ATHENS — The promo headline screamed off the national college football page Tuesday night:
“Georgia loses 1,200-yard wide receiver ahead of College Football Playoff,” it read.
Hmm, didn’t even realize the Bulldogs had a 1,200-yard receiver. Arian Smith? No, he has 750.
Clicked the article and … RaRa Thomas.
OK, well you can’t miss what you never had this season, and the “1,200-yard receiver” has been suspended since before the season, anyway.
Come to think of it, Miami transfer Colbie Young only played in five games this season and didn’t have more than three catches in any of them for the Bulldogs.
Moments earlier, there was another Athlon Sports headline that caught the eye: Rece Davis predicts clear winner of Notre-Dame in College Football Playoff.
OK, I”ll bite, “click.”
“I think Notre Dame’s going to win the game, and if Notre Dame wins this game, with Georgia a little bit uncertain, we’ll see what the situation is with Carson Beck, I think Notre Dame can go on a run here,” Davis said.
“If Notre Dame can get past this one, I can see Notre Dame running this thing out and potentially even playing for the national championship.”
Is that right? Oh, it’s easy to see how this looks from the outside. Two top receivers out for the season, Carson Beck “uncertain.”
Look, not sure what it’s going to take for the news to break, but Beck’s not going to play in the Sugar Bowl, OK? There’s a good chance he’s played his last game in a Georgia uniform, for that matter.
When Kirby Smart puts out a press release -- as he did last week -- saying there’s “no timetable,” it’s not like he’s going to sit around his office and tell Mike Bobo to hold up on a game plan until they know what’s up with Beck.
There’s nothing “uncertain” about any Kirby game plan, and there’s no timetable that’s going to hold up his planning.
So maybe ESPN’s brilliant GameDay host, Rece Davis, doesn’t know enough about Gunner Stockton -- like Georgia fans do.
Maybe he wasn’t paying attention to the third quarter of the SEC title game, which Georgia completely dominated against the then-No. 2 team in the nation and league’s highest-rated defense.
Remember how the commentators chuckled when Smart said after putting Stockton into the SEC Championship Game that his back-up quarterback had “played in some big games.”
Georgia High School football is no joke, and Stockton was born for this moment.
Hasn’t the college football world been paying attention to these Bulldogs?
Georgia is 3-1 in games decided by 7 points or less this season, and these Bulldogs have hunkered through two come-from-behind overtime wins in their last two outings.
Don’t they realize this team is built for moments like this?
And now you’re going to give Smart and his staff 11 days to zero-in on the preparation for the winner of Friday night’s game between Indiana and Notre Dame -- both are being intently scouted at the moment -- along with providing this UGA team more than three weeks to rest and recharge?
Georgia’s has its own version of “full-strength,” and the CFP is going to see what that looks like when the Sugar Bowl kicks off at 8:45 p.m. on Jan. 1.
It will be worth staying up for, just as this season, for all its ups and downs, is one worth remembering.
The “Never-say-die” Dawgs, Smart calls them. Smart’s love and respect for this resilient group that took so long to find its way is abundantly clear.
To recap: UGA has seen its top two receivers out for the season, projected lead power back Rod Robinson limited to two games, and there have been so many injuries up front that every UGA lineman has missed at least one week of practice, leading to four different O-Line combos being utilized.
And that’s just on offense.
Remember how the defensive line ranks were thinned at the start of the season? And, Georgia fans may have forgotten what the Dawgs were missing before linebacker Smael Mondon was back 100 percent from that foot injury. Most recently 10-game starting corner Julian Humphrey left the team to transfer to Texas A&M.
But here’s Georgia, the SEC champs and No. 2 seed in the college football playoffs — with the No. 5 scoring offense in the league despite a murderous schedule that included four Top 10-ranked teams.
Let the experts pick Notre Dame to win the Sugar Bowl, and talk about how “iffy” Georgia looks.
After all, the SEC coaches selected just one UGA offensive player to the first team (Tate Ratledge), and that’s only because they liked his mullet.
Those same SEC coaches ignored Smart’s best coaching effort and gave Vandy’s Clark Lea Coach of the Year, even though the Commodores lost their last three games by a combined 88-47 and finished 12th in the league.
OK, so does everyone see how this is playing out for Georgia?
The Bulldogs are running out of space on the bulletin board, quickly.
Click that.
