David Ching has this to say about Georgia’s 2016 slate:
Final analysis: SEC teams rarely play two Power 5 nonconference opponents in one fall, but that’s what the Bulldogs will do with UNC in the opener and rival Georgia Tech in the regular-season finale. That said, Georgia’s slate is not especially daunting. The Ole Miss-Tennessee stretch is the only spot on the entire schedule where the Bulldogs play consecutive scary games. Still, there are four or five contests that are anything but gimmes. The good news for Smart is that Georgia gets three challenging opponents (Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia Tech) at home. Further, aside from Ole Miss, Georgia’s other true SEC road games come against teams — Mizzou, South Carolina and Kentucky — that all fell short of bowl eligibility last year. However, the Bulldogs will play at Sanford Stadium just six times thanks to neutral-site games against UNC and Florida. ESPN’s Football Power Index rates Georgia’s schedule as the 16th-most difficult slate in the FBS, but that ranks eighth among SEC teams. By the conference’s lofty standards, this is a manageable first set of games for Smart & Co.
FPI bullshit aside, this lays out pretty nicely for the Dawgs. If they can manage their way through the first five games with a winning record, the odds are pretty strong they’ll be headed towards at least a nine-win season.
Get The Picture 
9 wins won’t cut it for me.
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agreed. A softer schedule, plenty of returning talent, “better coaching and organization,” sounds like 10 wins at least, doesn’t it?
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Back in early December, I was as big a Richt guy as there was on here, but anyone who is disappointed by a 9 win regular season in Kirby’s first year is stretching it. The QB and OL situations are unsettled, the DL is green, everybody has to adjust to a new coaching regime, and the schedule is frontloaded. There is a narrow path to a 14-1 national championship season that is plausible but not probable, but if we drop a couple more than that and wind up 10-3, I’d still feel encouraged about the future.
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I’m on board with this.
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I liked it better when we didn’t think that Ole Miss and Tennessee were scary
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DiF, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m not sold on either team, but I definitely preferred banking on those games as Ws in the past. But then again … Our fans would say we didn’t beat anybody if they did suck.
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Do not in anyway find those two scary. If that is our biggest worry, them we should be 11-1 regular season.
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Florida is a road game. Saying otherwise is ostrich-level denial.
I can’t put an over/under on how many wins would be satisfying but I’d argue that when a coach with Richt’s résumé gets fired, you need to see signs of culture shift. We saw some of that at G-Day. It needs to extend to the regular season in the form of more consistent line play and no Saturday’s where we collectively wonder if the guys ever got off of the bus.
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IF it is a road game for UGA, it is a road game for UF too.
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Why is Florida a road game? It takes the Florida team just as long to get to Jacksonville by bus as it does for our team to get there by plane. I don’t see a difference from a player/coach perspective.
FYI – I’m not necessarily in the pro-Jax crowd either.
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Agree Hob , if not in Sanford/Smart Stadium then it is a road game. They drive over for game, we fly and spend night, nd the stands are about 60/40 gaturds, regardless of how the tickets are supposed to be split.
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Florida spends the night too, so you can scratch that one off your list. And I’ve seen the stands 60/40 in our favor at times in recent years, so that one is bs too.
Damn y’all, it takes some really shitty arguments for me to stick up for having the game in Jacksonville.
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Exactly right, game is neutral any way you analyze it. Certainly isn’t a disadvantage to either team, Dawg fans are being babies about this and its bleeds over into the team. Stop whining, man up. Playing them a home and home would be an edge to FU, imo.
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Florida may be a road game, but it used to be a home game. We were 15-4 from 1971 to 1989. We get our heads on straight about Florida and it can be a home game again.
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“no Saturday’s where we collectively wonder if the guys ever got off of the bus” agree Hobnail. I hope to never see the bedshittins that we used to see under Richt and Co (08 & 15 Bama, 08,09,14,15 Gayturds and the 2012 Shamecocks debacle). They need to be ready to go every Saturday in the Fall.
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Would we or would we not have expected Coach Richt to win at least 10 wins with this schedule.
I can write the meme easily,
There is no reason to lose to any of the teams on this 8th toughest schedule in the SEC. All smart Dawg fans know the Coach Richt will lose to Florida, because that is what he does and then he’ll(not the players) wet the bed against either Ole Miss or UT. That is a 10-2 season and I’ll be disappointed with anything less. There that was easy.
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There is a reason we changed Coaching Staffs….time to move on from what CMR and Co might have done.
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I have thought 9-3 would be this year’s regular season record for 6+ months, and it’s exactly what I think now. For all of the teeth gnashing about Greyson Lambert, he’s not JTIII, who started the 2006 season at QB, and we finished 2006 with 8 wins (including the bowl game).
Really, anything less would be a disappointment unless there are significant unforeseen injuries and the training staff has pulled the wool over our eyes regarding Chubb’s readiness to be an every down back.
I see a path to 10-2 or 11-1, but I just don’t think we’re deep enough on either line of scrimmage (especially defense) to make the case for double-digit regular season wins.
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We r not deep enough and 9-3 is what I’ve thought as well.
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Old staff would win 10 easy with that schedule, why should our superior new staff do less?
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Old staff only won 9 last year and the schedule was just as easy, maybe even easier.
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Maybe because the new staff hasn’t had years to build and establish the program yet. Honestly, why is this so hard to comprehend?
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we didn’t have to hire a new staff…..Honestly, why is this so hard to comprehend?
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And yet we DID. Richt isn’t our coach anymore, so bitching about him is pointless. Why is THAT so hard to comprehend?
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Richt is effing out and Smart is effing in. Get over it and quit comparing how the two staffs would each fare vs the 2016 schedule. Kirby is going to have a moment he regrets or that he botches or that he overlooks, etc. Hopefully, it’s during a game that we’re more talented and can recover. Wouldn’t be surprised by 11-1 the same way I wouldn’t be surprised by 9-3. September will tell us a lot, not only about ourselves but the competition as well. This is supposed to be fun, everyone should quit bitching about everything.
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A lot of the Richt lovers are NOT over it. They’re trying to inflate expectations so that when their inflated expectations aren’t met, they can scream “see, I told you so!”
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Yep, the “I told you so” has yet to begin. The moment that Kirby makes a rookie coaching error with the clock, or a substitution, or a special teams call, we are going to hear it high up in the rafters. They can’t hardly wait, but most will bide their time. After that first loss it is going to be pretty epic.
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If I had to bet money on it, I’d bet on 9-3. Anything outside the range of 8-10 wins (just talking regular season here) would really surprise me.
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