Georgia’s football team tumbled in the polls Sunday, an unsurprising but quantifiable reminder that the season’s potential was reduced by an ugly loss to Florida the day before.
The Bulldogs fell to No. 17 in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls and figure to plummet at least as far when the new College Football Playoff rankings are announced Tuesday. Before the 38-20 loss to the Gators, UGA was ranked No. 8 by the coaches, No. 9 by the AP and No. 11 by the playoff selection committee.
The loss not only took the Bulldogs off the national playoff radar but also cost them the SEC East lead and control of the division race.
On Sunday, coach Mark Richt said his immediate message to the Bulldogs (6-2, 4-2 SEC) about where they go from here would extend no further than the next game: Saturday at Kentucky (5-4, 2-4).
“‘Beat Kentucky. Let’s get back on track. Let’s get a victory,’” said Richt, summarizing the message. “And I tell you what: Playing Kentucky at Kentucky is a very difficult task. Ask anybody who has been there this year. It’s going to take everything we’ve got. That is going to be the focus.”
Richt said he expects the Wildcats and Georgia’s other remaining opponents to try to copy what Florida did in piling up 418 rushing yards, the second most by an opponent in UGA history.
“I think everybody that plays us from here on out is going to be saying, ‘Let’s run the rock,’” Richt said. “They’ll watch that film and say, ‘Hey, we can do that, too.’
“We’ve got to get back to everybody playing good fundamental football as far as pad level and use of your hands and playing the right gap and being where you’re supposed to be. … ‘Setting the edge’ means making sure whoever is in charge of containing a run from bouncing outside does that and turns it inside to his teammates. We didn’t ‘set the edge’ as good as we should, especially in the second half.”
Georgia’s loss meant, among other things, that Missouri will win the SEC East if the Tigers (7-2, 4-1) win their three remaining games: at Texas A&M, at Tennessee and at home against Arkansas. If Missouri loses one of those games, and if Georgia beats Kentucky and Auburn, the Bulldogs would win the East by virtue of their 34-0 victory at Missouri.
But Richt wasn’t focused on such permutations Sunday as he zeroed in on a Kentucky team that forced Florida to three overtimes before losing and which defeated South Carolina several weeks after the Gamecocks beat Georgia.
The game will be Georgia’s fourth in a row away from Athens, a stretch complicated by the suspension of star tailback Todd Gurley.
“All I know is we got to get ready,” Richt said. “Nobody in this league feels sorry for the other team, I can tell you that.”
Richt also addressed several other issues lingering from the loss to Florida:
- On center David Andrews' ankle injury: "I don't think there's anything that showed up (on X-rays) that would cause surgery. He just sprained his ankle pretty good." Later, asked about team captains for the Kentucky game, Richt brought up Andrews returning to the Florida game despite the injury: "That guy sprains his ankle and can barely walk, and he's, like, 'I'm playing. Get out of the way, I'm playing.' … David is my first pick (for captain) right now."
- On tailback Nick Chubb getting just seven carries in the final three quarters after rushing for 101 yards on 14 carries in the first quarter: "Part of it (was) playing from behind. The other part is he's just one man. He couldn't carry it 60 times. … (As) the score differential began to broaden, we were trying to do some other things."
- On whether Georgia should have been prepared to recognize that Florida didn't have its normal holder in the game on a fake field goal that went for a touchdown: "Should be. … We just didn't respond well. It could have been if a coach saw that, we call timeout. We didn't get that done."
- On clock management near the end of the first half: "I did a bad job of deciding what to do. That was strictly on me. If I was going to call a timeout (which he did), I should have called it sooner. As I'm processing the decision, the clock was ticking, and that's a poor job by me."
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