Georgia 41, Mississippi State 31: Let’s talk hard truths

If you’re interested in reading a happy recap of a rousing Georgia Bulldog victory, stop reading here.

No, really. There’s an article somewhere on the internet praising Carson Beck for his night-long career. You might like this article more than this one. 36 of 48 passes for 459 yards is indeed a striking statistic.

There’s also probably someone praising the Bulldog defensive line for countering the run. This actually happened, the happy article is not wrong. Georgia managed just 79 yards on 26 attempts, an exemplary performance. But limiting the SEC’s worst rushing offense to a low rushing total isn’t what you’ll read about below.

And as I write this, someone else is writing an article praising the Sanford Stadium crowd for rising to Kirby Smart’s challenge and influencing the Bizarro Bulldog offense in key situations. You may want to bookmark this one. It will make you feel better than what you are about to read.

Still here? Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hard Truth #1: This is the team we have.

I’ll start with a hard truth that objective college football observers will begrudgingly admit: Six games into the season, your college football team simply is what it is.

Sure, there are occasional teams that make a big leap forward late in the season (see the 2007 Georgia Bulldogs), but more often than not, the team you have midway through the year is also the team you have at the end will, wait and everything.

This Georgia football team sits somewhere between the third and fifth best teams in an extremely competitive SEC. It has several weaknesses that will prevent it from winning a national title this season. This sentence will make some readers quite upset. They will say that I can’t possibly know at this point. They will say that Kirby and the staff train them intensively every week. They send me drunk emails late at night accusing me of being a complete idiot, a secret Alabama fan, or worse. That’s okay. Your frustration is not on my side, not really. They are the truths that they recognize deep within themselves and which I present below.

Hard Truth #2: Your weaknesses are more important than your strengths.

Great football teams reveal their opponents’ weaknesses. Georgia’s weaknesses are pretty obvious at this point.

The second division is a burden like it hasn’t been since Kirby Smart’s first season in Athens. The Georgia Bulldog defense made freshman quarterback Michael Van Buren look good tonight. In his second career start, Van Buren finished the game completing 20 of 37 passes for 306 yards and 3 touchdowns.

After a shaky start, Van Buren lit up the UGA defense in the second half. He was able to do this in part because the red and black secondary sides remain porous. Word got around to Daylen Everette. He’s a physical run defender and an athletic cover corner, but his eye discipline sometimes leaves something to be desired and he can’t recover effectively after a hit. Isaiah Bond will burn it for at least 125 yards and 2 touchdowns next Saturday in Austin. I suspect he’s a better option than rookie Ellis Robinson, IV at this point or he wouldn’t start. That doesn’t mean he’s reliable against elite receivers. It has been proven that he is not always reliable against lesser talents.

The wide receivers on the roster simply don’t make the difference like Ladd McConkey does. Arian Smith had 5 receptions for 134 yards and a touchdown. He also had a few completely predictable declines. Dillon Bell fights hard for the ball and can catch it hard. But he struggled to consistently open up. Colbie Young looked like the next clutch receiver for the Red and Black. He won’t be on the field in Austin next week, but will be consulting with his lawyers. There simply isn’t a consistent receiver on this roster, let alone the 2-3 needed to reliably build a good defense.

Oscar Delp and Ben Yurosek are amazing young men whose parents should be very proud of them. I expect they will both be good citizens, great fathers, and maybe even NFL football players, at least for a while. Neither is a replacement for Brock Bowers. Delp had a season-high 2 catches for 28 yards. The Georgia offense needs a slow half for him.

The offensive line has not established itself. Going into this season, we thought the offensive line might be the strongest position group on this team. At times, throughout the season and today it has been excellent. Other times it was a mess. Ernest Greene received All-SEC consideration in the preseason but struggled so much that I don’t think he can be fully healthy. Micah Morris has the size and physicality, but still misses too many assignments. I don’t think the plan going into this season was ever to put Drew Bobo under center. Monroe Freeling and Xavier Truss were good but inconsistent. Guys with their length in the program are not meant to build consistency. This is more of a freshman/sophomore project.

These are position groups where Georgia is vulnerable. If I know this and you know this, I’m pretty sure Steve Sarkisian noticed.

Most worrying….

Hard Truth #3: Lack of discipline leads to losing football games.

The Bulldogs tackled the Bizarro Bulldogs better than they have all season. So that’s good.

But I’m not yet convinced that Georgia’s tackling issues throughout the season have been resolved. Especially when you look at the amount of shady playmakers waiting for us in Austin. The time to develop good tackling habits is during fall camp. You don’t learn that six weeks into the season. Poor tackling depends on discipline.

The Bulldog defense decided to change things up today by giving up big plays not by missing tackles, but by killing coverage. I hate to lash out at Daylen Everette again, but he and Julian Humphrey both gave up big plays where the receiver simply ran past them while their eyes were on the backfield. Such eye discipline problems may not occur in experienced players. Not six games into the season, not if you want to compete with national championship-caliber teams.

Is there anything else a well-coached veteran team shouldn’t do? Impose costly penalties. Georgia was flagged five times for 54 yards, which on the surface isn’t bad. But two penalties really changed the face of this game.

Georgia led 34-10 and had Mississippi State on the ropes. The crowd smelled blood. On 3rd-and-8, Van Buren threw incompletely to receiver Seydou Traore, a ball that Traore wasn’t really hoping to deliver. But rookie Chris Cole draped himself over Traore and was flagged, extending the drive in the process. Georgia forced a third down again, and Chaz Chambliss managed to sack Van Buren in the pass rush. But in doing so, he ripped Van Buren’s helmet off, drawing another penalty and giving the Maroon and White another first down.

They took advantage of it to score a touchdown that made the score 34-17. The Bulldog offense responded with a four-play, 64-yard drive…that ended when Carson Beck threw a needless interception from the Mississippi State 11. It was one of two Beck interceptions, both of which led directly to points. The visitors used this move to march 80 yards for a 10-yard touchdown in front of a shocked crowd.

Another sign of lack of discipline? The inability to eliminate an inferior opponent. The fact that Georgia played as a starter well into the fourth quarter against this Mississippi State team is a loss, no matter what the scoreboard says. The fact that Georgia had a 10-minute lead and struggled to get the ball into the end zone with the same starters with less than four minutes to play is a loss. Losing focus against Mississippi State was costly. Doing this against teams like Ohio State, Texas or Oregon would be 100% fatal.

Not all winnings are equal. You see, this Mississippi State team is not good. Not even close.

That brings me to my final harbinger of undisciplined football: downplaying the competition. I know Kirby will almost certainly say in his postgame press conference that “every week is a battle in the SEC” and “every team in this league has star athletes.” The star athletes on this Mississippi State team are up to four Weeks lost 41-17 to Toledo, boss. For adherents of the “every week is a battle” theory, this is an uncomfortable data point. Elite teams take care of business against weaker opponents. This Georgia team has played with fire all season long. If you do that often enough, you’ll get burned.

I’m sorry if this assessment of the Georgia Bulldogs seems harsh, especially after a win. But I would be doing you a disservice if I told you that there is nothing wrong with this team and that they are close to flipping the switch and getting into national championship form. This team is much closer to having to beat Tennessee, Ole Miss and Georgia Tech to avoid a 9-3 record and potentially missing the College Football Playoff. The team, which is represented for large portions of the 2024 season, including today, will blow its doors in front of a national prime-time television audience in Austin a week from now.

And six games into the season is not the time to fix the problems that make that likely. That time was in April during spring training, in the summer during offseason training, and in August during fall camp. This team is what it is. And what it is worries me a lot. I hope that the problems that have arisen and continue to exist will be resolved in the next six days. But I’m not optimistic they will. I’ll still cheer and I’ll still live and die with the red and black. But I will not ignore what is before my own eyes. Hard truths don’t become untruths because we don’t like them. And flawed football teams don’t get fixed overnight. See you later…

Come on buddy!!!