Mack Brown names only team he sees winning national title, makes bold comparison

Earlier in Tuesday night’s live College Football Playoff rankings stream on The Triple Option, Urban Meyer called the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide interchangeable, the two most talented teams in the country and a step above everyone else when both play their best. Rob Stone saved the final question for the show’s guest, Mack Brown, and asked which teams have the ability to win it all. Brown, who won a national title at the Texas Longhorns, named one.

“I think Georgia is the best team in the country, period. And right now, I’m not sure I would say anybody else, Rob, because we’ve got three more weeks that things have to happen. And Georgia’s got Missouri, who’s beaten down a little bit now, at home. They’re at South Carolina, which they’ll have to play with that quarterback, and they got Georgia Tech. So Georgia should win and be in the championship game. Who do they play? That is Alabama … They can run the ball. The quarterback’s making good decisions. The one they lost, they made some poor decisions in that game against Auburn. But to me, they’re more like Indiana last year than anybody else I see. They’re running the ball. They’re stopping the run. They’re not making many decisions, and they’ve got a good kicking game,” Brown said.

Georgia is 8-1 and No. 1 in the committee’s rankings, and it has already beaten the team Brown expects it to see again in December, winning 20-17 in Tuscaloosa on Oct. 10. The comparison he reached for at the end is the bolder part of the answer.

The Indiana Hoosiers went 16-0 last season, won the program’s first national title and did it with a team built on the line of scrimmage, averaging 40 rushing attempts per game while allowing 77.62 rushing yards per game entering the playoff, third-fewest in the country.

The Auburn game is where Georgia broke Mack Brown’s formula

The Bulldogs ran for 295 yards at the Ole Miss Rebels on Saturday and held a top-10 opponent to 66 on the ground in a 42-7 win that snapped Ole Miss’ 16-game home winning streak. That is Brown’s first two requirements, running the ball and stopping the run, met against the best opponent on Georgia’s November schedule.

The Auburn Tigers outrushed Georgia 192-113 in Athens on Oct. 17, with quarterback Byrum Brown carrying 26 times for 115 yards. Gunner Stockton threw two interceptions, matching his total from the first six games, then lost a fumble at the Auburn 46 with 58 seconds left and the score tied at 24.
Auburn kicked the winning field goal as time expired, and Georgia’s Peyton Woodring had a 54-yard attempt blocked before halftime. Every item on Brown’s list went against Georgia that afternoon.

“We helped them. We had three turnovers and critical penalties. … We had some really, really untimely, uncharacteristic and undisciplined penalties,” Kirby Smart said afterward.

Brown’s comparison holds for eight of Georgia’s nine games, and the ninth is the one thing last year’s Indiana team never had: a loss. Indiana went 16-0 by refusing to hand opponents the kind of afternoon Georgia handed Auburn, and that is the standard the Bulldogs are measured against if Brown’s Indiana label is going to stick through January.

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