Georgia Bulldogs
The Matchup
By: Teddy Bishop
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Even though the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is being severely curtailed due to Covid-19, the game that accompanies The Party still has significant meaning.
The winner of the Georgia-Florida shootout will likely win the Southeastern Conference East title and take on Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.
The winner of the match-up against Alabama will win the SEC title and secure a spot in the College Playoffs for an opportunity to win a National Championship.
Florida had two games postponed because of a Covid outbreak, including head coach Dan Mullen testing positive, and couldn’t even take the practice field for twenty-one days. But all of that seems to be in the rearview mirror, at least for now.
Mullen has returned Florida to national prominence, going 21-5 in his first two seasons, but has not found to way to beat Georgia. Mullen’s Gators lost to the Bulldogs 37-26 in 2018, and 24-17 last year.
In Athens, Kirby Smart took over as Head Dawg in 2016 and had compiled a 44-12 record going into this Covid-plagued year, including three feasts on Gator tail with only one loss.
Florida opened the season with convincing wins over Mississippi 51-35 and South Carolina 38-24, before falling to Texas A&M 38-41.
Georgia rolled to three consecutive wins to start the 2020 season, beating Arkansas 37-10, Auburn 27-6, and Tennessee 44-21, before running into an Alabama buzzsaw 24-41.
The debacle in Tuscaloosa notwithstanding, Georgia’s defense has looked good for the most part. On the other hand, the Gator D has been porous at times.
The high-powered Gator offense is forcing maintenance crews to change a lot of light bulbs on scoreboards, averaging over 42 points per game, but the Bulldogs offense hasn’t done too shabbily either, putting up 33 points per contest.
A huge key to any game, of course, is the play of the quarterback, and it says here that Kyle Trask gives Florida the advantage over Stetson Bennett and the Dogs in the QB Dept.
Through three games, Trask has thrown 14 touchdown passes with only one interception, averaging well over 300 yards passing per game.
In four outings, Bennett has 7 TD passes and 3 interceptions, while averaging about 240 yards passing per game.
Having quoted all those stats, I don’t believe Florida has faced a defense as good as Georgia’s. If you take away the Alabama game, which you can’t, of course, the Dawgs are surrendering fewer than 13 points per game.
Trask’s task is to avoid pressure from the Georgia defense, and I just don’t see that happening.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two local players now wearing the Red and Black for Georgia: former Brunswick High offensive lineman Warren McClendon and former Glynn Academy kicker Jack Podlesny.
Podlesny is having a sterling season for the Dawgs, converting 14 of 14 extra points and eight of 10 field goals, including a 51-yarder.
McClendon (Willie’s nephew), a redshirt freshman, is arguably the best offensive lineman ever to come out of Glynn County, certainly the best I’ve seen in my 18 years of broadcasting Brunswick High football.
Final score for the 2020 Georgia-Florida game: Bulldogs 33; Gators 30.
Podlesny kicks a last second field goal to win the game. McClendon, of course, makes the key block.
The Smart Choice
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
After Georgia’s 41-24 loss to Alabama, Georgia fans took to social media complaining about head coach Kirby Smart. Some fans went as far as saying it was time for change.
If you want to start www.FireKirby.com or #FireKirby, let me, a longtime UGA adversary, drive that bandwagon.
All Kirby has done is build an Elite program in Athens, and I will happily let you idiots ruin that to benefit my Gators.
Getting back on topic, Georgia fans are a bunch of arrogant, spoiled, crybabies. Georgia has not won a National Championship since 1980 and up until 2015 Georgia has only been relevant a couple years at a time during the 1990s onward.
Fans have been comparing Smart to Mark Richt after Georgia’s loss to Alabama (again) last weekend.
Anyone who is honestly considering the idea that Georgia’s program is in the same place now as it was then should simply go look up the 2015 Georgia vs Alabama game.
All Georgia fans wanted was a program just like Alabama. Kirby achieved that goal in year two of his legacy in Athens. But, losing to Nick Saban three times (National Championship Game, SEC Championship game and October 17th) has Bulldog Nation on edge.
Kirby has constructed a program through recruiting. Georgia’s current class is ranked number third in the nation, and they have finished with the number one class in the country 3 out of the last 4 years. In my opinion, Kirby and staff are the top recruiters in the country.
The state of Georgia is a hotbed for high school football and Kirby gets who he wants in his home state. He also goes into Florida and recruits the top talent to their neighbor in the north.
The quickest take you’ll get on the last Alabama vs Georgia game: Matt Jones is better than Stetson Bennett!
Don’t get me wrong Kirby has his issues with hiring and firing offensive coordinators and five-star players transferring to other programs, he’s good but certainly not perfect.
I heard some Georgia fans saying he can recruit but he can’t coach. That is the biggest pile of bull. Kirby simply runs the defense and Georgia’s defense is simply the best in the country.
Kirby has outcoached Florida’s Dan Mullen the last two seasons. Completely controlling both games with his style of play.
Being 3-1 versus the Gators, Kirby knows the importance of this game as a player, and now, he coaches just like the Ole’ Ball Coach.
Mark Richt was 5-10 against the Gators in his 15 years in Athens.
So, the smug Bulldog fans who are whining about the Alabama loss, who are you hiring to replace Kirby?
There are only three other coaches in the country at the same level as Kirby Smart: Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney and Ryan Day.
The Bulldogs are the favorite in the SEC East to travel to Atlanta to face Alabama in the SEC Championship game.
If Kirby gets a chance in Atlanta to face Nick Saban again during this COVID environment shows his coaching prowess.
To Georgia fans, please just shut up and enjoy the greatness in front of you.
In my opinion, Kirby Smart is one of the top 5 coaches in college football.
Keys To The Game
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Dan Mullen was reprimanded and fined $25,000 for his actions in Saturday night’s fight between Florida and Missouri. The brawl was sparked after Gator quarterback Kyle Trask was hit up high and late by Missouri’s defensive lineman Trajan Jeffcoat and no penalty was called on the play.
In my opinion, there is no place for this kind of conduct in college football. I do not condone Mullen’s actions and I think the fine was insufficient.
Mullen down played his actions by stating, “from my understanding, I think our guys thought they took a late hit at our quarterback and they’re going to protect him.”
Reaction on social media started flooding in about potential fine and suspension. I heard from a few Bulldog fans on how Mullen is an embarrassment. Mullen’s reputation has taken a hit on social media with his recent comment about “Filling the Swamp.”
Former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush on FOX Saturday Football stated, “That was a dirty hit and I loved the way Dan Mullen and the Gators responded.”
Mullen’s actions had a positive reaction on his team’s play in the second half. Now can that carry over to the “World’s Largest Cocktail Party”?
Here are a few thoughts about the Florida vs Georgia game.
Georgia is a five point favorite.
Georgia has a huge advantage in talent if you believe stars matter.
The Saturday night injury suffered by All-American safety Richard LeCounte in a motorcycle accident had fans everywhere startled. My prayers for a full recovery go out to him and his family.
LeCounte is the heart of the Georgia defense, he was the SEC Player of the Week for his 13 tackles, three pass breakups, and a fumble recovery against Kentucky.
Georgia is suddenly hit by the injury bug with Jordan Davis, Quay Walker, Julian Rochester, Monte Rice, Lewis Cline, Tyrique Stevenson, George Pickens, Kenny McIntosh and Ben Cleveland all battling injuries.
Florida has two players suspended for the first half, starting defensive end Zach Carter and Antwuan Powell. Add those to the players that missed last week’s game due to COVID and the Gators could be short handed in the battle for the SEC East Division.
My questions going into this game:
Which Florida Defense shows up, the one that got shredded against Texas A&M or the one that controlled Missouri?
Which Georgia Offense shows up, the one that dominated Auburn or the one that struggled against Kentucky?
Who will be under center for the Bulldogs? Stetson Bennett, JT Daniel or Carson Beck
Can Dan Mullen out coach Kirby Smart?
Which team wins the turnover battle?
If you have the answers to these questions then you know who will win this game. The winner of this game is in the driver’s seat to represent the SEC East in Atlanta.
Worth The Hype
By: JJ Lanier
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Some rivalries are formed due to their close proximity to each other. Some rivalries are forged on the field or court due to memorable games, indelibly ingrained in your mind for years. Other rivalries come about because both programs have sustained a level of excellence unmatched by most programs.
What makes a rivalry special is when you can combine all three of these aspects; something Georgia and Florida have come close to achieving in the past, it has just never quite gotten there.
Location has never really been the issue, not because the schools are all that close to each other, but because the game is played in Jacksonville every year.
Normally, I’m not a fan of playing an entire series at a neutral location, but in this case it works.
Whether it’s allowing an equal number of Georgia and Florida fans to attend on a yearly basis, or making it easier to attach a moniker like “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party”, the central location in Jacksonville has really enhanced the game and rivalry.
As for the games themselves, there have been some really great ones, the problem is most of them took place years ago.
Recently, the games haven’t been all that competitive or memorable. There also hasn’t been a ton of parity between the two teams.
By that I mean in most cases the rivalry has been dominated by one team or the other. It’s been a little better in recent years, but even looking at the past twelve seasons the programs have just alternated three-year winning streaks.
Part of the reason the dominance has see-sawed back and forth is even though both teams have seen some level of sustained excellence, rarely have they both experienced it at the same time.
Over the last twenty years, only three of games were played with both teams being in the Top 10. (Two of those games have taken place in the last two years, so that’s at least a sign things might be changing.)
That’s not to say the games can’t be great unless they’re both ranked in the Top 10, but if you’re trying to attract a national audience, which is needed if you want it to be considered a top tier rivalry, having something on the line certainly helps.
Miami and Florida State is a perfect example. Their games from the mid-80’s through the early 00’s were some of the most memorable in college football and almost always had national title implications.
Regardless of where you lived, or what teams you rooted for, that was the game you tuned in to watch.
Now that neither team has been relevant for years, outside of Jameis Winston’s tenure in Tallahassee, the game is merely a blip on the college football radar.
As I alluded to briefly, if you desire the rivalry to be perceived as one of the best in the nation, the future looks promising.
Both teams have excellent coaches, who don’t seem to have ambitions of leaving their respective schools to go along with top of the line sports facilities and strong recruiting pipelines- all important attributes to not only reach the pinnacle, but to stay there.
The Georgia/Florida game has all the makings of becoming a great, nationally recognized rivalry.
The last two years have been a good start; could this year’s game be the one to put them over the edge?
Leading In
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
It’s been a weird year, which isn’t news, but it keeps coming up with ways to feel new bouts of weirdness.
The newest odd sensation was a sense of lacking where it doesn’t belong. Halloween came (with sadly few trick-or-treaters, at least in our neighborhood), Halloween went.
That old familiar football showdown between the University of Georgia and the University of Florida – traditionally positioned closer to All Hallow’s Eve – was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the game was pushed back a week and will now take place on November 7th. However, even that day won’t feature the same, familiar pomp and circumstance and it makes me wonder…if it isn’t a big, drunken, hate-filled party on the beach and at the stadium, is it really Georgia/Florida?
I think the answer is both kind of and kind of not. I’ve been down to Jacksonville for the game, and it is an atmosphere unlike most anything else, particularly for what is always a mid-season game and doesn’t always feature two evenly matched teams.
This is a rivalry that runs very, very deep, and the partying and pageantry is a massive part of that tradition; without RV City, the Bold City Bash, the Georgia-Florida Hall of Fame luncheon, and, perhaps most notably, no tailgating, can this Georgia/Florida week feel like Georgia/Florida week?
Mercifully, the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs have done their respective parts to make this a game worth investing in, even if the investors, aren’t sipping brews in northeastern Florida all day long.
Instead, this year’s game is a big one because the SEC East will be hanging in the balance. So, while TIAA Bank Stadium will only be at 25% capacity, all fans across the Southeastern United States will be hanging on to every snap.
And it should be a contest worth watching. Both UGA and Florida rebounded from their first losses of the season last week, with Florida smacking Missouri around 41-17 and Georgia, who has been ranked higher but won less impressively, beating Kentucky 14-3.
UGA’s not-so-pretty win might foreshadow troubles they could have against Florida.
Their defense held the opposition to 3 points, but quarterback Stetson Bennett was intercepted twice and passed for just 131 yards.
Coach Kirby Smart said after the game that he is going with Bennett against the Gators on Saturday.
That offense is going to have to step up in a huge way if they want to match up with Florida, who has put up at least 40 points in 3 of their last 4 games.
Their defense also looked to have turned a corner after an embarrassing showing two weeks ago; more bad news for the Bulldogs.
There’s also the issue of Florida’s blood being up. There was a matter of a late hit on their quarterback on Saturday, which led to a brawl with Missouri that saw two Gators get ejected.
Now, that might sound like it doesn’t affect their game against UGA, but they’re hungry and they’re probably pissed about being ranked below Georgia in weeks when they don’t feel like they should be.
This game could be a statement for a team that has players willing to get ejected for fighting.
With a quarter of the fans in the stadium and the normal pomp and circumstance that surrounds this game is absent this year.
You could be forgiven for thinking that this game won’t feel like the hard-hitting contest that fans are used to.
However, the rest of the context, and particularly the SEC East crown hanging in the balance, means that this one is going to be about football in a way that it isn’t always. And it should be very good football.
The More Things Change….
By: JJ Lanier
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
As we approach the middle of the college football season and the Big 10 and PAC-12 look to start their schedules, I want to take a minute and look back at a few things that have stuck out up to this point.
To begin with, the Top 25 rankings have about as much relevancy as the Art Appreciation class you took second semester your Junior year. I get it’s only fair to rank the teams that have actually played, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a bit misleading.
Trying to do this without including teams from two of the major conferences is like listing the best Adam Sandler movies, but only including those that have gone straight to Netflix; North Carolina is a perfect example.
If this were any other year the Tarheels would be a fringe Top 20 team, but instead they were ranked 5th before losing to Florida State- they were basically Hubie Halloween.
Secondly, the SEC has dropped all pretense about trying to give off the perception they are a defense first league.
The conference has been trending this way for a few years now, but even those stalwarts who hung their arguments about the defense on the lone 12-9 game every year can’t really argue at this point.
That’s not to say the SEC is the Big 12 where recruiting a defensive player is akin to begrudgingly drafting a player in the youth league because their dad volunteered to coach.
The SEC still has a plethora of talent on that side of the ball, it’s just the level of talent they’re seeing on the offensive side of the ball has grown exponentially.
It’s no surprise though, when you look at some of the coaches the conference has brought in recently; many of whom are offensive-minded.
I give the coaches and athletic directors a lot of credit for changing with the times; it’s one of the reasons the conference has been as dominant as it has been recently.
And finally, Alabama and Clemson are The Andy Griffith Show. When I was 8 years old, I woke up Christmas morning to find a color tv in our living room.
The first show that was on when I turned the power on was Andy Griffith. Being eight and not realizing that the show was filmed in black and white, I thought the tv was broken and automatically became upset until my parents changed the channel.
Point being, we all came into this season expecting to see something different, but Clemson continues to dominate a less than impressive ACC, and the one team I thought might be able to defeat Alabama, Georgia, could only hang for a half. (For what it’s worth, I think Georgia is closer to Alabama than the final score showed, but they’re not there, yet,)
We’re basically in the middle of a five-year tv marathon starring Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney, and we’re not in a position to just be able to change the channel.
It’s easy to look at these things I’ve mentioned and think they’ll change once everyone starts playing, but I don’t believe they will.
The Top 25 will still be difficult to rank based on the disparity of games played, you’ll continue to see high scoring games in the SEC, and in the end it will all come down to Alabama and Clemson. Even Barney Fife knows that.
Georgia Bulldogs v. Auburn Tigers Preview
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Georgia Bulldog’s season got off to a bummy but ultimately successful start on Saturday with a 37-1 win over the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The Auburn Tigers took care of business by beating the Kentucky Wildcats 29-13 to open the SEC football season.
Now the Bulldogs and Tigers will renew one of the oldest rivalries in the SEC on Saturday in Athens.
The top 10 matchup provides a steep test for both teams and plenty of questions after the season opener.
Georgia opens as a 7-point favorite.
There is no question who will be the starting quarterback for Auburn.
Since he arrived on campus, as a star-studded true freshman, Bo Nix has been the starter for the Tigers.
To kick off his second season as Auburn’s leader under center, Nix completed 16-27 for 233 yards and 3 touchdowns.
Nix will need a similarly stellar showing this Saturday at #4 Georgia if the Tigers are going to have a chance to beat the Bulldogs.
Saturday’s season opener provided little clarity in Georgia’s quarterback situation.
Redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis got the start but he struggled early and was benched for junior Stetson Bennett IV.
Bennett played well in relief completing 20-29 passes for 211 and 2 touchdowns. Bennett showed an understanding of the offense and delivered the ball to his playmakers.
Georgia doesn’t have a quarterback controversy right now. It is more like a quarterback muddle with prize transfer JT Daniels being cleared to play this Saturday.
Daniels, a five-star transfer from USC who was granted immediate eligibility, will throw his helmet into the ring.
Once Kirby Smart made the announcement on Monday, the reaction of Georgia fans was ”We have a new starter!”
Auburn’s Offense vs Georgia’s Defense: The Tigers had their struggles moving the ball against a stout Kentucky defense on Saturday.
Auburn’s weapons on the offensive side of the ball are receivers Seth Williams, Eli Stove and Anthony Schwartz.
But Georgia has the best secondary in the country with Richard LeCounte, Eric Stokes, Lewis Cine and Tyson Campbell.
Players to watch: Anthony Schwartz vs Tyson Campbell (former high school teammates).
Georgia’s offense vs Auburn’s Defense: The Bulldogs must get the ball in the hands of George Pickens. Pickens is the Bulldogs’ most explosive weapon on offense.
Last Saturday, he was targeted just six times with four catches and one touchdown.
Rewatching the game, Pickens had separation on a number of plays but the quarterback could not get him the ball.
My biggest concern for the Bulldogs is the players on their offensive line.
The line got little to no push against an undersized Arkansas defensive line and Trey Hill, All-SEC center, struggled with his snapping. Auburn’s defensive line is nursing some injuries with Big Kat Bryant playing just a couple plays in the second half, Jay Hardy and Dre Butler did not dress due to injuries.
Players to watch: Whoever Georgia runs out at quarterback vs Roger McCreary.
Georgia has won the past three meetings, dating back to Auburn’s regular season win in 2017 and has won eight of the past 10 meetings.
A sold-out limited capacity crowd of some 23,000 on hand, so I can throw home field out the window.
This game comes down to quarterback play. Can Bo Nix handle the Georgia defense? Can Georgia get a full game of quality quarterback play?
Georgia will get game management quarterback play out of Bennett and the JUNKYARD DAWGS DEFENSE will smother Bo Nix! Georgia 31 Auburn 13
