‘Level of physicality’ returns Georgia football to championship form

ATHENS — Coach Kirby Smart’s voice has been booming out over the Georgia football practice fields, putting everyone on notice that it’s business as usual.

That wasn’t the case a year ago, as it was a banged-up veteran Bulldogs team looking to restart the engines and adjust the offensive scheme from one built around the drop-back talents of quarterback Carson Beck to the more mobile Gunner Stockton.

Georgia’s run to winning the 2024 SEC championship was noble, to be sure, but Smart noted how the brutal schedule doled out by the league office had exhausted his players’ “mental bandwidth” as the season wore on.

The Bulldogs looked like a team running on fumes throughout an uncharacteristically flat performance in the 23-10, season-ending loss to Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff Sugar Bowl quarterfinal, as SEC Network analyst Chris Doering noted.

“It was surprising to see Georgia ‘out-physicaled’ last year in the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame,” Doering said during DawgNation’s “On the Beat” podcast earlier this week.

“Rarely are they the less physical team on any field that they step onto.”

Doering, a former Florida and NFL player who won three SEC championships with the Gators, has a pretty good idea why Smart is approaching this postseason with an edge.

“I think that (lack of physicality) probably stuck in the craw of Kirby Smart and that entire team since last year,” Doering said. “So it’s being able to come back and prove their level of physicality.”

Georgia will play the winner of Saturday’s game between Tulane and Ole Miss at 8 p.m. Jan. 1 in the CFP quarterfinal Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

Doering, one of the few national analysts who has picked the Bulldogs to win the national championship, notes the physical personality Smart has applied from the onset of spring drills.

“This team, from where they started at the beginning of the year and how they have evolved with Gunner Stockton being one of the best quarterbacks in the conference with his dual-threat capabilities, to how they have been able to run the ball more the last month of the season (has momentum),” Doering said. “Dominance on the offensive line and creating more disruption on the defensive line.”

To Doering’s point, the current Georgia football personality more closely resembles the back-to-back national title teams of the 2021 and 2022 seasons than the 2023 and 2024 teams.

“We are starting to see them looking like a Georgia team of the past,” Doering said. “I think they are peaking now, where I felt like last year they were limping into the postseason, particularly after Carson Beck’s injury in the SEC title game.”

Here’s how the 2025 team compares with the 2024 team, national rank in parentheses:

Total offense

2025: (44th), 406.9 yards per game

2024: (51st) 405.4 yards per game

Scoring offense

2025: (33rd), 31.9 points per game

2024: (38th) 31.5 points per game

Rushing offense

2025: (34th), 186.6 yards per game

2024: (102nd), 124.4 yards per game

Third-down conversion rate, offense

2025: (30th), 45.2%

2024: (78th), 39.2%

Passing offense

2025: (75th), 220.3 yards per game

2024: (12th), 281.0 yards per game

Total defense

2025: (13th), 284.5 yards per game

2024: (30th), 329.9 yards per game

Scoring defense

2025: (11th), 15.9 points per game

2024: (23rd), 20.6 points per game

Rushing defense

2025: (4th), 79.2 yards per game

2024: (36th), 129.6 yards per game

Pass defense

2025: (48th), 205.3 yards per game