Jordan Jenkins looks back on last year’s Florida game — when his Georgia team was heavily favored, Florida’s coach was on the verge of being fired — and essentially believed that Georgia lost it well before kickoff.
Defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt calls it “clutter,” as in paying too much attention to what the outside world is saying. And the Bulldogs were doing just that, Jenkins said, especially after star tailback Todd Gurley’s suspension was unexpectedly upheld three days before the game. The result was a 38-20 Florida win that wasn’t as close as the score indicates and simply was an embarrassment for Georgia.
“We let the clutter get to us,” Jenkins, now a senior linebacker, said last week at SEC Media Days. “I mean we had heard things, the Todd situation, and our minds immediately went to two games down the road, three games down the road. ‘We get Todd back, we’re not gonna even worry about this game, when we get him back it’s gonna be so much greater than that game.’ I feel like that’s what led to our downfall in that game.”
Call it the ugly-loss syndrome. Georgia’s record since 2001, when Mark Richt was hired as coach, is 136-48, second-best in the SEC over that period, after LSU. But the team’s ability to crack through to a national championship appearance has been undermined several times by the ugly loss: a game Georgia either shouldn’t have lost (like Florida last year, or in 2002), or a game that it just got plain embarrassed (South Carolina in 2012, Boise State in 2011) or both (Florida last year, Tennessee in 2007).
To be fair, Georgia has been on the right side of upsets and inspired performances. The two games that preceded last year’s Florida game spring to mind: Winning at Missouri 34-0 less than 48 hours after Gurley’s shocking suspension, and winning 45-32 at Arkansas the next week.
A few more: The 2012 win over then-unbeaten and No. 3 Florida, the 2009 win at then-No. 7 Georgia Tech, the 2005 SEC championship game rout of then-No. 3 LSU, and the hobnail boot game in 2001, knocking off then-No. 6 Tennessee in Knoxville.
But for a Georgia fan base frustrated over the inability to crack through, the losses stand out.
“We’ve got the talent to do a lot of great things this year, but we’ve just gotta capitalize on it,” Jenkins said of his team, which was picked to win the SEC East in last week’s media vote.
Jenkins points to another game that in his words “showed the amateur side of us”: The 2013 home loss to Missouri. The Tigers came into Athens unbeaten but without any impressive wins. Georgia was 4-1, and although injuries had piled up by then (Gurley and Keith Marshall were both out, as were Malcolm Mitchell and Michael Bennett) the Bulldogs were caught by surprise.
“Coming into that game I don’t think anybody thought we were gonna lose,” Jenkins said. “I think a lot of guys were remembering the 2012 game against them, saying, ‘OK, it’s the same team as last season. They’re the little brothers of the SEC, we’re gonna come in, dominate, clock in, clock out, leave.’ And as the game went on we quickly realized that was a dire mistake we shouldn’t have made.”
So the question becomes: How does Georgia avoid that “dire mistake” again this season? It’s impossible to say for sure. All Jenkins can point to for now is the team’s makeup, helped by a full offseason under Pruitt and his defensive staff.
If there’s a correlation between off-field and on-field discipline, it also bears mentioning that Georgia hasn’t had a known player arrest — or suspension — so far in 2015.
“We’ve just changed the overall attitudes of the program this past season, and this past offseason,” Jenkins said. “It’s just not in us to let that happen. We respect every team and some of the things coach Pruitt instills in us, it’s coming to fruition. We have a different mindset, and are more mature mentally.”
Richt isn’t one to make many grand proclamations. Last week he simply said that his team’s “focus is on the process again,” as in getting back to the SEC championship.
“Our focus isn’t on getting there as much as what do we have to do on a daily basis to earn the right for victory,” Richt said. “That’s what the guys have been doing throughout the off-season, the spring and the summer workouts.”
Whether it makes a difference, only the season will attest, as those three weeks in October last year showed.
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