had this to say about how the Rebels could beat Georgia:
“I like that Ole Miss understood the way to beat Georgia, and they did it,” Pollack said. “A lot of people would go, ‘Wait a minute, Trinidad Chambliss, why would we throw the football and put the game on him?’ Well, it’s because we had the biggest advantage out there, and the ball came out quick, and they understood coverages. Georgia played off they threw the ball short. Georgia played tight coverage; they took advantage of it with Trinidad scrambling.”
The Georgia blueprint fell apart in the fourth quarter
Georgia shut out Ole Miss in the fourth quarter of their first game. One of the main reasons for this was four pass breakups, two of which were from batted down at the line of scrimmage. In fact, Chambliss was just 1 of 10 in the final quarter for just 1 yard. Of those 9 incomplete passes, two were targets to Wright. Chambliss also had 0 rushing yards in the fourth quarter. The Junkyard Dawgs completely suffocated the Rebels’ offensive attack to end the game.
The idea of a “blueprint” to beat Georgia is appealing, especially when it’s supported by isolated performances or season-long averages. But when those claims are tested against recent trends and situational outcomes, the picture becomes far more complicated. Georgia’s defense isn’t static; it adapts, tightens, and, as the season progresses, often looks its best when the margin for error is smallest.
The first meeting offered a clear example of that evolution. While Ole Miss found success early, Georgia’s ability to generate pressure without excessive blitzing and to erase tight ends from the middle of the field ultimately swung the game. By the fourth quarter, the windows that had briefly existed were gone, the pocket had collapsed, and the Rebels were forced into low-percentage plays that stalled drives and ended possessions.
That’s what makes rematches against Georgia so difficult. What worked in stretches the first time rarely works the same way twice, especially when the data shows improvement in both pass-rush disruption and coverage discipline. The Bulldogs don’t need a perfect schematic answer; they need execution, leverage, and timing, all areas where the defense has trended sharply upward.
Thursday night in New Orleans won’t be decided by a theoretical blueprint. It will be decided by whether Ole Miss can sustain near-flawless execution against a Georgia defense that has already shown it can adjust, close space, and suffocate an offense when it matters most.
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