Georgia working on fundamentals, recovery during bye week

ATHENS -- On Saturday, Jake Ganus will trek back to Birmingham, Alabama, to look at a wedding venue for his impending nuptials. Kolton Houston will be travelling to St. Simons for a wedding.

Sterling Bailey just plans on going home to Gainesville to watch some football and get some home cooking. Malcolm Mitchell, admittedly not a planner, has no idea how he'll spend his Saturday.

But if Mitchell can bank on one thing this bye week, it's that he won't be playing football this Saturday.

"This week's been really good," Ganus said. "One, recovery and rest, and two, just working on the fundamentals and getting back to the basics and becoming a better football team."

The recovery is an important aspect for Georgia going forward. Without sophomore tailback Nick Chubb, sophomore Sony Michel has been able to stay out of practice and get some much needed rest.

Outside linebacker Jordan Jenkins, defensive tackle John Atkins and fullback Christian Payne are all using this week to try to get healthy. While none of them have been full participants in practice this week, there's a chance they might be able to play against Florida with the extra week of rest.

"We talk about getting people healthy and giving people rest, but we did work hard (Wednesday and Thursday) because we still feel like there's some things we've got to get better at fundamentally," head coach Mark Richt said. "It's a balance of trying to get all of that done."

Richt also noted that the bye week, particularly the final three days leading back into Sunday's team meeting, is the longest time players have had for relaxation and recovery since preseason practice.

It hasn't been all relaxation for Georgia. This week has been the optimal time for the coaching staff and players to look back and make some corrections on fundamental issues that don't normally get touched on in the bustle of weekly game planning.

"It's been a little different," Ganus said. "For practice, format was different, it was different on Monday, too. We're just kind of switching it up and, like I said, really just focusing on ourselves. Doing a lot of individual work, trying to get better with our technique, doing a lot of good-on-good, stuff like that."

Georgia hasn't totally ignored Florida.

"The last couple of days we've been studying the film, started to implement the game plan," Richt said. "We're ahead of the game and we'll be further ahead and Sunday we'll be further along plus next week's Monday won't have to be devoted to the game prior. We'll have Monday's, Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's all to focus on Florida."

But the opportunity to focus on themselves has been refreshing for the players.

"This week is all about us, getting ourselves better and putting ourselves in the best position to win football games in the future," Ganus said. "I think that next week, we'll go back to normal."

This story was originally published October 22, 2015 at 9:20 PM with the headline "Georgia working on fundamentals, recovery during bye week ."