This makes no sense, but here it is: Without Todd Gurley, the best player in the land, Georgia has become one of the best teams in the land.
This makes no sense, except that maybe — if you hold the Missouri and Arkansas games up to the light and squint really hard — it does. No longer is this the Gurley Show. No longer are these his supporting cast. They’re full-bodied Bulldogs, capable of jetting off to the Central time zone and destroying hosts primed for their arrival.
Eleven days ago, we wondered if losing Gurley was the worst thing that could happen to Georgia. Turns out it was the best. It made the other Bulldogs believe in themselves in a way they couldn’t so long as everything was Gurley-Gurley-Gurley. Eleven days ago, we wondered if all was lost without Gurley. Today we ask — half in jest, but only half — if the Bulldogs are somehow better off without him.
“We always had these players and this talent,” said receiver Chris Conley, who caught five passes for 128 yards Saturday. “We’re starting to get the mindset … this team has grown up.”
Think back to the Vanderbilt game of Oct. 4. Hutson Mason averaged only 7.1 yards per pass — he averaged 5.9 the previous week against Tennessee — and Mark Richt chose to give backup Brice Ramsey a first-quarter series. The defense, which had yielded 70 aggregate points to South Carolina and Tennessee, couldn’t stymie Vandy, owner of the SEC’s worst offense. The only difference between Georgia and the lowly Commodores seemed Gurley, who rushed for 165 yards, caught passes for 24 and completed a pass for 50.
Five days later, Gurley was suspended. Two days after that, the final score in Columbia, Mo., was 34-0, the biggest true road shutout in school history.
The halftime score here Saturday was 38-6. In 90 minutes without Gurley, Georgia had outscored opponents 72-6. (Arkansas would draw within 13 points with 5:05 remaining, not that it mattered.) Again, Mason was making confident and precise throws. Again, Nick Chubb was making his case as the second-best tailback — he rushed for 202 yards — on both his team and in the nation. Again, the defense that looked helpless against South Carolina was as swift and menacing as a storm cloud.
Speaking of Gurley, cornerback Damian Swann said: “He’s a big piece of what we do. Because of how great he is, he makes other players hard to see. Now everyone else gets a chance to shine.”
Back to South Carolina: Georgia might have stolen that game had Mason not incurred a grounding penalty on first-and-goal from 4. The backlash was massive. How do you not give Gurley the ball? Flash-forward to Saturday, when Arkansas had powered 75 yards in 7:51 to an opening touchdown.
“They’re ground-and-pound,” Mason said. “It’s always kind of a crappy feeling to play behind them.”
Georgia stopped being behind by having Mason throw long for Conley on its first snap and then to Michael Bennett on its second. The Bulldogs needed 88 seconds to take a lasting lead.
Not so long ago, Mason was seen as a game manager at best, but on this day he averaged 10.5 yards per pass. “It feels good to throw the ball deep,” he said. Also this: “We’ve just gotten better. We weren’t very good, from me to the receivers. There wasn’t a trust or the execution.”
Now every facet of Georgia football is functioning at a high level, and with Chubb rushing for 345 yards in two weeks we can’t say the running game has suffered. “He put the team on his back today,” Conley said of Chubb, but that wasn’t quite true. In two games, the Bulldogs have gone from being Gurley’s Team to being splendid across the board.
“I’m not sure we’re a good team yet,” Richt said, “but we’re getting there.”
They are, and they’re traveling in a way — and at a speed — few on the outside could have imagined. They’ve stamped themselves as the clear favorite in the SEC East, and they’ve been so dominant these past two weeks that someone wondered if Georgia could play any better.
Said Swann, smiling: “With No. 3 (Gurley) in the backfield, we can.”
