ATHENS, Ga. — It’s Vanderbilt week. Feel the excitement. Quite a comedown from Auburn week, that long and storied rivalry that during the past decade has been just as competitive as … well, the Vanderbilt rivalry.
Georgia vs. Vanderbilt since 2011: 8-2
Georgia vs. Auburn since 2011: 11-2
And similar results if you take it back to 2006:
Georgia vs. Vanderbilt: 12-3
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Georgia vs. Auburn: 15-3
Well, anyway, on to the mailbag, where some questions were edited for length and clarity, but all were excellent, and we’re sorry we couldn’t get to all of them:
I feel we are not celebrating the 2022 Bulldogs enough. If 2021 never happened, we would be pumped to be No. 1 and to be thrashing rivals like Auburn into oblivion. What can we do as fans to embrace the 2022 team and enjoy the wins more? — Eric W.
Well, a couple of those 130 fan bases would give you an argument, but your point is taken: There only has been one game this year that Georgia was truly in danger of losing, the Bulldogs pulled it out, and otherwise the average margin of victory of 33.8 points. What’s your problem, people?
Some of it is human nature. Some of it is legitimate worry about what happens when the opponent is better. But some of it is just the expectations the fans’ own program created during the past year-plus.
Georgia won 13 games by 14 or more points last season, the most in single-season SEC history and tied for the most in major college history. And as much as anyone didn’t want to compare this year’s team to last year’s team, once it blew out Oregon in the opener, then reinforced it with two more blowouts, the impression was set: Wire-to-wire blowouts were the standard.
Now the team has hit a bit of a lull, especially on offense, which for two straight games has started slow. The strong finishes have overcome it, but the slow starts have left a sour taste for those who saw perfection during the first three weeks. (Even the fourth week, against Kent State, could be chalked up to turnovers and red zone issues.)
Memories of 2017, when Georgia also mauled practically every opponent, as well as how Alabama and LSU did in winning the 2020 and 2019 national titles, may be skewing expectations upward. So are Georgia’s imperfections this year a red flag? Time will tell, but history says it could go either way:
• Last year, Alabama not only lost at Texas A&M but had one-possession wins over Florida, LSU, Arkansas and Auburn, the first two of which were so mediocre they fired their coaches in-season. And yet the Crimson Tide still routed the Bulldogs in the SEC Championship Game and nearly had them beat again in the national championship.
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• Clemson’s two national championships were two different kinds of seasons: In 2016, the Tigers lost at home to unranked Pittsburgh and had six wins by one possession, including Troy and unranked NC State at home. They won it all anyway. Two years later, Clemson won it again, going unbeaten with only one squeaker: a home win over Syracuse, which comes with an asterisk because Trevor Lawrence was making his first start and got hurt, leading Chase Brice to take over.
• Alabama’s history has similar mixed lessons: The 2017 team lost at Auburn and had two one-possession wins, both on the road. The 2015 team lost at home to Ole Miss and had one win by one score. Both won it all, unlike the 2018 team, which rolled through the regular season, the closest margin being 22 points, but lost to Clemson in the championship game.
So where will this Georgia team land? That leads to this question:
How is it possible that this is the same team that thrashed Oregon and South Carolina? Make it make sense. — Fay S.
My sense is it goes back to something I wrote last week: This is a young team that still has growing up to do. It came out of the gates firing this year, properly motivated by its head coach telling the players they were different from 2021 and hadn’t won anything yet. But the fast start got the players overconfident, and their continued slow starts are an indication they haven’t had enough good player leadership form to get them ready for the subsequent games.
But in the end, talent has taken over. And as a result, this team is still 6-0 and No. 1 in the country.
Do you think the rushing attack we saw last week is representative of a shift for this team, especially with the performances of Daijun Edwards and Branson Robinson? Or is it more of Kirby Smart-Todd Monken picking what the game plan suggests for the opponent? — John H.
Monken met with Rick Neuheisel and the rest of the CBS crew that broadcast team and evidently gave Neuheisel — a fellow offensive coach — the impression that Georgia’s coaches felt they tilted too far in the passing game early in the season. During the pregame intro, Neuheisel said this of Stetson Bennett: “They trust him. They want him to have the ball, he makes good decisions, but they may have gone a little bit overboard. They may have gone a little bit overboard. Look for them to be a little bit more balanced today.”
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That was what the Bulldogs did, in fact rushing it on first down more than normal, and the running game did quite well: 16 rushes for 118 yards and only 25 passing yards on 13 attempts. As boring as that may have been, it was working: Georgia was up 14-0, and it didn’t feel like the game was in any real danger. So Georgia came out to start the second half and went run-run-pass … only to get sacked and fumble on third down.
That was when Monken and company evidently decided: OK, maybe we should just let Stetson be Stetson. The result was four touchdowns in the next five drives.
CBS showed a graphic during that pregame intro: Georgia’s offense was only 42.5 percent pass from 2016-21, then 54 percent the first five games of this year, the highest at Georgia since 1994. The graphic was used to buttress the idea that the Bulldogs had gone too far in the passing direction.
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But I’m not sure it’s quite that. The idea is still — all together now — to take what the defense gives you and be equally good at passing and running. Monken and Smart may not have wanted to become too dependent on the passing game and sought to develop the running game.
It’s also not so simple as run versus pass. The way the defense is playing you impacts that. Missouri came out attacking, and it worked, with one impact being it took away the deep ball because Bennett didn’t have enough time to throw. No explosive plays, which had been a staple of the offense. So in the second half, Georgia shifted to more short- and midrange pass routes, settling for moving the sticks and ended up scoring on its final six drives.
Auburn came out with a different strategy, closer to Kent State’s of playing back while also trying to take away the perimeter, so Georgia adjusted with more traditional running. But in the second half Saturday, after Bennett’s fumble, Monken got more creative to go outside: A misdirection to the left where only Bennett and Darnell Washington went right, and Bennett hit him for a good gain. Then they passed to the left on the next play and kept attacking the outside, stretching out the defense.
The horizontal offense. And what did it do? It set up the middle to be wide open for two Bennett keepers, the second one 64 yards to the house.
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The good news in all this for Georgia is its offense has adjusted twice, with great results in the second half.
The concern is it has had a margin for error to adjust because the defense has kept it that way. What happens if that doesn’t happen against high-flying offenses like Tennessee and Mississippi State?
How concerned should we be with Bennett’s “injury?” I recognize not wanting to give opponents, and thus fans, much info on the status of our players, but Bennett is clearly playing through pain. — Jeremy G.
As I stood on the sideline watching Bennett warm up Saturday, I could tell this was a bit different. He wasn’t wearing a brace or anything, but he clearly was testing out something with his shoulder, which was on my radar because he said after the Missouri game that he got hit there, but it wasn’t anything big. After the Auburn game, he acknowledged some soreness but downplayed it. And the way he played in the second half, and the air he was able to put on some of those throws, showed that structurally it’s not an issue.
Still, you wonder if it was bothering him enough during the week that it had something to do with the game plan being more run-oriented than before. And perhaps a throw or two or three were affected. We’ve all had little injuries that feel fine for the most part but flare up at odd times. But all evidence points to this being a minor nuisance rather than anything that’s being elaborately hidden; I actually ran into Bennett getting out of an elevator Monday, and he was perfectly normal, no ice on the arm or brace or whatever. (Well, I didn’t literally run into Bennett, in that case maybe there would have been an issue.)
Are we about to see more of the Edwards and Robinson duo? Those two hit holes differently. — David F.
We could for the next few games if Kendall Milton is out with a groin injury. It doesn’t look like he’ll play Saturday, so you could see a lot of the other two guys. But let’s not discount Kenny McIntosh and Milton, and realize why the run game looked so much better the other day: The blocking was better.
Georgia has four good scholarship tailbacks. McIntosh is the best in space, which can be exploited in the passing game. Robinson has good patience and vision, along with toughness and burst. He has the most long-term upside. Edwards keeps getting better, showing enough explosiveness to get 28 yards on one carry while also punching in three touchdown runs. Milton just needs to stay healthy; it was his bad luck to get hurt again in a game where the blocking was on point.
That’s what it comes down to, in my opinion: The blocking, whether it’s gap scheme or zone, just needs to be there. Georgia doesn’t have dominant tailbacks and won’t have a dominant running game, but it doesn’t need to with how good the passing game can be this year and has been.
(Bennett still ranks second in the SEC in total passing yards, despite sitting out the fourth quarter of the first three games.)
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I very much enjoy watching Bennett’s postgame interviews and news conferences. It occurred to me I haven’t enjoyed watching a player talk this much since Jarvis Jones. This is sort of a do-it-yourself question, but what is it that makes a player (or coach for that matter) an easier or more pleasant person to talk to from a reporter’s perspective? — Lori H.
It can be a number of things. I’ve enjoyed talking to Georgia players through the years who were funny (Bennett), pleasant (Jones, Jordan Davis, Aaron Murray, Christian Robinson, etc.) thoughtful (Malcolm Mitchell), honest to a fault (Shawn Williams) and brilliant (Chris Conley).
There’s a perception that media members love players who are good quotes, and that doesn’t hurt. But on a personal level, I love talking to players who either just give off a pleasant vibe, that talking to us isn’t a chore they’d like to get over with as quickly as possible. More importantly, on a professional level, I want to talk to players who provide insight, whether it’s about the team, the game of football or a personal feature. I’m not looking for bulletin-board material and few reporters are. (Some are, and frankly, they make it harder for everyone else because the teams clam up on access, penalizing everyone.) But most people in the media are looking for insight they can use for a story, without any real positive or negative slant, just something that moves a story forward. I want to walk away from an interview saying I learned something and that I’ll be able to help the readers learn it too.
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Bennett and Zion Logue, incidentally, have become those players on this year’s team. Both are straight shooters who answer questions thoughtfully and with insight, and yes as soon as I publish this, Georgia will never let them speak to the media again.
Where does Bennett’s 64-yard touchdown run rank in terms of longest runs by a UGA quarterback? — Jay S.
That’s hard to say for sure, but after checking with Georgia sports information’s staffers, they were able to find one longer run by a quarterback: 73 yards, during the 1976 season, by a man I wrote about earlier this week: Ray Goff.
(Top photo: Steve Limentani / ISI Photos / Getty Images)