All the pressure on Georgia to beat Florida
The good news came a few days back, and it should have been welcomed by anyone who cares about college football and its disappearing traditions. The Florida-Georgia game – or if you’d rather, Georgia-Florida – will remain in Jacksonville, Florida, for at least a few more years.
“It’s important to all Georgia fans. It’s important to all Florida fans,” said Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart in reaction. “It’s one of the biggest rivalries in college football. So for me it’s special because of where it’s located, where the game is played and usually what the outcome determines.”
He is correct, of course. Florida Georgia is the rare matchup that doesn’t need external stakes. Put the Gators and Bulldogs on the same field in Jacksonville, mash two passionate fan bases together at a neutral site, and it’s more than enough. But pay special attention to that very last phrase: “What the outcome determines.”
For only the third time this century, both teams are ranked in the Top 10 (Florida, 7-1, is No. 6 in the Amway Coaches Poll; Georgia, 6-1, is No. 7). The outcome will likely determine the SEC East and will keep the winner in the hunt for the College Football Playoff.
But if the stakes are similar, the pressure points are not.
Florida’s success in Dan Mullen’s second season has fueled optimism in a wary fan base that has years of reason for caution. There’s no real sense Florida has arrived as a power, – but things seem headed in the right direction. A win would be great. And yet, in the overall picture of a program’s progress, a loss would not be debilitating.
By contrast, 2019 was supposed to be the year Georgia emerged fully as a national power, as the SEC’s pre-eminent power. The rival that Smart and the Bulldogs are trying to supplant is not on the schedule, at least not during the regular season.
Never mind that Alabama might have
its own issues in the SEC West (with LSU next week and Auburn lurking down the road). Smart was hired away from ’Bama and back to his alma mater to raise Georgia to the top of the SEC, and from there college football.
He was hired to beat Nick Saban – because in the current version of the SEC, you don’t reach those goals if you don’t. In two chances, the Bulldogs have come very close, only to lose late leads. Still, there was a sense that the program was ahead of itself, that 2019 always was going to be the year when the Bulldogs fully arrived, when talent, recruited over the last few years, finally matched up with experience and momentum to reach critical mass.
And then South Carolina happened. Even a 23-17 home win in September against Notre Dame has been re-evaluated. When Notre Dame was considered a Playoff contender, it was fine that Georgia struggled to put away the Irish. But about that: Last week Michigan – which has struggled through the first half of the season – swamped Notre Dame. Yeah, it was played in a monsoon. It was also 45-14. Notre Dame was
exposed as a pretender, at least in relation to the Playoff.
And what is Georgia?
“We’re just going to do what we do,” junior quarterback Jake Fromm said this week. “We’re just going to do it better.”
He was talking about the Bulldogs’ offense, and what they did with an extra week of practice since beating Kentucky on Oct. 19. But it’s also essentially the entire philosophy of the program in two sentences.
Under Smart, the Georgia Way is to put better players on the field and then to execute better than the opponent. Great defense. Very physical but vanilla offense, grinding ball control mixed with play-action passing.
It’s copied unapologetically from what Smart learned from Saban at Alabama – and its results are so often delicious. But it’s also not what Alabama is doing anymore. The Crimson Tide still have all the five-star recruits (at least, those Smart hasn’t reeled in), but the offense has been opened wide with Tua Tagovailoa throwing the ball to a fleet of fabulous receivers.
Saban’s shift came in response to how college football was changing around him, and with it Alabama has taken things to another level. Georgia under Smart quickly morphed into a very formidable program, but is a philosophical shift necessary to make that last step to the top?
But that’s a question for the offseason. It’s possible that Smart will decide not to change much of anything, and the blueprint will be enough to win SEC and national championships – as they’ve come so close to doing in the last couple of years.
But if it’s going to work this season, Georgia must win Saturday. Or else, the season becomes disastrous. That’s maybe not fair, but the expectations are what they are. And the opponent in Jacksonville is better than almost anyone would have predicted.
Florida doesn’t much resemble those offensive juggernauts from the other side of the SEC, or the high-powered contenders from other conferences. But the Gators have a very good defense, allowing only 15.8 points (12th nationally) and 319.5 yards (25th) per game. Meanwhile, Kyle Trask has been solid at quarterback, a very adequate replacement for the injured Feleipe Franks.
With the combination, the Gators have become formidable. While the talent gap between Florida and Georgia exists on paper in the form of those recruiting rankings, it suddenly doesn’t seem quite so large.
“This game changes everything,” Florida defensive lineman Jonathan Greenard said this week. “If we win, we get to where we want to be.”
A Georgia win doesn’t change much of anything, but maybe that’s the point. A trip to Auburn would still loom, and after that presumably the SEC championship and, just maybe, another matchup with Alabama. A loss isn’t necessarily a pivot point, either. But for the program’s supposed trajectory, success Saturday seems critical.
If Georgia wins, the Bulldogs still have the chance to get to where they’re supposed to be.