Bill Shanks: Positives don't outweigh negatives of Georgia season

OK, let's start with the positive. The Georgia Bulldogs have quieted the storm with two straight victories. Feel great for the players, who never asked to be put in a soap opera, which was exactly what was going on two weeks ago.

Now here's the negative (and the facts). These two victories were against bad teams, and nothing with these final two games of the season will define the season or should decide whether this coaching staff returns.

The funny part is these final two games will, in fact, decide Mark Richt's fate. If Georgia loses this weekend to Georgia Southern or next week to Georgia Tech, he probably won't make it. The fans likely will be so outraged, even the ones on Richt's side will probably jump ship.

If Georgia wins out, it will finish 9-3 and everything will be fine and dandy. People will spin it and say, "How could you even consider firing a coach who went 9-3 with this team, especially with no quarterback?"

It comes down to this: Georgia hasn't defeated a good team all season. Georgia Southern, with all due respect, is Georgia Southern and Georgia should never lose to the Eagles. And Georgia Tech is having a nightmare season. So if Georgia finishes 9-3, well, how good of a season would it really be?

But Richt would survive anyway, despite this season being pretty dismal. The only team Georgia has beaten that currently has a winning record is Southern, the FCS opponent that is 6-2. The combined record of the six FBS opponents Georgia has defeated -- with not one having a winning record -- is 28-40.

We know how Georgia did against the teams it faced with a winning record (0-3). Alabama, Tennessee and Florida have a combined record of 24-6. How would Georgia do against some of the other top teams in the country -- like Clemson, Ohio State or Oklahoma State?

The defense has played hard and is showing positive signs under coordinator Jeremy Pruitt. But it simply hasn't played a great offense. Look at how Georgia's opponents rank in total offense of the 128 FBS teams: 124 -- Missour; 121 -- ULM; 116 -- Vanderbilt; 105 -- South Carolina; 99 -- Kentucky; 91 -- Auburn; 87 -- Florida; 51 -- Alabama; and 48 -- Tennessee. Georgia Southern, ranked 39th in the country in total offense, will be the highest-ranked offense Georgia plays all season when they meet Saturday.

This is the 15th year of this head coach's tenure. Don't Georgia fans deserve more, or has a 9-3 season with no win over a really good team become good enough?

It does seem silly, in a way, to complain about this. But this program is not an elite program, and it's not in a position to win a championship. It's stuck in the middle of the SEC, a football purgatory if you will, regardless of the record. And while it's all peachy to feel jubilation about the record, it's pretty thin.

Georgia beat Auburn on Saturday. That's great. The Bulldogs always want to beat Auburn. But Auburn is not a good football team. You could say, "Well, that's not Georgia's fault. Maybe they were simply less awful than Auburn." Well, that's correct. Neither team was very good, but someone had to win.

Is that what this Georgia program has become -- being less awful than another underperforming SEC team? We know Richt has had most of his success against unranked teams, so this season is basically the poster child for his whole career in Athens.

You can talk about his overall winning percentage all you want. You can talk about how he's behind Vince Dooley in this stat and that stat. But this fact remains that is undisputable: Since 2008, Richt's teams are 14-23 against ranked opponents. That's what Georgia fans are getting for $4 million a season -- a coach who beats unranked teams consistently but often falls short against winning and ranked teams.

Unfortunately, a season like this has become acceptable to some Georgia fans. It'll do, mainly because so many (although not all) love Richt the man so much they don't care anymore that the program has once again not met expectations and once again had awful performances against winning teams.

If Georgia wins the final two games, it'll be the most mediocre 9-3 season in the history of college football. And the sad part is Richt and many of his Kool-Aid drinkers will not have one problem with it whatsoever.

Listen to "The Bill Shanks Show" from 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WPLA Fox Sports 1670 AM in Macon and online at www.foxsports1670.com. Follow Bill at twitter.com/BillShanks and email him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 6:27 PM with the headline "Bill Shanks: Positives don't outweigh negatives of Georgia season ."