Georgia football: Bad game against good Auburn just what Bulldogs needed
The Georgia football team was handed their first defeat of the season against the Auburn Tigers this weekend, but it may not have been the worst thing for this program.
It’s okay, Georgia football fans, you can come out of hiding now. Open up the blinds, cancel the plane tickets in your cousin’s name and add some red back into your black wardrobe. Everything is going to be alright.
Monday is here. The AP and coaches only dropped the Dawgs to No. 7 in the polls, and it’s doubtful the College Football Playoff Committee will any more harsh or less forgiving.
Yes, your Bulldogs walked into the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry and laid the proverbial egg, but as far as this team goes, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.
A loss to Auburn is bad, because it’s a rival, we get it. A lopsided loss to a rival is even worse. A lopsided loss to a rival when you’re the No. 1 team in the nation seems unrecoverable…but it’s not, and here’s why.
Georgia Bulldogs Football
For those of you fans beginning the “same ol’ Georgia” narrative, let me bring that to a quick halt. The same ol’ Georgia wouldn’t have waited until November to curl into the fetal position for 60 minutes. They would have dumped against SEC-winless Tennessee or made a game against Samford actual work.
The same ol’ Georgia wouldn’t have taken a Mississippi State team who nearly beat Alabama to the woodshed earlier this year. The same ol’ Georgia would have let a close win over Notre Dame early in the season slip through their fingers.
This is a very different Georgia team.
Yes, the Bulldogs were flat-out whipped by Auburn in nearly every phase, but Georgia also picked a very good team to play a very bad game against.
Georgia made mistakes they hadn’t made all season long – bad penalties, blown coverages, sloppy tackles, mental mistakes – and there could be a number of reasons why that happened. Perhaps they were buying into their own hype too much, or perhaps it was just one of those days when things just go wrong.
Every team has them, just ask the 2007 New England Patriots.
The important thing to take away from this game is that Georgia is not a bad team; their defense is not a bad defense; Jake Fromm is not a bad quarterback and Georgia’s offensive line is capable of much better play than they gave against Auburn.
Georgia – pulled from the too often used political vernacular – is now “woke”.
As for the other sideline, two-loss Auburn should be careful about patting themselves on the back. The Tigers played way over their heads in several aspects of the game against Georgia, and had a lot of emotion carry them through. The whole thing can still be derailed by Alabama in two weeks.
Georgia and Auburn are much more evenly matched than the 40-17 final score from Saturday. In fact, if you play this game with these same players 10 times, you probably get 10 different results, with a lot of close games, and a couple of blowouts in either direction.
The interesting thing is, depending on how things go over the next two weeks, it’s entirely possible the Bulldogs and Tigers will meet again on December 2 in Atlanta in a game which could be a play-in game for the College Football Playoff.
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Neutral field in Atlanta, with revenge in mind and the playoffs on the line? Have to give the edge to Georgia if round two does come about.