ATLANTA — Georgia receiver Dillon Bell was standing on one side of a back room at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday afternoon, heaping praise on the part of his team that yielded just three points to Clemson.
“I feel like we play the best defense in the country every day at practice,” Bell said. “It shows that every day.”
CJ Allen, a Georgia linebacker, was across the same room, heaping praise on the part of his team that scored 34 points on Clemson.
“We go against those guys every day,” Allen said. “I think that’s the best offense.”
Hey, Dillon just said that about you guys, Allen was told. The linebacker smiled.
“Iron sharpens iron,” he said.
On most teams, it would sound like bravado, just something you say. But at Georgia, this rings very plausible, and it’s why the unveiling of this year’s team looked very much like the No. 1 team in the country and a plausible national champion.
That first game victory feeling 😁#GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/KKq1TyuPsd
— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) August 31, 2024
During a much-discussed Netflix documentary this week, legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler was heard emphasizing the catchphrase for his program: the team, the team, the team. Schembechler meant it in a more philosophical sense, and it was a different era. But in its own way, it very much applies to the formula Kirby Smart has built. Not just the defense. Not just the offense. The team, the team, the team.
Smart’s first two national championship teams showed the importance of complementary football. The 2021 defense was great, but the offense did its part, too. And when the 2022 defense took a slight dip after the loss of all its NFL Draft picks, the Stetson Bennett and Brock Bowers offense more than made up for it. The flip side occurred last year in this same building: Georgia faltered first on offense and fell behind Alabama, and when the offense finally got going in the fourth quarter, the defense couldn’t get stops.
On Saturday, the Georgia defense bought time for the offense to figure out it wouldn’t be able to run the ball and that it had to open things up. But the offense also did its part by not turning the ball over and at least getting field goals in the second quarter.
“We’re going to have days where we don’t do well. They’re going to have days when they don’t do well,” Georgia safety Malaki Starks said. “So we’ve got to be able to pick each other up.”
The easy takeaway from Saturday is about Georgia’s defense because it essentially mirrored what it did three years ago against the same opponent. Three points in each game, the only difference being no pick six this time. But one wasn’t needed because quarterback Carson Beck and the offense got going.
Still, you couldn’t help watching Georgia’s defense fly around Saturday — swarming to the ball and stifling the run — and wonder if this was a similar coming-out party. Allen, asked directly about the comparison, demurred.
“I wouldn’t say that. But I’d say it’s something we want to get back to,” he said. “That was the standard. Last year, we didn’t play up to the standard.”
The offense, meanwhile, sort of poked and prodded at Clemson’s defense, seeing if it could run the ball, seeing it could not and then adjusting. Beginning with the third drive, Georgia went pass-heavy (10 of 12 plays were called passes), with offensive coordinator Mike Bobo finding different ways to get the ball to playmakers: Bell and fellow receiver Arian Smith on end arounds while misdirection cleared space for short passes to receiver Smith and tailback Nate Frazier. The second half opened with two touchdown drives, and that was it.
“Once we got in that second half, looking at the iPad, seeing what they were doing against us, it was everything that we saw on film that we watched from last year,” Beck said. “So we just kind of deciphered which ways we wanted to attack them and maybe tried to be a little bit more aggressive coming out at the half.”
Bell had a more succinct way of framing the second-half approach: “Front door attacking.”
Follow-up questioning revealed it to be a fancy way of saying: Quit fooling around and beat them.
“There’s only one way in. Front door attack,” Bell said. “Nobody can run anywhere, it’s us versus them.”
The overall formula for Georgia has been pretty similar: coaching, development and talent, with a manifesto — there’s another word from the Connor Stalions documentary — about playing a specific brand of football. Physical on both sides of the ball, poised and taking care of the ball. The result often, as Clemson can attest, is a stranglehold-type game where it’s close for a while, then Georgia runs away and the opponent wears out.
“It’s a process. We believe in what we do,” Smart said, adding that it doesn’t change in an era with so much roster turnover. “We’re going to do what we do and we’re going to try to out-execute you and just do it the right way. … Everybody wants to find an easier way. There’s no easy way to win these games. They’re all hard.”
Well, maybe not next week against Tennessee Tech. But the schedule, featuring games at Kentucky, Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss, is indeed nasty this year. The risk is overrating this win over Clemson, which may or may not be any good. (Three years ago, when Georgia won by only a touchdown, Clemson went on to go 10-3.)
The difference is this year’s team will have many more measuring stick games, and very soon. The similarity to three years ago is this team looked very capable of surviving the gantlet to make the Playoff. Or do more than survive.
This was the first of potentially four games this year at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The SEC championship and national championship games are both here. The Peach Bowl is a quarterfinal game. There’s still a whole lot of football to be played, and in this extended season, and with Georgia’s schedule, nobody can be termed a prohibitive title favorite.
But this team, as it looked in its debut, had the most necessary trait: balance. Not reliant on one side of the ball. The team, the team, the team.
(Photo of Nate Frazier: Dale Zanine / USA Today)
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Publish date : 2024-08-31 11:01:00
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