Georgia is back to being Georgia, and the rest of college football should be terrified

ATLANTA — What’s it like when Kirby Smart has two weeks after a stunning loss to chew on steel, invent curse words that have never been heard by human ears and soak his team in a marinade of hatred and bile that gets reserved for one particular opponent every year? What happens inside Georgia’s football building when a coach with an organic and lifelong distaste for Florida, who savors the opportunity to deliver a good butt-chewing like a fancy bottle of red wine and finally is given a reason to go nuclear on his team after that shocker of a loss to Auburn? 

“Honestly, it’s just the same,” Georgia linebacker Chris Cole said. “Like, if we’d have won that game or if we lost, we were still going back to work. We knew coming into this game we had to get better and better.”

Just the same, huh? 

Maybe we’ll find out otherwise some time before the end of the weekend in one of those leaked fire-and-brimstone speeches that seem to find their way out of the Georgia locker room after every big game. Then again, the Bulldogs left plenty of evidence on the field in a 27-8 thrashing of Florida about what the last couple weeks must have been like in Athens. 

As the calendar flips to November, there is little doubt about the national championship favorite. Miami may have come into the weekend as the nation’s No. 1 ranked team, but when you see Georgia play like that —Georgia in its full tilt, buttoned-up, grind-you-down glory — who else in this crazy sport are you supposed to bank on?

The Auburn game two Saturdays ago? Yeah, that wasn’t the real Georgia. That was an imposter that momentarily conceded to the meat-grinder effect that has turned the SEC into an unpredictable mess where everyone is susceptible to a hangover and nearly anyone can rise up on a given Saturday and put a pelt on the wall. 

But this effort against Florida was the genuine article: A defense choking off the point of attack and creating havoc with its size and athleticism, an offense that plays with the lead like an anaconda slowly squeezing the life out of its prey. 

As it turned out, Georgia wore an ill-fitting costume two weeks ago against Auburn. On Halloween, the Bulldogs came to the Cocktail Party as themselves. 

“We left a lot out there to be desired,” Smart said. “We can play a lot better offensively, but we did what we had to do and we avoided turnovers for the most part and we got turnovers. The Dawgs didn’t beat the Dawgs today.”

What a luxury for a coach to understand that your personnel is so good and your team so balanced that the key in any given game is as simple as not beating yourself. How many other programs can really say that in this era where it seems like everyone has a potentially fatal weakness? 

Perry McIntyre/ISI Photos via Getty Images

Even though the 19-point margin may not look that impressive on the surface, this one was over quickly and decisively. The entire second half felt like a slog through garbage time, since there was no pathway at all for Florida to make up a 24-0 halftime deficit. It looked as close to vintage Georgia as we’ve seen in awhile against a quality opponent. 

But don’t expect Smart to relax — not for even a second. Because not only does Georgia have to get right back up for a key road game next week against Ole Miss, but Smart said something really interesting Saturday night about the overall state of college football. 

For some reason, and he can’t quite put his finger on it, things feel different this year. Even Georgia, famous for its “Bloody Tuesday” full-pad practices, can’t reproduce the level of physicality during the week that propelled Georgia to national titles in 2021 and 2022. 

“I’ve asked several coaches about it and we all have speculation,” Smart said. “Everybody’s practicing less, but everybody’s getting injured more and it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”

Is it the 105-man roster limit impacting depth? Are players making so much money now that they want to preserve their bodies in a way that wasn’t the case when impressing NFL scouts was crucial to making millions of dollars? Is the spread of talent around the country making it impossible for teams to be consistent from week to week? 

“I don’t have a good answer for that,” Smart said. “People’s depth is going to show up and you have to make a choice. How do you want to practice? Do you want to practice at all or do you want to just try to save everybody? It’ll be interesting. It’s just a different day and age.”

In that kind of world, banking on Georgia seems like a good bet. There are rare exceptions — including early exits from the College Football Playoff the last two years — but for the most part you know what you’re going to get from Georgia. Even when things aren’t perfect, nobody in college football has a higher floor of performance. 

Most of the time, like Saturday, the offensive stats don’t even really matter. Quarterback Gunner Stockton finished with 101 passing yards on 13 completions against Florida — in other words, he was mostly a non-factor — yet it felt like he could have done a lot more if necessary. 

At some point, it will matter. But that’s why Georgia is 72-8 since the start of the 2021 season: They rarely need to play their best game to win. 

“It might not be perfect, but we can strive to be that,” Stockton said. 

That’s what makes Georgia so scary. Here they are, 7-1 and a near-lock for the CFP after embarrassing their most important historical rival, and they still haven’t played a complete football game where everything works the way they expect. 

Just imagine what happens if they do.

“I don’t know when that’s going to happen for us,” Smart said, “but we can be really good if we’re clicking on both sides of the ball.” 

Trick-or-treat, college football. On Halloween, Georgia got back to being Georgia and showed just how scary it can be simply by being itself.