ATHENS — The latest College Football Playoff rankings did not bring forth good news for Georgia.
Should those rankings hold, Georgia would not make the 12-team field. The Bulldogs slid from the No. 3 spot to the No. 12 ranking. And with No. 13 Boise State earning an automatic bid due to being a theoretical conference champion, Georgia would drop out of the field.
Of course, the season is not over yet. The Bulldogs still have time to improve their standing.
And that starts this Saturday with a game against No. 7 Tennessee.
“We’re just focused on this week. We know we gotta win this game,” tight end Lawson Luckie said.
A win over the Volunteers would boost Georgia’s resume even further. While the Bulldogs do have two losses, they also have wins over No. 3 Texas and No. 20 Clemson.
The losses and the wins over Texas and Clemson have all come away from Sanford Stadium. To this point, Georgia has played more ranked foes away from its home venue than games in Sanford Stadium.
That is what makes hosting Tennessee this weekend so crucial.
“It’s great to be back home,” Luckie said. “The night game, the atmosphere is electric. I mean, it’s not the best waiting around all day in the hotel. But when you get out there, it’s worth it. It gets the fans extra riled up.”
Of course, beating Tennessee alone won’t get Georgia into the College Football Playoff. The Bulldogs still have games against UMass and Georgia Tech that they must also win. The Yellow Jackets just showed how challenging they can be as they knocked off previously unbeaten Miami this past weekend. The Hurricanes dropped from No. 4 to No. 9 in this week’s rankings.
The SEC is still likely to get multiple teams in the College Football Playoff. Per Tuesday’s rankings, the league would project to grab four bids. But two of those — Alabama and Ole Miss — already have multiple losses.
If Georgia beats Tennessee this weekend, as the Bulldogs favored to do so, Texas would be the league’s only one-loss team.
“I just think a home game in general, the SEC, is hell on the road team,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “I think it’s really hard, man. It’s hard. And I tell people all the time, I told our offensive line, it’s harder in the SEC to play on the road at offensive line tackle in some of those positions that are timing positions and snap-down positions than it is in the NFL until playoff.”
Georgia has its work cut out for it. Losing to Ole Miss this past weekend, especially in the manner in which it did, clearly hurt Georgia’s chances of making the College Football Playoff. The Bulldogs will likely need some tiebreaker help to possibly make the SEC championship game, and it’s far from a lock that Georgia gets to host a potential first-round playoff game.
But all of that is further down the road for Georgia. Right now, it knows it has a very capable Tennessee team in front of it.
The Bulldogs have to win that game if they’re to continue to talk about the College Football Playoff.
“They’ve got a good football team. They’re hard to simulate,” Smart said. “That’s the hardest thing is simulating what they do, especially their offense and their defense, vertical strike, knockback. They’re very different in terms of how they play.”
