There’s no way to dress it up any nicer. The Dawgs are SEC Champions again, their first time going back-to-back since 1980-82. Any SEC title is sweet, and it’s got some extra sugar on top of it given that much like 2017, it comes with a measure of revenge.
Here are ten thoughts from Georgia’s latest SEC triumph.
1. No, this was not the same catharticism of January 2022 in Indianapolis. But boy, did it feel good. Coming into this week, there was a rightfully-built up sense of confidence that Georgia could win this game. A few months ago in Athens, it was a case of one, Georgia solving Alabama’s offense after a half and not making quite enough plays to win. But the past few times gave a sense of pause – did that scripted “A” have some kind of juju over all things Georgia aside from one night? Is it meant to be that some teams just mentally master others? Yes, Kirby Smart could be accused of laying it on thick about this team being counted out in his post-game comments on TV, but be certain of this – the point that outsiders doubted if Georgia could beat Alabama was hammered home, and Kirby Smart never met a motivational opportunity that he did not like.
2. Speaking of sending a message, it’s not an accident that Kirby Smart chose to spotlight Georgia’s defensive staff after the game. It’s no secret. This defensive staff has at times been maligned, and the fact that not just Glenn Schumann but the whole defensive staff was shouted out is not a slip of any phrase, especially when Kirby Smart says something to the effect of “It’s not Kirby Smart’s defense, it’s Schumann’s defense.” Back when Smart was at Alabama, you heard things like, “oh, but it’s Saban’s defense..” Saturday’s post-game was a prime chance to do what was rightly deserved – give this defense staff its well-earned due.
3. Georgia took this game personally. I’m not sure Alabama did. Georgia took the role of aggression, and the Crimson Tide looked to be a team still trying to figure itself out. Alabama may have been big enough for the moment back in September in Athens, but the test of a team is how good it is over the course of a season. We have seen signs of this team progressing, but you did not want to pin that as a high mark against pedestrian teams like Florida and Mississippi State. But when you do that against a team like this? It’s a proof of concept of how Georgia does things as a program against others.
4. This is not saying the Crimson Tide are a walkover at all. But at some point, there’s a toughness mentality that you expect to not be there minus Nick Saban. The bottom line is that Georgia out-toughed Alabama. Clearly, part of that was holding them to negative rushing yards. That’s something you’d of expected in the uneven SEC title games of the 1990s against the SEC West…but not the current era Alabama. Defensively, Georgia did disrupt Alabama up front with blitz packages, but it also found success from winning the trenches and collapsing run lanes and pass protection. Physicality is one of Georgia’s calling cards, and it showed on Saturday.
5. Be honest. When Alabama’s freakish drive got the Crimson Tide on the board, many of you thought, “oh no, here we go again…” Thankfully, Georgia locked in from that point forward.
6. I’m not sure what was more satisfying early on – the fact that Roderick Robinson got into the end zone, that he was in for a meaningful play, or the fact that it came out of a fullback play design.
7. And on the note of kicking it old school, this had an old-time football feel to it. Georgia was the dominant team, but opportunism ruled the day as Dawgs didn’t just create opportunities, but cashed in as well. If you get 21 points off of prime field position on special teams and turnovers, you’re going to have a very good result.
8. However much Ellis Robinson will be paid when he is drafted by the NFL, he earned a good chunk on Saturday. Georgia’s coaches decided that he was up to the task of shutting down Ryan Williams. That job was handled, as Williams managed just 33 yards.
9. This win was not perfect. If it was closer, the 80 yards of penalties would have caused a lot more heartburn. As stomach-churning as Demello Jones’ pair of penalties to aid an Alabama scoring drive were, the absolute silver lining was seeing multiple players around him after the fact appearing to already help him refocus for whatever the next play is – very similar to the famous Nakobe Dean on-field coaching against Alabama in 2021. That, of course, is yet another lay-up to compare this defense to the ones we saw a few years back in Athens.
10. Thanks to the 12-team playoff, this game did not have a high sense of postseason urgency for Georgia. And depending on the CFP Committee, the loss may not knock Alabama out of the playoffs. So it was nice not having more pressure, at least for Georgia, riding on Saturday’s result. That obviously was not the case in 2023, when a close loss dropped UGA by multiple spots outside the top four. Other teams had to sweat out Saturday, but not Georgia. To paraphrase Han Solo in Star Wars, A New Hope, “better them than me!”
The rub of course is that should Alabama and BYU be punished for playing for a conference title. If conferences are set to keep these title games, you may as well expand the playoffs field to 16. Think about the atmosphere you had in Atlanta. And I’m sure those at the Big Ten title game would tell you the same. Beneath the postseason layers, these conference title games should matter. Yes, the CFP may be a TV cash cow, but if you don’t think that conference title games matter, ask any players on the winning side.
Go Dawgs!
