ATHENS — So begins another week of confusing-but-compelling SEC and College Football Playoff hypotheticals.
The madness sure is fun, isn’t it?
Survive and advance, as cliché as it sounds, is the theme of this season. In a landscape lacking a truly “dominant” team, it’s just about racking up wins. Set style points aside. No team has looked its best every week; no team has avoided multiple lackluster performances, really.
No. 12 Georgia, for all its imperfections, remains firmly in the CFP mix after squashing No. 7 Tennessee 31-17 on Saturday in Athens. It was a de facto elimination game for the Bulldogs, who’d already slipped up twice.
“A week ago, we were dead and gone,” coach Kirby Smart said. “Everybody had written us off.” That’s hyperbole on Smart’s part, but the conversation around Georgia certainly wasn’t rosy.
Georgia responded by becoming the first team this season to surpass 20 points scored on Tennessee’s mighty defense, which had allowed 12.6 points per game. The Tennessee offense, averaging 37.6 points per game, managed only 17 and didn’t score in the second half.
This was a stand-out victory that hammered home a key point: Call it “championship culture,” call it a “winner’s mentality,” call it simply having more talent than almost every opponent, but however one chooses to view it, the Bulldogs just figure it out.
It often hasn’t looked stellar.
Supporters, spoiled by the past three seasons, were frustrated (Saturday: Their team won its 29 consecutive home contest and its eighth straight over Tennessee).
Quarterback Carson Beck has been routinely crushed by fans, analysts and defensive lines (Saturday: He was splendid, making clutch plays and managing the game well, another reason for encouragement moving forward).
The offensive line sure hadn’t been a force (Saturday: It didn’t surrender a sack in its finest performance yet, even more impressive given Tennessee’s defensive front.
Offense coordinator Mike Bobo is always ripe for criticism, even when he calls a nice game (as he did Saturday). That’s become Georgia tradition at this point.
So Saturday was somewhat a cleanse. What actually matters, though, is Georgia has assembled a strong resume among playoff contenders; one that should almost certainly earn it an invite to the dance when decision day arrives.
Georgia now has wins over No. 20 Clemson (neutral site), No. 3 Texas (road) and Tennessee. The CFP committee came under fire this week for what many perceived as a lack of respect for strength of schedule, but what the rankings say right now isn’t the final word. Georgia is positioning itself well for the CFP, even if that resume doesn’t include another trip to Atlanta in the SEC Championship game.
Smart noted again Saturday that his team’s arduous schedule has led to his roster’s attrition.
“We’ve accumulated a tremendous amount of injuries from the schedule we’ve had,” he said. “It’s not going to get any easier. It’s a physical game, but when you get the gauntlet we’ve played, it’s taken its toll. We had a lot of guys sitting on the sideline tonight that couldn’t play. But we also had a lot of guys step up.”
It behooves Smart to emphasize his team’s schedule every chance he gets. Getting through the nation’s toughest slate with a bevy of quality wins and two “respectable” road losses will be cited when the committee evaluates teams’ cases.
The Bulldogs valiantly battled back in Tuscaloosa and lost by one score. They were walloped at Ole Miss. They rebounded emphatically from both defeats (“How you handle losses says a lot about you,” Smart said). And while Georgia has had to gut its way to some ugly wins — the Kentucky and Florida games were stressful — the bottom line was the final scores.
“Everybody thinks we should win every game,” Smart said. “I’m very proud of our team. If you told me this group would be this resilient, I’d probably say, ‘I don’t doubt it’ because they’re great kids. They’ve played the toughest schedule in our league and we still have two games left.”
While no other team has faced Georgia’s schedule, every team has endured its own adversity.
No. 1 Oregon, still unbeaten, just barely escaped at Wisconsin on Saturday. Earlier in the year, it looked sloppy against two teams from Idaho (Boise State, a potential playoff participant, gave the Ducks all they could handle).
No. 2 Ohio State, which lost at Oregon by one point, has started slowly several times. It narrowly defeated Nebraska, which might not make a bowl game. No. 3 Texas was destroyed by Georgia at home and had close wins over Vanderbilt and, on Saturday, Arkansas.
No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana don’t have any wins over ranked opponents. No. 8 Notre Dame lost at home to Northern Illinois. No. 9 Miami kept getting by with its shoddy defense until Georgia Tech finally handed it a loss.
No. 10 Alabama lost to Vanderbilt and Tennessee, and beat South Carolina by two. No. 11 Ole Miss lost at Kentucky and fell to LSU, which won’t be ranked next week after it lost to Florida.
The list could go on, but the point is that there’s no peak Nick Saban’s Alabama here. There’s no Jordan Davis-Nakobe Dean-Stetson Bennett IV Bulldogs. There’s no Joe Burrow’s LSU. This is anyone’s race, which means Georgia should be taken just as seriously as anyone did months ago.
“These Bulldogs might not be that good,” is a common water-cooler discussion. It could be accurate to an extent. But Georgia doesn’t need to be its past self to win this year. It just has to be better than the current field. Based on the evidence we have, the Bulldogs — on their best day — can defeat anyone in the country. They’re more than good enough.
The New York Times’ CFP projections, updated Saturday evening before the Bulldogs’ win, projected No. 11 Georgia traveling to No. 6 Penn State in the first round. Even with home-field advantage, how many people would believe in James Franklin’s squad against Georgia?
If the Bulldogs won at Penn State in this scenario, they’d face No. 3 Miami next at a neutral site. Once again, not many would think Mario Cristobal and that defense could knock off Georgia. Win both those games and suddenly Georgia is in the semifinals. Maybe the Bulldogs even host that first-round playoff game by the time this is sorted out.
See how clear the pathway could be? That’s not to disrespect other playoff teams. Georgia could be ousted in the opening round, too. It’s just acknowledging that the Bulldogs could still achieve their ultimate goal.
Anything within realistic means can happen, but that works to Georgia’s benefit, too. For its shortcomings, for its frustrations, it could still be a national champion. Saturday’s bounce back was a clear reminder for anyone who started allowing themselves to think otherwise.
“I don’t know what (the committee) is looking for, I really don’t,” Smart said. “I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eye-ball test and come down here and look at the people we’re playing against. You can’t see that stuff on TV. So I don’t know what they look for, but that’s for somebody else to decide.”
Georgia has UMass and Georgia Tech remaining. If they win those games, it’s difficult to imagine the committee not giving them a chance to win four more.
