All that Dawgs fans want out of the 2023 season is more of the same, please.
What that means depends on your level of optimism, whether it’s simply Georgia going undefeated again in the regular season, winning the SEC Championship, making it to the College Football Playoff again or defying the odds and becoming the first program of the modern era to win three national championships in a row (and only the second ever, after Minnesota did it 87 years ago).
Chatting with fellow fans recently, I’ve seen expectations that include some, or all, of the above.
My brother Jonathan predicts a three-peat (or, as he put it in the family Dawgs text group: 🏆X3). Of course, he has predicted an undefeated season and national championship every year as long as I can remember. But, thanks to Kirby Smart, the level of football in Athens finally caught up with my brother’s sky-high optimism the past two years.
Other fans think another undefeated season and a third consecutive national championship just might be bucking the odds a bit. Some, like my old buddy CP, think the Dawgs might falter somewhere in the regular season, perhaps at Knoxville. Others expect Georgia to make it to the postseason undefeated, but aren’t sure about this team’s ability to go all the way without Stetson Bennett at quarterback.
Still, I haven’t run into anyone — Dawgs fan or otherwise — who doesn’t agree that Smart’s 2023 Georgia Bulldogs — who return 16 starters from last year’s national champions and will begin play next week as the consensus pre-season No. 1 team — will figure prominently in the playoff/national title conversation again this year.
When the preseason coaches’ poll came out recently (with Georgia at No. 1, as in the AP poll), a USA Today headline summed it up: “Dawgs chasing immortality.”
There are a lot of reasons for fans to be confident, and the majority of college football media predictions that I’ve seen so far have Georgia winning it all again — though not everyone is on board. (No one who watches “GameDay” regularly will be surprised to learn that not one of the panel of Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Pat McAfee picked Georgia.)
Vegas oddsmakers, on the other hand, see UGA as the big favorite to win it all again.
Among those college football writers and broadcasters who are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude, most expect Georgia to make it to the SEC Championship Game, but, beyond that, they pepper their predictions with that word “if.”
As in, the Dawgs can win it all if first-time starting quarterback Carson Beck, who has a strong arm but isn’t as mobile as Bennett, proves that he can carry the team on his back in the face of adversity, as his predecessor did time after time.
And Georgia can win it all again if the players on both sides of the ball who are replacing the bunch that moved on to the NFL can perform consistently at anywhere near the same level as last year’s team.
These show-me folks also say Georgia can win it all if another transition — Mike Bobo taking over for Todd Monken, architect of Georgia’s high-scoring offenses the past two years — goes smoothly.
Frankly, I think too much has been made of this particular question mark; Bobo is an experienced play-caller, oversaw productive offenses at Georgia back when the talent level wasn’t nearly as good as it is now, and was on Monken’s offensive staff last year when Georgia averaged 41.1 points a game. Most important of all, Bobo is not an idiot. The likelihood of him derailing a system that’s already working, just to put his stamp on it, seems pretty close to nil.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any new wrinkles. As Bobo observed, even if Monken had stayed, adjustments would have had to be made.
“I think each year, you try and figure out your identity as an offense,” he said in addressing the media recently. “Whether I was going to be the coordinator or if Coach Monken comes back, you’ve got to figure out what pieces of the puzzle fit to what things that we did well last year, and what we’re going to have to change. Darnell [Washington] was such a big impact for us, not necessarily just blocking in line, but to block on the perimeter, Stetson’s ability to move — we’ve got to figure out the pieces that fit the best for us offensively.”
Lastly, the wait-and-see folks say, the Dawgs can win it all if they don’t get hit by too many injuries at key positions — a point driven home to many Dawgs fans by the current number of running backs who either are out with an injury (for the season, in Branson Robinson’s case) or are still working their way back from injury. (The injury bug also has struck elsewhere on both the offense and defense, though Robinson’s appears to be the only season-ender.)
That last concern naturally is a valid one, with even Smart conceding in the past that luck plays a part in a championship season.
Still, it’s worth noting that, in both of Georgia’s past two seasons, injuries were a concern early on, particularly among one position group (receivers). However, the talent level in the program proved to be deep enough that the replacements were just about as good, if not better, than the those they were replacing.
That’s what happens when you consistently recruit at an elite level, as Smart has done since taking the reins in Athens.
Of course, as you’d expect, Smart has tried to play down the three-peat talk this preseason, but it’s sort of like trying to ignore an elephant in the room. And, because of that, he knows that perhaps the biggest obstacle his team faces this season is avoiding complacency.
“If you acknowledge that complacency is a threat, that’s the first step toward stomping it out,” Smart said in July at SEC Media Days.
There are other things the head coach is worrying about, too. As he has noted, the 2023 team is young and, overall, might not be quite as talented as in the past two years.
And, Smart has emphasized the recent spate of injuries, which have been more plentiful this preseason, though most of the hurt players aren’t currently listed as starters.
However, if linebacker Jalon Walker accurately is representing how his teammates feel, the Dawgs don’t appear to be overly occupied with thoughts of a three-peat. “It would be a great historical feat,” Walker said this past week. “I know it hasn’t happened in a long time, and having that opportunity before us, we don’t take it for granted.”
But, Walker said, “Our goal here is to make history every day, and making history every day is what we plan on. So, that history will be made at today’s practice, then tomorrow make history at the next meeting, history at the next team event. You know, overall, it’s just an opportunity for us to seize, and having that opportunity will be in the hands of our preparation and things of that sort to attack.”
Added wide receiver Arian Smith: “You can’t set a goal that far ahead. We try to stay with what is important now. We can’t win a national championship right now. We’ve got to still practice and build the foundation for the season throughout fall camp to get to where we want to be.”
No matter how focused Smart manages to keep his team, taking a quick look at the state of the Dawgs in 2023, it’s obvious why expectations are so high. Yes, the departure of Bennett is a major change, but we’ve seen enough of former backup Beck to know that he’s a very talented QB. The only two legitimate questions about him: whether he can escape a pass rush and make something happen with his legs, as Bennett did so often, and whether he’ll have the same sort of leadership intangibles that elevated No. 13 from feel-good story to champion.
Although the Dawgs are having to replace two starters on the offensive line (Warren McClendon and Broderick Jones), their habit of moving folks around and giving a lot of reps to the No. 2s means we shouldn’t notice much, if any, drop-off. With likely All-American Sedrick Van Pran, Tate Ratledge and Xavier Truss returning, and Amarius Mims and either Earnest Greene III or Austin Blaske likely rounding out the starters (plus a lot of talent rotating in and out), this group is expected to be one of the best OLs in the country. That will make the relative lack of experience in the backfield less of a concern.
While Georgia certainly will miss the blocking and receiving of tight end Darnell Washington, it has the nation’s best at that position in Brock Bowers (who easily can be considered Georgia’s biggest offensive threat), plus some talented, less experienced players. And Georgia’s receiving corps, led by Ladd McConkey, already was pretty loaded (even with the loss of A.D. Mitchell to Texas) but should be even more dangerous with the addition of transfer Dominic Lovett, who was Missouri’s leading receiver last season) and is likely to start at slot receiver for the Dawgs.
“What stands out is our depth,” McConkey said recently. “We have, like, three guys at every position that could go in and not skip a beat. We all have our different styles of play, but there are so many guys who can go in there and contribute. That is exciting. Stay fresh the whole time. I don’t think the defensive backs can rotate like that, so if we can always have fresh guys in there and go play fast, it will be special.”
The defensive line also looks dynamic, even with rising sophomore Bear Alexander having decamped for Southern Cal.
Smart said recently that the Dawgs don’t have quite the depth on the DL that they’ve had in the past couple of years, when they generally were able to shut down most opponents’ running game and make them one-dimensional. But, again, because Georgia tends to rotate linemen frequently, the front returns four experienced veterans — seniors Nazir Stackhouse, Warren Brinson, Zion Logue and Tramel Walthour. Sophomore Mykel Williams seems to be the likely starter at defensive end. And several younger players, including highly touted freshmen Jamaal Jarrett and Jordan Hall, are likely to get plenty of playing time.
When talking with the media this week, Brinson noted that the unit’s motto is: “We’re all we got; we’re all we need.”
Also, the Dawgs have several experienced linebackers — including last year’s leading tacklers, Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Smael Mondon, along with Walker and Chaz Chambliss.
The secondary (probably the weakest aspect of last year’s defense) looks likely to be even better, despite losing both Kelee Ringo and Christopher Smith to the NFL, with cornerbacks Kamari Lassiter and Daylen Everette, safeties Javon Bullard and Malaki Starks and Tykee Smith at the star position.
On special teams, junior Jared Zirkel and freshman Peyton Woodring are battling it out to replace Jack Podlesny, though Smart has hinted both placekickers might be used. Aussie Brett Thorson returns at punter.
And then there’s the schedule, which has dominated much of the national off-season discussion about the Dawgs. Yes, it’s true that, with the SEC-mandated cancellation of a trip to Oklahoma, Georgia ended up with an opening home stand of four games, three of which are against lesser nonconference competition (the exception is the conference opener against South Carolina, which some worrywarts see as a potential “trap” game).
It all begins next Saturday with a rare night game against a lightly regarded nonconference opponent, the UT Martin Skyhawks.
On the plus side, the relatively easy early schedule will give Beck and Co. time to work out the kinks. However, opening with major top-level opponents lit a fire under Smart’s teams the past couple of seasons, so the worry is that playing a soft schedule early on might prompt some of that complacency that Smart fears.
So it is that, borrowing from the ultra successful New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, Smart once again has summed up his theme succinctly with a slogan: “Better never rests.”
The bottom line for 2023 is that the Dawgs likely will be favored in all their regular season games, even those against Ole Miss and Tennessee, seen by many as Georgia’s most challenging regular-season opponents.
So, if Smart can keep his players performing at peak level, even when they don’t have to, the Dawgs might well go all the way again. (Maybe he can convince them that nobody respects Georgia and that everyone thinks they’re going to be a 7-5 team, as they apparently believed last year.)
Whatever tricks he employs, if Smart can keep this team performing up to its talent level each week, and they really do get a shot at a three-peat, this might wind up being his most impressive performance as head coach.
Which brings us to that annual trip out on a limb with my own season prediction. No surprise, it’s basically the same prediction I made the past two years. As I begin the 19th season of writing the Junkyard Blawg, I’ll go with what I said last year: Assuming key players get and remain healthy, I don’t see any reason why Georgia shouldn’t go at least 11-1 (read that as “12-0, barring an unforeseen disaster”), and I expect them to win the SEC East again in the division’s final year of existence, putting the Dawgs back in the championship game in Atlanta. And, if they make it to that game undefeated in the regular season, I believe they’ll be a lock for the College Football Playoff, regardless of whether they win the conference championship or not.
So, you could say I expect it to be a case of third verse, same as the first (and second).
