On Saturday, and perhaps for the rest of the season, Georgia’s greatest enemy should be complacency.
Georgia was as guilty as any school when it came to falling susceptible to inferior opponents. One 2016 game in particular served as a prime example: Losing a 17-16 stunner to Vanderbilt.
The Bulldogs see those Commodores again this weekend, fresh off extracting revenge on another Tennessee school for last season’s heartbreak. The Hail Mary loss was a combination of foolish penalties and luck; losing to Vanderbilt was more inexcusable, period.
On fourth down, trailing by one, the Bulldogs elected to run a gadget play with Isaiah McKenzie rather than Nick Chubb against a Vanderbilt defense that had been tough all afternoon. Linebacker Zach Cunningham and the Commodores halted McKenzie for no gain, giving Vanderbilt its first road SEC win in three years and first over UGA since 2006.
These Commodores might be better than last season’s team – they’ve been in every game except against Alabama and defeated ranked Kansas State – and shouldn’t be overlooked. That might be harder than suggested, considering Georgia just crushed Mississippi State and Tennessee by a combined score of 72-3.
“I’d say the wind blows a lot harder at the top,” coach Kirby Smart said. “I think everybody always wants a piece of Georgia because of the history of the program. It’s a signature win for so many, regardless of what you’re ranked. It just makes it even more so, what you’re talking about.
“We don’t really talk about that with the team. We talk to them about controlling what you can control, which is getting better and playing good and taking out the mistakes we’ve made the past 2-3 games so that we can increase our chance of success. We don’t talk about what we’re ranked, or what somebody else’s effort will be greater based on what we’re ranked. We’re just really focusing on us.’’
It's the second game of a five-week stretch in which Georgia will play in Athens once. After Saturday, Georgia hosts Missouri before its usual off-week before facing Florida in Jacksonville. After that, its toughest game is at Auburn on Nov. 11, but Kentucky and South Carolina have to visit Athens.
“It doesn’t matter where we’re playing,” fullback Christian Payne said. “We’re ready to play wherever we play, it doesn’t matter.”
These Bulldogs don’t seem phased by much. Talent, conditions, home or away; it doesn’t matter. Their closest game was in South Bend, yet it still felt as though UGA was in control most of the night. The players, whether they admit it, have seen the “We want Bama” signs and heard the remarks.
There’s a different feeling with this team. The coaches see it, the players feel it, even the media can sense it. For a program that was somewhat in flux following Mark Richt’s dismissal and Smart’s 8-5 homecoming season, that’s quite the shift in mentality.
‘’I don’t know that you coach them harder because, I’ll be honest with you, we coached them hard when we weren’t ranked,” Smart said. “I believe that when you coach them, you give it all you’ve got every day and then you do the same thing tomorrow.
“I certainly think you’ve got to pay attention to detail more, meaning every little thing, you’d better be on top of. Whether it’s a guy’s shoelaces touching the line, stretching the right way, running the right route, giving the right signal because success sometimes breeds complacency.”
Complacency has long doomed UGA. It resulted in consistent upsets such as what Vanderbilt achieved a season ago. It led to frequent losses in Jacksonville and often the team looking up in the East standings despite winning the on-paper war.
Smart, if nothing else, is igniting a culture change. To complete it, the Bulldogs have to finish off teams such as Vanderbilt and Missouri. The next three weeks before Jacksonville are important from a momentum perspective, but even more so from a mental point.
“That’s one thing we won’t stand for here is to be complacent,” Smart said. “So we’re on top of everything we can be, but I don’t see how that’s any different than anytime.’’
The trickiest, yet defining stretch continues Saturday in Nashville.
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