More SEC East dominance from SDS’ Connor O’Gara:
Obviously the stat everyone knows is 12-0. That is, Georgia went 12-0 against East foes the past 2 years. What you might not know is that all of those games were won by at least 14 points with an average margin of victory of 25.3 points per contest. The East team that’s been the closest to them on average over the past 2 seasons — smallest margin of defeat — was South Carolina at -19.
But wait, there’s more!
Mizzou is the only East team the past 2 years to hit 28 points in a single game against Georgia. In fact, non-Mizzou East teams averaged 12 points per game against Georgia in the past 2 seasons.
One other thing that contributed:
One thing that stuck out when looking back at these games was the turnover margin. Overall, Georgia is +11 against the SEC East in its past 12 games, but what really stood out was the fact that only once have the Bulldogs committed more than one in a game. That came against Kentucky in 2018 and Georgia forced two turnovers of its own in that game.
In 2017, Georgia was +4 in the turnover margin and it was +7 in 2018.
O’Gara goes on to ask,
Speaking of sustaining that rate, is there an end in sight to this?
Like, who’s going to be the first East team to lose by fewer than 14 points? Who can actually hold a lead against Georgia for more than 7 minutes? Who will reach 30 points? And can anyone from the East, dare I say, actually beat the Bulldogs?
Who’da thunk those kind of questions would be legitimate to ask? Any given Saturday thoughts aside, who’s your choice to have the best chance of upsetting the Dawgs?
Get The Picture 
I don’t like to contemplate it and I’m NOT a Jimbo fan, but Texas A&M’s placement on the schedule following Florida, Mizzou and at Auburn does concern me. At least we get the Aggies at home.
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TAMU isn’t an East team.
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….but if we’re confined to predicting possible upsets by an SEC East outfit, I’m confident that we won’t see it this year, barring some disastrous injuries.
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Look at Missouri’s schedule. They could lose in Athens and still win the East.
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Mizzou’s SEC slate the next few years is a total joke. They don’t have to play Bama, LSU, AU, or TAMU this year or next. All while we play TAMU and AU this year, and Bama and AU next year. Huge advantage for them.
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Mizzou ain’t winning anything with Kelly Bryant at the helm.
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Mizz is ineligible to win the east
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I think the Gators or Volunteers will be the ones to end the streak. UF because it’s a rivalry and after all these years of seeing us lose to them, it’s hard for me to imagine a sustained run of dominance against them. Luckily the players and coaches don’t share my trepidation. And I could see Tennessee winning one against us just because it’s Pruitt. Not saying that either will happen this year, but eventually.
I could see Mizzou or SC getting a win over us at some point, I just don’t think either of them will be the first. I didn’t pay enough attention to Mizzou last year to know how good or bad Dooley is as an OC, plus Drew Lock isn’t there anymore.
And I hope we never lose to Vanderbilt (again) or Kentucky as long as Smart is our head coach.
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Predicting how things will go wrong is the most Georgia thing ever. Ugh!
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Only Georgia can beat Georgia
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And yet, there still are UGA fans out there who feel that, if CKS doesn’t win the Natty this year, his run will be a failure and will prove that we never should have fired CMR in the first place. Mind you, these folks are in the minority, but they are certainly out there with their idiotic opinions.
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This is my new favorite.
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Missouri b/c of where it falls on the schedule and Bryant may play well.
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None this year, too much of a talent gap…but who knows, shat happens. More of a chance the following year, some of that gap may close. Gonna say UT or UF in ’20. Thinks we will be favored in all of them in ’20 though, especially if Fromm comes back, I think he will.
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I think if anyone has a chance to upset GA it could be Kentucky. They are not doormats anymore, and with a few key recruits anything could happen. Also, they want revenge for busting their bubble last year.
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It’s good to be a Georgia Bulldog.
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You misspelled great.
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Good catch. It’s great to be a Georgia Bulldog.
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To me this is the biggest difference between richt and smart. Richt never went undefeated against the east hence why we were on the outside looking in many times. a loss to an eastern team is effectively twice as costly as a loss to an sec west team. Control the east control your destiny, simple as that.
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If CMR has just chosen to compete against Booch and Muschamp, instead of Meyer, Spurrier and Fulmer, he would have been all set. What was he thinking? SMH.
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Richt also competed against Zook, Holtz, and Derek Dooley. Let’s not pretend like it was a murder’s row of SEC East coaches on the other sideline every year.
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The 2 losses Zook are certainly the exceptions to my “CMR’s good teams only lost to good SEC East coaches” rule.
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It would take a fluke, but I’m guessing either Tennessee or Mizzou. Kirby ain’t through torturing Florida yet. #ftmf
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Florida. We pick at Sideshow Dan, but he took a team that we had KIRB stomped the year prior and was down only a single possession midway through the 4th quarter last year. The guy is a dork, but he can coach inferior talent to play at a high level and has proven this time and again.
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His program is a disaster right now and is coming apart at the seams. Top recruits wont even visit there and are calling out the coaches for being phonies. Huge internal problems and IMO they will disappoint this year.
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All true, but having to pick one, I would put money on them over the others.
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Got it. Yea, I think you might be right on that one. I started to go with UT, but there are cracks starting to show there a bit, and their ’20 recruiting has been horrid thus far, with no real momentum at the moment.
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Kentucky and Mizzou.this year ….jus’ ’cause.
What’s your opinion, Senator?
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FU because Mike Bianchi said so.
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Considering we’re a 3 loss team, I think this speaks more to what a shit show the east is than how dominant we are. We’re a good team, obviously. But the East is just a dumpster. #dawgradingftw
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Please tell me this was a tougne in cheek post.
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The East had a winning record vs the West last year…FWIW
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Never mentioned ever.
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Status quo being the same year in year out, 12 and 0 will grow to 24-0…sorry Bluto, only the staff not learning from past experiences will deflate UGA on the field of play…injuries and the like not withstanding
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USC east in 2020 if Fromm goes to the NFL after this season. It would be Mathis’s or Bennett’s first away start.
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Um richt did compete against booch and muschamp and shark humper…..and lost. The sec east in richts last 5 years was garbage, as evidenced by South Carolina’s success, a program that has never won anything, ever. Also Meyer didn’t beat richt he straight up Aaron Hernandez’ed him, repeatedly.
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This was meant to be a reply to Derek
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My point is that times we had competitive teams and lost east games, we played against better teams/better coaches than what are now populating the east.
The good teams CMR fielded:
2002, 2003 lost to UF 1 and 2 years post Spurrier
2004- lost to Fulmer
2005- lost to Meyer without a starting QB
2007- lost to Spurrier and Fulmer
2008- lost to Meyer
2011- lost to Spurrier
2012- lost to Spurrier
Unless you want to say we had a good team in 2006, 2009-10, 2013-15, my point holds.
The REAL difference between CMR and CKS is in recruiting. That’s night and day. Now we’re recruiting like Saban and Meyer.
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Just recruiting?! Ask anyone with any inside knowledge of the program, and they will talk for hours about how much better run the program is now compared to the CMR days. I mean, the difference from a leadership and organizational standpoint alone is night and day. CMR, for ex., took a far more reactive approach than a proactive one, and he was generally a weak leader due to his laid-back style coupled with a lack or urgency (or fierce desire to win). He also was very set in his ways and didn’t particularly like change. CKS is the total opposite.
You may disagree with me on everything else and generally think I’m full of it, and that’s perfectly fine. But trust me on this one as someone with a modicum of insight into the program…it is not just an improvement on the recruiting front alone. Far, far from it in fact.
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Roquan and Baker winning those awards was not recruiting by Kirby. I am as excited about his player development as I am his recruiting.
My vote is for UTk as most likely to break the streak, but it’s probably going to be 2021 or later. I think we continue to dominate the east for the foreseeable future.
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I think one leads to the other. You can be much more demanding of your #1 guy at a position if you’re willing to play the #2 guy.
I think one of the reasons some of our really good players coasted and/or turned into better pros under CMR (Geno, I’m looking at you) than they were college players, is that no one was there to push them to be.
It does appear that we have a lot more resources (read: staff), but until they talk CKS out of stupid fake kicks, I’m still saying that upgrading the roster is the main difference. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t other identifiable differences, its just that they aren’t tangibly or quantifiably making differences like the recruiting is.
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I’ll simply say this – we had top 10 recruiting classes under CMR pretty much yearly, yet we still managed to struggle mightily with foes far inferior to us. Like Mizzou, SCU, Vandy, etc., while at the same time losing to foes regularly with equal talent. That doesn’t happen anymore.
Again, t’s not just a recruiting/talent thing. Everything is vastly improved.
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All top ten classes aren’t equal. Load up on a few skill positions and your ranking goes up while your lines of scrimmage lag behind.
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Top ten doesn’t do shit in the SEC, especially when the #1 recruiting team every year is in the way. The difference between #7 and #2 is HUGE.
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Good gosh you refuse to the the forest through the trees. Reading comp also is an issue.
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Except in 2016 before the recruiting kicked in right?
We’re we better than UT and LSU last year?
Did we win?
We’re double digit favorites vs. every east the last two years. How many of those did we lose under CMR?
Why are we double digit favorites? It’s the roster.
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Derek can be a brick wall, man. Not saying we all can’t be from time to time, but he can be particularly obtuse.
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Concur
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Yeah, I’m having a hard time believing that 02 & 03 Florida, 04 Tennessee, 05 Florida, 07 South Carolina and Tennessee, 2013 Vanderbilt, and 2014 &2015 Florida (led by treon fucking Harris) were juggernauts that would have dominated today’s sec East. The 2014 team also had zero business letting the division slip away.
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Slipped right through our fingers when Todds’ picked up the pen…
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Hell, SCU straight up owned CMR and had surpassed us in the pecking order, winning 4 out of 5 years against UGA at the end of CMRs run. These days, SCU is hoping to possibly beat us once every five years or so.
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From 2007-2015, USCjr beat us 5 out of 9 times including 3 in a row (10-12) – unacceptable, Guess what? They won the East once and we won it twice. They hadn’t surpassed us in the pecking order.
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Fair enough point about the pecking order, but wow(!), those stats. UGA lost to USCjr 5 out of 9 times, including 3 in a row? I had forgotten it was that bad.
From some angles, it’s kind of amazing UGA kept Richt as long as they did.
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Of course, right before your cherry-picked data, we had beaten them 5 years in a row; 4 of their 5 wins were essentially coin-flips and they were also coached by (like it or love it) a HOF’er who is our all-time nemesis during that time and was (and likely will be) the best coach they will ever have…
Lies, damn lies and statistics!
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I was only responding to 3&G’s assertion that USCjr owned us and had passed us in the SEC’s pecking order.
No cherry picking there. I was using his specific timeframe (end of the Richt era) to prove my point.
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Not cherry picking at all…at the end of CMRs tenure, they had beaten us 4 of 5 years (half of those were double digits wins, including a 28 point win blowout).
UGA should never lose to SCU that often given our immense inherent advantages over them, even if Belichick is coaching them. After all, look where things stand now between us. And I’ll submit Muschamp is an upgrade over a 70 year old Spurrier who literally stopped recruiting after 2012.
More importantly, CMR had a downright horrid record against ranked teams going all the way back to ’08. Something like 13-29 if I recall. What other major SEC program would keep their coach for so long with such pathetic results? He also was no longer a 10 win average coach but instead only averaged 9.1 wins his last NINE years with a 13+ game schedule.
Simply put, towards the end, CMR retained respectability due to his likeable personality, along with feasting on inferior foes with a vast talent advantage. Yet he continued to get trucked by mediocre or better foes. 2015 exemplifies this perfectly.
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When they throttled us in 2012 I think 35-7 or something – it damn sure felt to me like we’d dropped a spot in the pecking order.
T Kyle King’s headline next day was “Rode hard, put up wet” – Just awful. Richts worst loss for my money.
It’s a shame T Kyle quit writing about the Dawgs.
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Until we were 5 yards from a SEC and a national championship…then 10 weeks later, USC east didn’t matter again.
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Agree
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If any SEC East team pulls an upset against Georgia this year, it will be South Carolina. They’re the only team with a quarterback and they’ve got an attacking and aggressive defense. They don’t really have the horses, though, and the game is between the hedges. I don’t see any eastern division team beating the Dawgs this year.
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Ask any Sakerlina fan, and they’ll tell you this is true. Last year they would’ve gone undefeated if it weren’t for the injuries.
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I really don’t think anyone this year. I don’t know that Kirby wants to beat Florida as bad as SOS wanted to beat Georgia, but it’s close — I mean #ftmf didn’t come from nowhere. So it won’t be UF (a/k/a MF), now or in the near future.
That being said if I had to pick a 2019 East upset it would be…UT. I think Pruitt can coach and will get things turned around there (face it, this is his audition to make Bama think about him when Nicky hangs it up). The game is up there and comes after ND in Athens. Us being 4-0 and coming off an ass-kicking of ND might set us up for a K’ville letdown.
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I would buy being after the ND as being somewhat of a trap game, except for the off week…I think that cancels it out.
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Agree, different situation than the 2004 LSU game then an immediate trip to KnoxVegas. Also think Pruitt can really be a great coordinator is true, jury is definitely out if he can “really coach”. Remember last year when he threw his current players under the bus after a loss, good coaches don’t do that. Frustration level will likely rise this year, how will he handle it? Pruitt hasn’t handled adversity well at any stop,
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Fuck those mother fuckers.
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The team with the best chance is whoever Georgia plays like absolute shit against, because none of them can compete this year if Georgia even shows up with its B game.
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After they get the SEC to move them to the East and Mizzo to the West…Auburn.
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Auburn…after they get the SEC to move them to the East and Mizzo to the West.
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(first comment didn’t appear in a reasonable amount of time so I re-posted and got doubled up. Just in keeping with my adverse relationship with computer technology)
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The only team that’s beating Georgia this year during the regular season is Auburn or TAMU. Auburn, because they’re always dangerous at home and seem to always do well in years when EVERYONE is picking them to suck, and TAMU because they have a mobile QB who can play a pro style system, which is Kirby’s kryptonite.
Also, we might just be beat to hell by the time the TAMU game is there, already having clinched the East by going undefeated against those 6 other teams, so TAMU would be the perfect “let down game” scenario.
But no, no East team has a shot against us until 2020. Maybe not even then.
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