How could the Dawgs fall short? Let Groo count the ways…
1) The perfect storm. Georgiaâs last home loss was a sleepy noon shocker in 2019 at the hands of South Carolina, a 20+ point underdog. Combine a disinterested Georgia team, a single big play, and four turnovers, including a pick-six right before halftime, with an uncharacteristic missed Blankenship field goal in overtime, and you got just enough to hand Georgia its lone regular season loss and kept the Bulldogs out of the playoff. Kirby Smart admittedly didnât do a good job of âgetting (their) ass ready to play.â Georgia might have been able to overcome that and snap out of it in time most days. Will Muschampâs Gamecock defense was opportunistic enough and Georgiaâs 2019 offense limited enough that South Carolina stretched it out to overtime and made the outcome a crapshoot.
Georgia will have a lot of games in 2023 in which theyâre heavy favorites. A weak home schedule, especially in September, will feature several games in front of sub-capacity crowds sapped by the late-summer heat. Those fans, many of whom have decided the season comes down to the trip to Knoxville, will be disappointed if the team looks anything other than dominant in its home games. The team â with visions of a threepeat and basking in its #1 ranking â will have to find its own motivation each week, and, yes, South Carolina is among the home opponents again. Avoiding âthat gameâ isnât just a problem for the offense: Stephen Garcia made a career for himself in South Carolinaâs 2010 upset of Alabama. We know that obvious fundamentals like turnovers and special teams can give even lopsided underdogs a chance. The challenge, as always, is seeing each week as an opportunity to improve and play to the programâs standard. Itâs not always so easy.
2) Waning explosiveness. Georgiaâs lack of explosiveness was a major theme in 2019. Without much of a deep threat and a razor-thin tight end position, defenses swarmed the line of scrimmage and made for a compact area of the field to attack. The constrained offense (along with the turnovers) played a role in the South Carolina upset but also left Georgia in a number of close games in which they had to lean on a very good defense. Itâs hard to imagine an offense with Brock Bowers and Arian Smith â not to mention Dominic Lovett, Oscar Delp, or Ladd McConkey â having issues with explosiveness, but thereâs someone else on the other end of those passes. The quarterback position remains unsettled heading deep into August though the depth chart looks solid. Georgiaâs next quarterback will have to be as adept as Stetson Bennett at generating explosive plays, and Mike Bobo will have to be creative spreading the ball around to a dangerous group of receivers and tight ends. If the quarterback canât get the ball downfield consistently, an offense with a banged-up group of tailbacks will find it difficult to move the ball.
Turnovers were a minor issue at Missouri in 2022 (-2) and didnât help things, but we also saw problems with explosiveness that had begun to creep up in the Kent State game. With Missouri playing tight to the line of scrimmage and blitzing often, Georgia couldnât get sustained success on the ground, and the screens and short passes that were an extension of the running game earlier in the season werenât available. Stetson Bennett completed just 56% of his attempts at an unremarkable 7.25 yards per attempt. Georgia was held to their lowest SEC scoring output of the year until that frozen, windy game at Kentucky. Fortunately the defense never broke and the offense remained composed enough to find something that worked. Georgia had too much talent to completely slip back into its 2019 shell, but a lackluster night from the offense can be enough to keep even a mid-table opponent within a score or two.
3) Overwhelmed defense. Auburn and Oklahoma 2017. LSU 2019. Florida 2020. Alabama 2021. Ohio State 2022. Even the best Georgia defenses during the Kirby Smart era have found themselves in shootouts. Sometimes, as with Alabama in 2021, you get a second chance. Sometimes, as with Oklahoma or Ohio State, the offense can keep up. But those shootout wins have been the exception. Georgia has allowed 30 points or more in ten games since 2017. Theyâve only won three of those games (Oklahoma 2017, LSU and Ohio State 2022.) In Georgiaâs nine losses since 2017, theyâve given up at least 35 points in seven of those games.
Giving up 30 points doesnât happen often â ten times in six seasons and usually in the postseason â but it does happen frequently enough and with enough regularity that the possibility has to be considered. Itâs true that most of these high-scoring games have come at the hands of Heisman candidates and known explosive offenses. Georgiaâs defense isnât getting blindsided by Kentucky or Georgia Tech. It does suggest what weâve come to accept as common knowledge: really good offenses are hard to stop by even the best defenses. That realization was the root of the crisis that spurred changes in Georgiaâs own offense after 2019, and during their title run Georgia featured a high-performing offense of their own.
What does one of these offense look like? Ian Boyd put it like this (h/t Blutarsky): ââŚif you donât have an elite space force or the tactics to beat a team with skill, and it just comes down to trench play, Georgia will whoop you.â Itâs possible that Georgia wonât face an offense with those traits until the postseason. LSU and Alabama arenât on the regular season schedule. We saw first-hand the breadth of Ohio Stateâs receiving talent, and USC has a special playmaker at quarterback in a proven system, but, again, those potential challenges are still hypothetical at this point.
Tennessee jumps out as the regular season opponent most likely to challenge Georgiaâs defense. The Vols lost the quarterback and top receivers that led to their breakthrough season in 2022. They still return several productive receivers and add an important transfer in Dontâe Thornton. Kirby Smart has done well to keep the up-tempo Tennessee offense in check, but it doesnât take much for them to get on a roll. Lane Kiffin and Hugh Freeze have been known for productive and explosive offenses in the past, but they might fall short of the level of skill that has given Georgiaâs defense the most trouble.
Of those three, I’d rate the third one as the most logical threat, but it’s hard to see anyone other than possibly the Vols getting Georgia into a regular season shoot out. All bets are off come the SECCG and CFP, of course.
The illogical threat is the one he mentions first: South Carolina. You’d like to think Smart will be prepared to dodge a perfect storm scenario, but all I can say is that I hope I’m glad the game isn’t a nooner.
What do y’all think of Groo’s list?
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