Somewhere, Vince Dooley is smiling.

The class of ’24 has its long snappah commit.

I’m coming home!! 🐶🐶#godawgs @GeorgiaFootball @theBAFootball pic.twitter.com/h6SBpLFuT5

— Luke Raab (@Luke_Raab615) July 31, 2023

I know some of y’all were worried about it.  You can rest easy now.

“Body out of control, it was just stupid.”

This is great.

Things changed for George Pickens forever when he realized that he could just knock guys on their asses. It was his freshman year at Georgia, and Pickens noticed that in the first milliseconds after the snap, cornerbacks sat in a “toilet” position. So he just started pushing them down.

“That’s part of my game, the absurdness,” Pickens says. “Nobody ever thought to do this. Cornerbacks are worried about their feet, their hand placement, and they don’t realize they are on their heels in a seated chair position. All I have to do is push. And that was a shock to everybody because people are like, ‘It’s not illegal, but I never thought to do it.’ So it’s become one of my go-tos.”

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what he was referring to.

Anyway, read the whole thing.  There’s more stuff about his Georgia days in it.

Georgia on his mind

I tell you what — Jim Harbaugh sure has been thinking a lot about the Georgia football program.  In addition to instituting the Beat Georgia drill, he’s got his eye on another mark UGA set ($$).

“I think we’ll have 20 guys picked (in the next NFL draft),” Harbaugh told me. “I bet we break that (draft) record. (Georgia) had 15 that year.”

Consider my eyebrow raised.  That’s a bold statement coming from the coach whose team is ranked 14th in Bud Elliott’s Blue Chip Ratio.  The more important question is whether Michigan has the goods to win a national title with that roster.  You can’t dismiss their chances — as Feldman notes, they’ve whipped a more talented Ohio State team two years in a row now — but still, talent is talent, as this neutral observer explains.

NBC’s Todd Blackledge, the analyst for three Michigan games in 2022, including its lone loss of the season against TCU, has also called a lot of Alabama and Georgia games. He offered a nuanced take on whether not having enough top-rated recruits will prevent a team from winning a national title.

“I think I read some of those same things, and I get where they’re coming from,” said the former NFL QB. “I do think that Georgia and Alabama are a breed apart. The way they’ve recruited year-in and year-out. The way they continue to reload and never rebuild. When Clemson was winning national players, they had some elite players, but I don’t know if that roster top to bottom was as good. But they (Clemson) had the right pieces in place.

“I think Michigan is very talented. I don’t know if they’re as talented top to bottom as Ohio State, but I do think Michigan has a championship culture and I think they have a physical toughness. To me, that has been the bigger difference the last two years. Michigan has some intangibles that make them a special team. Is that enough to win a national championship? I think they have a quarterback now who is capable of leading them to that. He’s seasoned and he’s the leader. I don’t see elite wide receivers, but they’ve been excellent on the offensive line, got excellent running backs, excellent tight ends and defensively, they are talented. I think they’re capable.”

That’s a nice way of saying, “probably not”.  We’ll see.

Pick a flaw, any flaw

You may think the three-peat is a matter of inevitability, but, let’s face it, there are no guarantees in life.  Seth Emerson ($$) lists three things that may trip up Georgia along the way this season:

1. Quarterback (no crunch time game experience)
2. Defensive line (plenty of experience, but no superstars)
3. Schedule (does UGA have a problem with motivation?)

Surprisingly, he doesn’t blame Bobo. (I keed, I keed… I think.)

With regard to his list, I tend to think the schedule will be the quarterbacks’ (and, yes, I’m using the plural there) friend in 2023.  There is sufficient time for someone, presumably Beck, to grow into the position.  Besides that, with the wealth of surrounding talent around whoever starts there, Georgia doesn’t need a superstar, just someone who can play within him self and not cost the team any games.

Defensive line is the lowest concern of mine on his list.  There’s too much depth and talent (on all three levels, honestly) for the Dawgs not to put forward an effective defense.

As far as the schedule and complacency go, yeah, I can see the argument there.  Georgia almost got tripped up by Missouri last year and would have lost to a team with a better offense.  Ohio State would have won with a healthy Harrison, Jr. a better defense.  That said, Kirby has proven himself to be a master at motivating this team.

If you have to pick a concern, either one Seth cited, or something else, what would it be?

Your Daily Gator is chagrined.

Imagine presenting this piece to a Gator fan after the 2020 season.

1. Kirby Smart (Georgia)

Last year: No. 2

Nobody is recruiting, retaining and developing talent better than Smart. No team is playing defense better than Georgia. Smart has implemented the Alabama blueprint to perfection. And if Smart, 47, leads Georgia to the NCAA’s first three-peat since the 1930s, he’ll have achieved something his old boss never did.

Nobody’s better at developing talent than Kirby Smart?  Ah, how quickly we’ve consigned the Portal Master™ to the ash heap of history.

Again, with the gaps?

Another sighted in Columbia, South Carolina:

“We got a lot of work to do,” Beamer told CBS Sports at the SEC Media Days. There are some great teams in the SEC East. You could point to any of those teams and say that they’ve got a chance to challenge Georgia. We’re all trying to close the gap with Georgia, without a doubt. But when you have a quarterback, it gives you an opportunity. We’ve got a really good quarterback.”

You probably don’t need reminding, but last year Spencer Rattler turned in a turd of a performance against Georgia (13-25, 118 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT), in fact, his worst showing of the season.  He wound up being benched late in the game.

That’s some opportunity you’ve got there, Shane.  Good luck with that gap closing.