‘On to the big one.’ What getting to the SEC Championship means for Georgia Bulldogs
Kirby Smart set the tone for this week with the first words of his weekly press conference.
“On to the big one,” Smart remarked as he stepped to the podium the Monday before his Bulldogs faced off with the LSU Tigers in Atlanta for the SEC Championship.
Four days later in a press conference at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Smart said teams are in “playoff mode” on a weekly basis in the SEC. Still, after the ups and downs of this season, there’s no denying that this is the moment the Bulldogs have been pointing toward all along.
That’s not to say Smart’s notion of a weekly playoff isn’t at least partially valid. After losing to South Carolina on Oct. 12, Georgia knew its margin for error had evaporated.
“If you lose a game, we knew it was going to be over because of the type of position that Florida was in,” offensive lineman Solomon Kindley said. “Since that time, we already knew that it was win or go home.”
With their backs against the proverbial wall, the Bulldogs responded. They toppled Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Auburn, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech consecutively to finish the regular season 11-1 and back in the SEC Championship Game for the third straight year.
As Smart made sure to note throughout the week, his team didn’t “back our way” here. They earned the right to play for a title, which according to tight end Eli Wolf is simultaneously the expectation and awe-inspiring.
“I don’t think it’s lost on people that this is not easy to do,” Wolf said. “Only two teams out of the SEC go to this every year. While I think they maintain their composure, I think they’re still pretty excited. It’s not lost on them at all.”
A return trip means going back to the routine. For receiver Tyler Simmons, it’s managing the workload of football along with final exams. For cornerback Eric Stokes, it’s staying off social media and getting eight hours of sleep — he walks around with an eyemask on his head so he’s ready to flop down and snooze at any time.
So, the Bulldogs are back. Now, it’s time for them to go at Saturday’s contest with the same do-or-die mentality that has presented itself in their last six games. But this has the added twist of knowing that a win against LSU gives them an SEC title and a likely berth in the College Football Playoff.
These are the games where the playbook gets emptied. For some, that conjures visions of reverses, double passes and, for Georgia in particular, Justin Fields’ fake punt in the fourth quarter of last year’s championship game against Alabama.
Smart said plays like that are about stealing possessions and putting the team in the best position to win. He referenced last week’s Iron Bowl where Auburn caught Alabama with too many players on the field after some substitution shenanigans to ice the game.
“I think anytime you can find some advantage, some ability to do that, it’s important to do it,” Smart said. “Just got to be calculated. You have to understand why you’re doing it and you hopefully are going to be successful at it.”
But for a Georgia offense that has been stuck in the mud at times this year, this game also presents an opportunity to get a little more creative.
Simmons said the offense has a lot (repeated twice for emphasis) of plays it hasn’t broken out this year. The Bulldogs aren’t going to reinvent themselves and switch to an Air Raid offense overnight, but Saturday could mean going to certain plays, route concepts or players that haven’t been utilized a ton.
That’s what happens in the biggest game of the year. Everything is laid on the line with the hope of keeping a season’s dream alive.
Smart and his players are excited to do just that.
“It’s a big game, and everything we want is in front of us,” Wolf said. “If you can’t get motivated for one of these games, why are you playing college football?”
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 5:18 PM.