“Anybody can sue anybody for anything.”

Case in point:

Adam Sasser, a former Georgia baseball player who was kicked off the team for using racial epithets at a Georgia football game in 2018, has filed a federal lawsuit against UGA, the state board of regents and several other parties.

Identified only as “John Doe” in court documents, Sasser alleges violations of his constitutional rights for free speech under the first and 14th amendments as well as breach of contract. He seeks undisclosed “compensatory and punitive damages” for loss of income and employment opportunities as a result of UGA’s actions.

I wonder if they’ll make Justin Fields testify.

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So, 2020, you’re saying there’s a chance?

Behold, my friends, the latest Heisman odds:

Latest Heisman Trophy odds by @betonline_ag
Missouri will have played eight of these guys by season's end pic.twitter.com/qIdDmCReLC

— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) October 6, 2020

If you’d have told me a week ago that Stetson Bennett would have better odds today than Sam Ehlinger, Sam Howell, Ian Book or Najee Harris, I would have laughed in your face.  Crazy, man.

“Just demoralizing.”

This PFF SEC Film Room post is certainly that — if you’re an Auburn fan.

In this week’s SEC Film Room, we will talk about Mac Jones’ development as a passer, the Georgia offensive line and, first, Bo Nix — who was hung out to dry against the Dawgs.

Lots of enjoyable stuff there, so take a read.

Streakin’

One thing I cherish about college football is its traditions.  Here’s one that needs to be preserved Saturday:

Most Consecutive Losses vs Top 10 Teams – Active Streaks
Tennessee 33
Indiana 25
Wake Forest 21
Vanderbilt 19

Vols get a chance to break the streak this weekend against the school which its last Top 10 win came against.

— Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) October 6, 2020

Having a longer losing streak than Vanderbilt in anything is… well, something to be cherished.  Keep it going, Vols.

No time to rest on his laurels

I’ve seen some Internet chatter about this quote from Smart regarding Stetson Bennett:

“I want to temper that enthusiasm, though, because he knows he has to get better. People around him played well, but he did a good job of understanding what we wanted to do in the game, and he executed that really well. We think that right now he’s the guy.”

… the gist of it being that Smart isn’t sold on his starting quarterback as the long-term (or even medium-term) solution at the position.

That’s not quite fair.  As the advanced stats I’ve posted show, Bennett has indeed executed at a high level.  Here’s another one indicating that:

Lowest% off-target throws > line/scrimmage:
T Lawrence, 3.8%
S Robinson, 5.3%
K Trask, 5.5%
KJ Costello, 5.8%
K Seals, 6.1%
Z Wilson, 6.7%
S Howell, 6.7%
S Bennett, 6.8%

Highest
B Burmeister, 34.5%
M Cunningham, 25.4%
L Hatcher, 23.9%
B Armstrong, 23%

— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) October 5, 2020

He’s more of a game manager in the Jake Fromm mode, except he’s shown better escapability in the pocket and he’s operating in a more quarterback-friendly scheme.  The thing is, as others have pointed out, a game manager functioning at a high level may be all Georgia needs to succeed this season, given the elite defensive play.

What I think lurks in the back of Smart’s mind — this is pure speculation, mind you — is that he thought he had a game manager functioning at a high level last season, until he didn’t.  Worse, he didn’t seem to have any way to push Fromm to stay on his toes because there was zero depth at the position.

That’s not going to happen in 2020, especially once Daniels is back to full speed.  It may be Bennett’s job to lose, but he’ll have to win it every week in practice to keep it.

Booted

While I’m on the subject of the history of the Georgia-Tennessee series, there’s never a bad time to share this.

#UGAFootball’s Today in History—October 6#UGA is just 8-6-1 all-time in games played on 10/6—but one of the wins was a 26-24 victory at No. 6 Tennessee as an 11-point underdog on 10/6/01, when the Dawgs “stepped on their face with a Hobnail Boot and broke their nose…” pic.twitter.com/RfUmSdR5ep

— Patrick Garbin (@patrickgarbin) October 6, 2020

2020 = 2004?

Could Saturday’s game against Tennessee be a case of déjà vu all over again?  Urnge Nation wouldn’t mind.

Former Tennessee wide receiver Jayson Swain didn’t have any trouble deciding who to yell for during Saturday night’s Auburn-Georgia game.

“I was kind of rooting for Georgia to beat Auburn,” he said on Monday afternoon. “I wanted the Bulldogs to be feeling good about themselves this week. I wanted everybody down in Athens telling them how great they are.”

If anyone understands how hard it can be to perform at your best two weeks in a row within the Southeastern Conference — and it would be hard to perform better than Georgia did in last Saturday’s 27-6 dismantling of then-No. 8 Auburn — it might be Swain, who was a key member of a Tennessee team that upset a similarly gifted Georgia bunch between UGA’s famed hedges in 2004, winning 19-14 to snap a 17-game Bulldogs home winning streak.

Played on October 9th of that year — this weekend’s game between the Vols and Dawgs will be Oct. 10 — Georgia was coming off a resounding 45-16 rout of defending SEC champ LSU.

Tennessee, on the other hand, was trying to bounce back from a 34-10 loss to Auburn, which might explain why the Dawgs were 12.5-point favorites. Beyond that, the Vols were ranked No. 17 to UGA’s No. 3.

Now fast-forward to this season. No, UT isn’t coming off a double-digit loss, but rather a 35-12 victory over Missouri. But they are ranked 14th to Georgia’s — drum roll, please — No. 3. And the first betting lines released on Monday had the Bulldogs favored by 13 points. Twilight Zone music, anyone?

In ’04, the Dawgs swallowed the rat poison after blowing out Nick Saban’s defending national champs the week before and looked like it against the Vols.

“I can’t explain it,” said Greene, who threw a school-record five touchdown passes against LSU. “I couldn’t explain it last week, and I can’t explain it today.”

Will Smart remind his charges of the risk of history repeating?  Probably until they’re sick of hearing about it.

The Package

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall watching Smart’s expression when Monken explained this to him:

Georgia went to a bit of a different look near the goal line on Saturday night against Auburn as defensive linemen Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis entered the game on offense as blockers. The Bulldogs were able to score both times that Carter and Davis entered the game, and afterwards, Kirby Smart gave credit to new offensive coordinator Todd Monken for the idea.

“(Todd) Monken talked about the inability to travel a lot of guys in the NFL and how they use defensive players for those packages,” Smart said following the 27-6 win on Saturday. “We certainly think that Jordan is a weapon because of his athleticism and his size, and Jalen did a lot of that stuff in high school. He’s a really talented guy who has played some fullback and things. We’ve had it in for awhile and thought we would use it when we needed to. I thought Monken and the offensive staff did a good job developing that package.”

It was probably something like this…

… followed by a shit eating grin.

Corch, agent of chaos

You might wonder what a new agency that would advise athletic departments on adapting to the coming NIL marketplace would see in bringing Urban Meyer on as a “coaching consultant”.  Allow Corch to explain his value:

Meyer, who will be the coaching consultant, predicted extraordinary demand for Altius’ services. Coaches’ time and attention in 2020 has been totally consumed by the pandemic, social justice causes and uncertainty around the 2020 season itself, Meyer said, so few of them have given full consideration to what NIL rights might mean.

The kind of guidance and expertise that Altius promises could provide its clients with a leg up in recruiting the top athletes who might be in position to benefit from NIL the most, the coach said.

“Universities will adapt, everyone will adapt,” Meyer said. “But I know a coach is going to want help in this space. He’s going to want to know what other people are doing. The biggest thing is what the NCAA compliance is going to look like. … This is going to be very chaotic for quite a while.”

Translation:  he’s there to help coaches figure out how to push the envelope with boosters.

Domination

Bill Connelly:

… if the highlight of your performance was a player rushing twice for 4 yards, as J.J. Pegues did, that is probably saying something. Georgia snuffed out pretty much everything Auburn could come up with in the Dawgs’ suffocating 27-6 win. Bo Nix completed just 21 of 40 passes at 8.4 yards per completion, threw an interception and took three sacks. Only one Auburn pass gained 20 yards, and the longest rush of the day was a 10-yarder by Nix. It took drives of 11 and 15 plays for the Tigers to manage two field goals.

Georgia played exactly how it was projected to play. The Dawgs were first in defensive SP+ last year and were projected a distant first this year with a motherlode of returning production. Through two games, their defensive SP+ rating, presented as an adjusted points per game figure, is 6.2. Here is the entire list of teams that have finished with a better rating in the past 30 years:

–2006 Virginia Tech (4.6)
–1991 Miami (4.9)
–2017 Alabama (5.6)

That’s it. Smart was the defensive coordinator for a couple of otherworldly defenses at Alabama (6.4 in 2011, 6.5 in 2009), but if the projections and early performances hold up, this could be his masterpiece. We’ve talked a lot about Georgia’s early-season QB issues — but with this defense, the Dawgs’ offense has to be just merely good for the team to contend. Having said that, Georgia’s offense looked pretty fantastic on a few drives against what was, heading into the game, the No. 2 defense, per defensive SP+.  [Emphasis added.]

In case you’re wondering, Auburn’s defensive SP+ dropped to 16th this week.  Not too shabby.

Add up the success on both sides of the ball and that’s how you get to this:

Top Week 4 Game Grades
• Power 5, Game Grader formula

🚨117.3 – Georgia (season high)
86.9 – Alabama
86.7 – Clemson
85.6 – Oklahoma State
83.8 – BYU
81.2 – LSU
75.6 – WVU
74.6 – Tennessee
72.5 – TCU
69.2 – Oklahoma
69.1 – Florida
61.4 – Arkansas

— Pick Six Previews (@PickSixPreviews) October 6, 2020

To repeat, not too shabby.