Anyone who has watched any Georgia football this year—unless you paid attention to only the Kentucky game—knows this, from the national media to the barking ‘necks of northeast Georgia. Something isn’t right with these Dawgs, at least compared to performances by their predecessors, who looked dominant week-in, week-out on the way to two consecutive national titles.
But while the 2023 Dawgs haven’t been dominant, they have been winning. Georgia is 7-0 for the third straight season and fourth overall of Kirby Smart’s tenure coming off a 37-20 win over Vanderbilt in Nashville. That scoreline alone should illustrate Georgia’s struggles—and yes, I use that term loosely—considering the Dawgs beat the ‘Dores 62-0 in ’21 and 55-0 in ’22.
Now, a little more than halfway through the regular season, comes the bye week, a chance to reset and recalibrate ahead of the final five-game stretch. It’s the toughest stretch of the season, beginning with a trip to Jacksonville for the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, followed by home games against Mizzou and Ole Miss, and capped off with trips to Tennessee and Georgia Tech. If the Dawgs play how they played for the bulk of the first seven games during this stretch, there’s a loss lurking somewhere.
There is still the opportunity to right this ship and transform the team back into an unstoppable force/immovable object. But that is going to take some work over this bye week and improvement in a handful of major areas.
One of those areas is defense, specifically creating turnovers and sacks. At this point, we can safely say that this defense is not on the level of the ’21 or ’22 defense. That’s not a slight. The ’21 defense has a case for being the greatest in college football history, and the two have seven first-round NFL Draft picks between them. Those defenses didn’t need to create as many turnovers or sacks because they were able to stop teams at the line and get off the field.
This year’s defense can’t rely on the bend-don’t-break ethos of the last couple defenses because when they bend, Vandy scores a touchdown on us for the first time since 2018. Ranking 83rd nationally in team sacks and 69th in takeaways per game won’t cut it for this unit. In this tough upcoming stretch, we’re going to need some major momentum off turnovers and sacks at some point.
Offensively, Carson Beck needs to figure out exactly what he’s trying to be. I was convinced Beck had turned the corner with a strong showing against Kentucky, but against Vanderbilt he seemed to struggle once again. I say “seemed” because there’s a phenomenon with Beck where I always think I watched him play a worse game than he did. After every game, his stats are objectively pretty good. Not great, but pretty good.
There are times when he seems stuck between wanting to be a “game manager” and a “game winner.” We would all love for him to be the latter—he certainly would—but we typically play better when he is the former, keeping us in control of the game and eventually letting our talent win out. I think eventually he can make that transition and be the catalyst to win games. He’s not there yet, though.
The most important thing we can do these next two weeks is get healthy. Injuries have plagued the roster all season, and the injury list got longer against Vanderbilt. Xavier Truss went down with an ankle injury, while Kendall Milton reaggravated his MCL injury. The most worrying injury came to Brock Bowers, who left the game with a sprained ankle in the second quarter.
I don’t think there’s an individual on the team whose absence means we can’t win a national title, but the closest is Bowers. He’s bailed us out on multiple occasions this season. The offense did an admirable job without him against Vanderbilt, but I don’t want to find out how this offense looks without him for multiple weeks.
The next two weeks will be spent on Brock Watch, with Dawg fans everywhere hoping Bowers is ready to roll for the Cocktail Party. We’ll need him. The Gators have been up and down this season, but make no mistake, that’s a trap game. If our worst tendencies come out in Jacksonville, they can beat us, and then we go from “off vibes” to “bad vibes.”
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