Georgia’s football team — 4-0 at home but 0-1 on the road this season — won’t play again in Sanford Stadium until mid-November, meaning the Bulldogs’ season may be shaped by the upcoming stretch away from Athens.
The travels start with Saturday’s game at Missouri, which is the only SEC East team without a league loss, and continue with games against Arkansas in Little Rock on Oct. 18, Florida in Jacksonville on Nov. 1 and at Kentucky on Nov. 8.
“It’ll be a long time before we get back,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said.
Although the Bulldogs don’t play in Athens again until Nov. 15 against Auburn, Richt said it should help that the stretch is broken up by an open date the week before the Florida game.
“If you had five away games in a row without any type of break in the action, it would be a little tougher,” he said Sunday. “But, you know, there are advantages to going on the road.
“It’s very simple on the road. It’s just you. It’s just our team. It’s the focus on going into a town and taking care of business and coming home. It’s not a lot of extra things that go along with it. I think it helps the team focus. I think it might even bring the team closer together because we’re really all we’ve got when we go to those away games.”
By the time the Bulldogs play again in Sanford Stadium, where they are 21-2 since the start of the 2011 season, many of their current issues — such as the state of their passing offense and passing defense and by extension their chances of reaching the SEC Championship game — should be clarified, one way or the other.
First stop is the defending SEC East champion. Missouri (4-1, 1-0 SEC) is coming off a bye week, while Georgia (4-1, 2-1) is coming off a 44-17 victory against Vanderbilt. In its only SEC game yet this season, Missouri won 21-20 on Sept. 27 at South Carolina, where Georgia lost 38-35 on Sept. 13.
Georgia and Missouri are in control of their destiny in the division race; either is assured of reaching the SEC title game if it wins the remainder of its league games. The same goes for Florida (3-1, 2-1).
The Georgia-Missouri game will kick off at noon Saturday and will be nationally televised on CBS, it was announced Sunday. The game time had not been known previously because CBS exercised its option to delay decisions on Saturday’s SEC telecasts until six days beforehand.
CBS, with the first choice of SEC games, chose Auburn-Mississippi State for the 3:30 p.m. time slot. ESPN, which had the next two selections, chose Alabama-Arkansas and Ole Miss-Texas A&M for 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. telecasts, respectively. With the fourth choice, CBS selected Georgia-Missouri over LSU-Florida for its noon telecast.
Georgia climbed to No. 10 in this week’s USA Today coaches’ poll and remained No. 13 in the Associated Press media poll, while Missouri is No. 23 in the AP poll and No. 24 in the coaches’.
Richt said Sunday he hopes wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell will see more action against Missouri than the four plays he got against Vanderbilt in his first game back since tearing the ACL in his right knee in last season’s opener. Richt also said he hopes wide receiver Justin Scott-Wesley, who had been expected to make his season debut against Vanderbilt but did not, will play this week.
“Malcolm just started (practicing last week), and Justin is still looking a little rusty,” Richt said. “But they’ll get better, and hopefully this week they’ll be ready to be productive for us.”
Scott-Wesley didn’t play against Vanderbilt because the coaches didn’t feel he was “quite game-ready,” Richt said.
On another topic, Richt said the Bulldogs could continue to use backup quarterback Brice Ramsey as they did against Vanderbilt, when he played the third offensive series of the game in place of starter Hutson Mason.
“I don’t know for sure, but it’s definitely a possibility to keep doing that type of thing,” Richt said.
Richt said Brendan Langley, who moved from wide receiver to cornerback last week because of attrition in the secondary, will stay at cornerback “until further notice.” Langley played corner last season but shifted to receiver after spring practice.
