Saturday’s game between Georgia and Tennessee in Knoxville is what some might call a “pendulum game.”
Win it, and the pendulum could swing hard in Georgia’s favor. It would be career victory No. 100 for coach Mark Richt and Georgia’s fourth win in a row and put the Bulldogs (3-2, 2-1 SEC) in the driver’s seat in the SEC East and favored heading into next week’s game at Vanderbilt.
Lose it, and the Bulldogs could be in real trouble. They will have lost in Neyland Stadium for a third consecutive time, would have lost to an unranked team and would be effectively eliminated from the division race. Worse, talk that the program is in a state of decline under Richt surely would be resurrected.
It is an important game, and it feels like an important game.
“This could be the turning point,” junior linebacker Christian Robinson said. “I think this will be a game that people decide whether we’ve turned the corner or not. Same for [Tennessee]. This will be the determining game for both these teams. It doesn’t mean we can’t do well from here, but if a team comes out and is dominant, it’ll let people know they’re for real, I believe.”
Kickoff is set for 7:06 p.m., and the game will be nationally televised on ESPN2.
Georgia has looked like a dominant team in recent weeks. The Bulldogs have recorded three relatively stress-free wins in a row against Coastal Carolina (59-0), Ole Miss (27-10) and Mississippi State (24-10). Georgia’s defense allowed one touchdown over that period.
But the Bulldogs will face a different kind of challenge Saturday. In the Volunteers, they will go against one of the more prolific passing teams in the country, led by one of the more talented young quarterbacks to come through Rocky Top since Peyton Manning.
Tyler Bray, who is built similarly to Manning at 6-foot-6, leads the SEC and is ranked seventh nationally with a pass-efficiency rating of 176.1. He is averaging 332 yards passing per game and has thrown 14 touchdowns with only two interceptions.
Granted, much of Bray’s good work has come against the likes of Montana, Cincinnati and Buffalo, but Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham has been impressed enough to label him “a young Kellen Moore.” Boise State’s Heisman Trophy-candidate quarterback carved up the Bulldogs to the tune of 261 yards and three touchdowns in a season-opening 35-21 loss.
“Tyler Bray is playing fantastic,” Richt said. “You can look at a man’s statistics and see that he’s doing great, but when you look at the film it’s even more impressive to me. He’s a very smooth, effortless passer, very accurate. He makes it look easy, really just from a fundamental standpoint.
“He’s very tall, a guy who can see the field well and put in on the money.”
The Vols’ most impressive statistic is what they do on third down. They lead the nation with a conversion rate of 62 percent. Conversely, Georgia is No. 2 in America at stopping opponents on third down (25.4 percent).
“The last three games, there’s nobody in the country that’s played as good on defense as Georgia has played,” Tennessee coach Derek Dooley said. “They’ve been excellent on third down, nobody’s running the ball on them very well and they’re great against the pass. So we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’ll just see how we do.
“We’re going to have to be able to run the ball somehow, because we can’t get in one of those throw-it-50-times games. We’re not very good when we do that.”
Georgia hasn’t been very good when it has played at Neyland Stadium. Not lately, anyway. After winning in their first three trips to Knoxville under Richt, the Bulldogs have lost the past two by the combined score of 80-33. And they’ve taken some pretty good teams in there.
The 2007 team that finished 11-2 lost to Tennessee 35-14. Georgia’s 2009 squad lost 45-19.
“In both of those games, before it was over it looked like they beat us to the point where we gave in,” Richt said. “It’s hard to fight when you are so far down. I don’t know if we fought the full 60 minutes. That’s what happens when you get behind and you get behind in a place like that.
“We haven’t had many of those since I’ve been at Georgia. Those were two situations right there where it did.”
Robinson was a member of the ’09 team. He doesn’t believe these Bulldogs are capable of being dominated like that one was.
“I just think we came out flat that game,” he said. “It didn’t go well. Just the overall feeling was not what it needed to be. I think the team now is different. We know what we have ahead of us. It’s a big game.”
One of the biggest.
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