Georgia sat at the rarest of sports’ intersections the past two games, losing its best player to a suspension, but flourishing in adverse circumstances and playing its best football of the season.
The Bulldogs lost Todd Gurley. Then they went on the road and dismembered Missouri 34-0. Then even more impressively, because it obliterated theories that the win was some one-week aberration, fueled by anger and emotion, the Dogs went into Arkansas and blew the doors off the home team 38-6 in the first half, coasting from there.
Now, there are a lot of theories about what prompted this unexpected post-Gurley rising in Athens. The quarterback getting better. The defense getting better. The offensive line being so good that any decent tailback could flourish, even if not at the otherworldly levels of Gurley.
Here’s another theory: Mark Richt.
Georgia’s head coach has been criticized for not winning an SEC championship since 2005 and not sniffing a national title despite coaching in a conference where Alabama, Auburn, Florida and LSU combined for eight of 13 BCS championships since his arrival in 2001. But this has been one of Richt’s best coaching seasons. He has held together this team despite losing Gurley and dealing with the standard portions of injuries, defections, youth and ever-lingering drama.
Football teams are a reflection of their coach. The Bulldogs have responded to the Gurley suspension much as Richt has. When he broke the news to his players in a pre-practice meeting three weeks ago, wide receiver Michael Bennett said, “He was pretty calm about it. There wasn’t any panic. He just said, ‘We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and get ready for Missouri.’ Then we beat them 34-0. I guess it worked.”
In a brief quiet moment Tuesday, between the expected Florida week blur of TV interviews and media commitments, I asked Richt if he felt particularly gratified for the way his team has responded recently.
I think he almost laughed.
“Well, the other thing is, we’re playing again on Saturday, and everybody’s going to have an opinion on how that game went,” he said. “If the season ended and those last two games were our last two games of the year, I might have some of those feelings, like, ‘Yeah!’ But we’re about to play another one. We’re about to get judged again.”
As for suggestions that this has been one of his best coaching jobs: “It’s premature.”
He has learned to be cautious. Coaching in the SEC, and particularly at Georgia, will do that to you.
Georgia is a heavy favorite over Florida, whether Gurley plays. But strange things happen in rivalry games. If the Dogs lose, Richt understands he will catch heat. But if nothing else, we know Georgia players don’t lack a belief they can win without Gurley, given they are coming off consecutive conference road wins.
The Dogs have succeeded because, like their coach, they never panicked.
Richt doesn’t view Gurley’s suspension as being any different from a team having to deal with an injury to a major player or a loss in a big game. It’s all about processing. They’re all just issues that need to be dealt with, and the head coach needs to set the tone.
“You just tell them the truth about what’s going on, then focus hard and just carry on,” he said. “I don’t try to make too big of a deal about it. I don’t try to dramatize it. But I try to be honest and forthright with them and set an expectation for them that nothing is going to slow us down.”
Richt navigated through a similar storm in 2011. Georgia was coming off a disastrous 6-7 season and lost its first two games that year to Boise State and South Carolina. Richt’s job security appeared in question. But he handled it about as well as a coach could, and the team won 10 consecutive to reach the SEC title game, before losing.
“Coach Richt, in some aspect, is a laid-back guy, and he doesn’t get too rattled,” Bennett said. “Our team doesn’t get rattled, either. When we face adversity in a game, we’re just like, ‘All right, let’s go.’ He stays even-keeled no matter what’s going on. There’s no panic. Even last year when we had a bunch of injuries, he stayed calm.”
This season’s ascent isn’t sudden, Richt said. He thinks Georgia was improving on offense and defense before Gurley’s suspension.
“A lot of people want to say, ‘Well, Todd not being there really gave our team incentive to play harder,’ all that kind of thing,” he said. “And there may be some truth to that. I know they were trying to honor him, especially that Missouri game, trying to give him a sign of saying, ‘Hey, we’re with you.’ But I think we were getting better regardless. The good thing is, we’ve stayed focused. We’ve won. We’ve created a lot of good momentum.”
There’s always a chance it could end this week, but it probably won’t. Critics are quick to jump on Richt when things go sideways. But they’ve been quiet lately. Go figure.
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