ATHENS — Malaki Starks was talking about Florida quarterback DJ Lagway, who will be making his third career start this Saturday against Georgia.

But what the Georgia safety had to say about Lagway also applies to the rest of the Georgia roster.

“Coming as a freshman, people always use that tag as a freshman,” Starks said. “It doesn’t really matter, especially just so far in the season. We’re halfway through the season, no one’s a freshman anymore.”

To this point, KJ Bolden has been Goergia’s most consistent freshman to this point. Georgia is hoping that the second bye week will offer some of Georgia’s many young players the chance to further establish themselves.

It’s not limited to just freshmen making mid-season leaps. With a team as young as Georgia, the off week gave inexperienced players plenty of reps.

With Georgia dealing with injuries throughout the season, the Bulldogs know they have to do whatever they can to build better depth.

“It was a total team, like we worked our entire team and that’s more than freshmen, we work everybody,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “Now some of our older players took less live reps, but they did a lot more drill work, drill-specific things. But last week was a total team improvement goal. But the two by weeks, I feel like this year, we’ve had more injuries than we’ve ever had.

“I mean, we’re dealing with it right now more than we’ve ever had.”

One of those promising young players, Joseph Jonah-Ajonye, was ruled out for the season after he had surgery following the Texas game.

Georgia is hoping to get Tate Ratledge and Jordan Hall back this week, with off week giving them extra time to heal.

Sophomore Lawson Luckie can personally attest to how much the off week helps in that regard. He dealt with an early-season ankle injury as a freshman and really didn’t begin to feel like himself until Georgia’s bye week last season.

Luckie is now Georgia’s top passing-catching tight end.

“Yeah, the bye week is huge just to get your legs back under you,” Luckie said. “It helped me a lot last year because I remember, I’m pretty sure the Vandy game was the first game I was really back playing and then we went into Florida. So it took, those two weeks really helped me getting ready and it’s done the same this year getting your legs back under for the Florida game.”

While health might be Georgia’s biggest issue now, Smart is also keenly aware of Georgia’s schedule coming up as well. Coming out of the bye Georgia has a rivalry game against Florida, followed by a trip to No. 19 Ole Miss and a home game against No. 7 Tennessee.

Win all three of those games and Georgia is almost certainly a lock for the College Football Playoff. Lose any one of them and it becomes murky.

“The schedule’s been just tough, just brutal and it’s not getting any easier,” Smart said. “So you need to have less depth, more injuries. The two by weeks actually has to help, so.”

Bolden is likely to make his first start on Saturday, in part because Dan Jackson will miss the first half due to a targeting ejection. We’ll see what Nate Frazier or Ellis Robinson could possibly do with bigger roles.

Georgia’s game against Florida is set for a 3:30 p.m. ET start on ABC.