Not again.

Damn it.

Georgia wide receiver Arian Smith suffered a broken leg Wednesday during the Bulldogs’ practice ahead of this weekend’s Tennessee game and is going to have surgery. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the injury will potentially end his 2021 season.

Dude’s been injury prone, but came back strong against Missouri.  Now this.  Life ain’t fair, sometimes.

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Laissez faire game prep

Kirby’s been flogging his defense for weeks to get ready for Tennessee’s pace on offense.  How are the Vols getting ready?

Josh Huepel says he believes Stetson Bennett and JT Daniels play similarly, so Tennessee doesn’t need to prep differently for either QB.

— David Schiele WBIR (@Deacon_Schiele) November 11, 2021

There’s only one possible response to that.

The Dawg porn, she burns.

This part of Bruce Feldman’s interview with the folks running the Senior Bowl ($$) will get your blood racing:

Nagy: “I love this defense.”

Ellenz: “Their defense rivals the Miami early 2000 crews.”

Nagy: “Some of those Alabama teams might have more first round picks but this crew is so hungry. They rotate everyone except the safeties. Even the corners come off the field. When they get on the field, it’s like a coach’s dream. They play their asses off. Every kid flies around. It’s special.”

Nagy closes with something UGA assistant Will Muschamp told him. “His tone of voice was interesting. He said if you saw our Tuesday post-practice run period, we could charge admission. He called it a blood letting.”

Cigarette?  Cold shower?

“It’s 12 or back to four.”

Sankey’s not budging on an eight-team playoff format, but it sounds like he’s agreed to throw the Alliance a bone:  the “5+1”.

The debate over eight appears over. Now, there’s a new model, as college football leaders are not done haggling over playoff expansion formats just yet.

At their meeting last week, a group of conference commissioners introduced a new alternate 12-team postseason model that guarantees a berth to each Power 5 champion, sources tell Sports Illustrated.

The model is almost identical to the one a subcommittee introduced over the summer—aside from one change. The alternate model grants automatic bids to the Power 5 champions plus the highest-ranked Group of 5 champion. The subcommittee’s proposal gives automatic access to the six highest-ranked conference champions. Each format completes the field with six at-large selections based on rankings.

That just reeks of the best of the best, doesn’t it?

They know what the weak sister P5s are.  They’re just haggling over the fee.  Which is all the CFP is about, anyway.

Heard it before

One of the season’s recurring themes has been Georgia’s opponent this week is their biggest challenge yet.  (Exclamation point optional.)  We heard it about Clemson.  We heard it about Arkansas.  Then Auburn.  After that, Florida.

According to Barrett Sallee, now it’s Tennessee’s turn.

Main course: Tennessee is Georgia’s toughest test

How many of you thought before the season that the above headline would be even remotely possible? Put your hand down. No you didn’t.

Yet here we are in mid-November with the Volunteers offense improving to a point that it should scare Georgia fans and grab the attention of Georgia coaches. The Volunteers leads the SEC in yards per play in conference games at 7.15, they led the SEC in yards per play in October at 6.93 and put up 9.81 yards per play in its lone November game — a 45-42 win over Kentucky. Georgia coach Kirby Smart knows just how dangerous this team is.

“Offensively, in the last three or four games, they’re averaging the most points in the SEC,” Smart said in his Monday press conference. “They’re up-tempo, fast-paced and that’s really hard to prepare for. Everybody tries to prepare in the offseason, but it’s so hard to simulate when you talk to people going against it, it makes it tremendously tough.”

Dual-threat quarterback Hendon Hooker is the trigger man of that offense, and has evolved into one of the most dynamic signal-callers in the country. Velus Jones Jr., Cedric Tilman and JaVonta Payton have emerged as one of the best wide receiving trios in the country, and coach Josh Heupel has found creative ways to get them open. Georgia’s secondary is stout, but it’ll be on Jordan Davis and the rest of that defensive line to get pressure on Hooker and disrupt plays before Hooker gets loose outside of the pocket.

Funny how he neglects to mention anything about the Vol defense, such as being seventh in yards per play in conference games at 5.83 (almost 2 ypp worse than Georgia).  Or how they’re twelfth in the SEC in defensive scoring in conference games, giving up almost five times the points per game that Georgia’s defense has.  Georgia does get to play on offense Saturday, amirite?

As far as Smart’s “really hard to prepare for”, that doesn’t mean he’s not giving it the old college try.  Like he’s done before.

“We’ve had the scout team preparing for this for weeks,” Smart said. “We’ve done a lot of work to get them ready for this. Again, it’s very similar to facing the triple-option, because you better have a plan since it’s so different and outside the norm.”

Lewis Cine makes it sound like they’ve been preparing for a root canal.

“You’re going to be huffing and puffing,” Cine said of the impending preparation, “and some of the time you’ll be discombobulated. Am I looking forward to it? Of course not, but am I going to have to do it? Yes, so I might as well enjoy it while I’m out there.”

Will that be enough?  Well, let me remind you about Georgia Tech’s yardage totals from Paul Johnson’s last two games against Georgia:  219 in 2018 and 226 in 2017.  And those were in two seasons that the Dawgs defensive ypp was a yard greater than it is in 2021.

Obviously, there are no guarantees in life, but seeing as Smart looks at every opponent as being his team’s toughest test, I expect Tennessee’s offense will get Georgia’s best shot.

1990 is just an attitude.

While I’m taking note of Stewart Mandel, I’ve got to give him real credit for something he said on his podcast with Bruce Feldman about Florida.  Dial this bad boy up to the 19:50 mark to hear Mandel speak about the attractiveness of the joint:

• Hypothetically, if the USC, LSU and Florida jobs were all open, the Florida job would be the least desirable of those due to unrealistic fan expectations.
• They’re unrealistic because, outside of the decade with Spurrier and Meyer’s shorter run, the Florida program hasn’t had a coach who’s sustained success, or, as he put it, “everybody else just flames out”.

You can tell Feldman wants to object, but really can’t bring himself to do so.  Truth bomb!

What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on in Montana?

Stewart Mandel ($$), I hardly know ye.

Let’s assume Alabama was outscoring opponents by 31.9 PPG and was leading the SEC in both offensive yards per play (fourth in the nation) and defensive yards per play (No. 1 in the nation). How many articles would have already been written about this being the best team of all time? Instead, we’re left still reading articles about how Georgia’s offense is a liability, blah, blah blah. — Keary F., Lawrenceville, GA

You’ve got to admire the staying power of “Georgia’s offense is just OK.” It has now spanned multiple coordinators, multiple quarterbacks and somehow managed to remain afloat despite overwhelming data to suggest the Dawgs’ 2021 offense is quite good…

… Alabama has the more confidence-inspiring quarterback in Bryce Young, but as of today I wouldn’t trade Kirby Smart’s offensive line, running game or offensive play caller for Nick Saban’s. At least this year.

Dayum.  Something in the water, maybe?

Is ‘Bama man enough?

Coach O says no.

Alabama knocked off LSU on Saturday in a much closer game than most expected. Afterward, Ed Orgeron didn’t come away thinking that Nick Saban’s club is the powerhouse that it usually is.

The Tigers lost 20–14, which was an improvement from the 55–17 loss in 2020. That last meeting served as a revenge game after the Tigers knocked off the Tide and rolled through the rest of the SEC en route to a national championship in ’19.

“I felt we were a better team than them,” Orgeron, who will not be back with the team in 2022, said. “I don’t know if they played to their peak performance or not, but I felt we matched up pretty good.

“I can’t judge how good they are,” he added. “They aren’t as good as they were in the past. They might be the best team in the country; I don’t know. But they weren’t that night.”

I wonder if anyone will be saying that after the SECCG.  I sure hope so.

How green is that grass, anyway?

I noticed in the comments yesterday that there was some speculation about Dan Lanning’s future after this season ends, namely how attractive he might be for another program to hire as a head coach.  (I don’t think we have to worry about a lateral move; Jimbo Fisher tried that last year, only to be rebuffed.)

Anyway, shedding a little light on the matter is this 247Sports piece about the top assistant coaches in the game and their future hiring prospects.  They polled a bunch of FBS head coaches, assistants and staff administrators, and got responses from thirty-one of them.

Dan Lanning’s name is at the top of their list.

No one should be shocked to see Dan Lanning atop this list, easily garnering the most mentions among the swath of coaches polled by 247Sports. His Georgia defense is on the cusp of being a generational unit, one that might prove to be the best in modern college football history, as the Bulldogs chase a national championship in his third season as the play-caller. The Bulldogs have allowed a combined 59 points through nine games (33 points against the starters) and five opponents have been held without a touchdown. The 35-year-old Lanning is young, yes, but that hasn’t stopped programs like Oklahoma from leaning into youth movements — Lincoln Riley was 34 when he led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff in 2017 — and Lanning has been gaining notoriety and respect among his colleagues for several years.

Lanning might play the job market slowly, however, and wait until a big job is open for the taking. He has plenty of time and a lot of talent to work with at Georgia, where he could wait his turn and build up more cache among athletic directors and boosters at the blue blood programs across the country. Either way, Lanning will be fielding calls in December. The question is whether those calls are loud enough for him to consider answering.

That’s a good point.  Kirby, no doubt, has made Lanning’s position attractive, much like Kirby’s mentor, Nick Saban, did for Smart in Tuscaloosa.  How badly does Lanning want to scratch that itch?

@#)$&@*^%) computers!

Boy, here’s a take that hasn’t aged well at all.

nothing has aged more poorly than the very first ESPN ad for the College Football Playoff from 2014, which features—you can't make this up—actors playing Cincinnati fans proudly saying that there are "no more computers to keep us out!" pic.twitter.com/Dyq3VFregr

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) November 10, 2021

How quaint.  But at least Mickey’s got those cool, albeit meaningless, selection committee shows to sell us.