The Georgia Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide will play for the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday Night at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta after defeating the Oklahoma Sooners and Clemson Tigers respectively in the College Football Playoff Semifinals.
Alabama is playing for its fifth national title under head coach Nick Saban, who is looking his sixth national title as he also won one while coaching LSU in 2003. If the Crimson Tide win on Monday he would tie former Alabama coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant, for the most all-time.
The Tide is also playing in the title game for the third year in a row and this time they face a fierce SEC rival coached by Kirby Smart, Alabama’s former defensive coordinator.
This is the first time that two SEC schools are playing for the National Championship since 2011 when Alabama defeated the LSU Tigers 21-0. These matchups are the only times that two teams from the same conference have played for the National Championship.
This marks Georgia’s first shot at a title since 1980, when they played in the Sugar Bowl to defeat Notre Dame 17-10 and finished with a 12-0 record to earn their second National Championship (their first came all the way back in 1942 when they defeated UCLA 9-0 in the Rose Bowl and finished with an 11-1 record).
These teams have provided some great matchups the last two years, but the last time they played in a championship game was the 2012 SEC Championship in the Georgia Dome. That game resulted in a very competitive 32-28 Alabama win that was decided on literally the last play of the match.
For the Bulldogs, it’s clear that this is the best team they’ve had in a long time, and despite Nick Saban’s outstanding record of 11-0 against former members of his staff, none of them had a team as good and as talented as the one that the second-year Smart is currently coaching.
This Georgia team has a dynamic running back duo with Nick Chubb and Sony Michel that completely obliterated the Sooners run defense in the Rose Bowl as they combined for 326 yards (an average of 13 yards per attempt) and five touchdowns.
For ‘Bama it’s going to be huge to find a way to stop these two guys if they want to defeat the Bulldogs.
Georgia’s biggest concern as they prepare to face Alabama‘s quarterback Jalen Hurts and the rest of the 12th highest scoring offense in the nation (37.9 points per game) is how to fix their defense after it was exposed in the 2 OT victory against Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl.
Georgia’s defense, which allows 13.2 points per game and is ranked 4th nationally, had been playing lights out since week one. Nick Saban and his staff will thus be looking at the Rose Bowl tape to find ways to overcome the Bulldogs stingy defensive unit.
On defense, the Crimson Tide are going to have their hands full trying to contain not only Georgia’s run attack but also quarterback Jake Fromm who proved in the Rose Bowl that he can play under a lot of pressure as he passed for 210 yards and two touchdowns.
He will need to repeat that performance against an Alabama defense that is first in the nation allowing just 11.5 points per game and that held Clemson to two field goals during the 24-6 win in the Sugar Bowl.
The Bulldogs offense is far from average as they score 36.3 points per game which ranks them 17th in the nation, so Alabama is going to miss linebacker Anfernee Jennings who underwent surgery after suffering a knee injury against Clemson in the College Football Playoff Semifinal match against the Clemson.
Expect a competitive defensive matchup that will include several lead changes and remains close all the way to the fourth quarter.
Even though these teams are both fast and have talented running backs, and despite the fact that Georgia is practically playing a home game; Alabama will find a way to come out on top as their players are more experienced in these instances and are trying to leave behind the pain of last year’s shocking loss to Clemson and Dabo Sweeney.
