Fun fact: 2018 is a World Cup year. Georgia has lost eight straight to Florida in World Cup years, by a combined score of 272-125, or an average score of 34.0-15.6. So today we will hop in the way-back machine and take a ride back…back…back…
The 80’s. Reagan. Yuppies. Duran Duran. Michael Jackson was thrilling fans with his new album Thriller. (See what I did there?) E. T. was warming the hearts of moviegoers the nation over. Yes, all of this and more was a thing because it was the 80’s baby!!!!!!!!!
The year was 1982. The old Gator Bowl had just expanded with the addition of a new upper deck. Herschel Walker, who had led Georgia to a national championship as a freshman two years prior, had Georgia well on the way this year as Georgia entered the game 8-0, 4-0 in SEC play. Georgia started the season with wins over Clemson and BYU, and inched their way up the polls to No. 3 the week of the Florida game. Florida, meanwhile, was 5-2 with wins over Miami and USC in the season’s first two games and losses to LSU and Vanderbilt. A win over Auburn the week before had them back in the polls at No. 20.
Walker dominated the game, scoring the game’s first three touchdowns. In the first quarter, Georgia recovered a fumble at the Florida 37 and on the second play Walker broke free for a 30-yard touchdown. In the second quarter, Georgia drove all the way to the Florida 1 and then Walker leaped over everybody for the touchdown and a 14-0 Georgia lead. Two Kevin Butler field goals stretched the lead to 20-0 and once again Georgia faced third-and-goal at the Florida 1. Walker leaped again but this time he fell short. On fourth down QB John Lastinger mishandled the snap, but Walker snatched it from him and slid under everyone into the end zone. With Georgia now up 27-0 midway through the third quarter, Walker exited the game. He finished with 219 yards and three touchdowns.
And Walker did all this while sick with a cold. In his words: “I’ve had a cold for three weeks and I was a little short of breath….Maybe it hurt my little bursts of speed a little bit.” Imagine what he could have done if he had been at full strength.
Despite Walker’s prowess, the game was also defined by a couple of key defensive sequences. In the first quarter Florida drove to the Georgia 17 but QB Wayne Peace was intercepted in the end zone. In the second quarter Florida drove all the way to the Georgia 1 but was stopped short on fourth-and-goal. Florida never mounted a serious threat thereafter.
Florida went on to win its next three regular season games to finish 8-3. They went to the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston, where they lost to Arkansas, which would join the SEC a decade later, 28-24. Georgia beat Auburn and Georgia Tech to close out the regular season, then went to the Sugar Bowl to play Penn State for the national championship and lost 27-23.
Before the clock reached 0:00 in Baton Rouge last week, the disappointment felt by many in the Bulldog Nation had begun to give way to a positive, existential dread. “OMG!!!!!!!!!”, they cried. “WE ARE SO GOING TO BLOW IT IN JACKSONVILLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
For Georgia, this is not just some passing fancy. This has been stark reality for the better part of the past three decades.
I know. I was there, in a manner of speaking, and could give you the full rundown on every game Georgia ever lost during this stretch. But you don’t have that kind of time on your hands right now, and neither do I. This one tidbit tells you everything you need to know: The last Georgia coach to hold a winning record against Florida was Vince Dooley. He coached his last game as a Georgia Bulldog on January 1, 1989, in the old Gator Bowl. In other words, it’s been a couple minutes.
In the interim, there have been two great Florida coaches: Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, who hold a combined 16-2 record against Georgia. There were also three not-so-great coaches who were fired in short order: Ron Zook and Jim McElwain, who each hold a 2-1 record against Georgia. The third, Will Muschamp, is the only Florida coach in this entire stretch with a losing record against Georgia, but even he did not leave without sticking it to his alma mater to the tune of 38-20 two weeks before he was fired. Those 418 rushing yards dropped on Jeremy Pruitt’s defense will not soon, if ever, be forgotten.
Individual games in this series have been defined by key players and key moments: Tight end Richard Appleby slinging it a mile to an unencumbered Gene Washington. Doug Dickey’s fourth-and-dumb. Lindsay Scott. A phantom timeout. An endzone celebration. Faton Bauta. But the larger story in this series has been coaching. Usually the better coach has been able to turn the series in favor of his school, and the side that wins in Jacksonville usually goes on to win the SEC East. There have been exceptions: Mark Richt, proud owner of losing records against four different Florida coaches, a distinction never approached or surpassed anywhere in Georgia annals. Richt won two SEC championships, 2002 and 2005, and both of those teams had to absorb losses to Florida.
Then Georgia went out and got Kirby Smart, and when his team dismantled Florida 42-7 in year two, the belief and hope among the Georgia faithful was that he had just flipped the series back in Georgia’s favor. But the next day Florida fired Jim McElwain. (Say this for the Gators: They are nothing if not exceedingly adept at cutting their losses.) After a brief flirtation with the overhyped Chip Kelly availed naught, they turned their attention to Dan Mullen of Mississippi State.
Mullen was offensive coordinator on Florida teams that won national championships in 2006 and 2008, and was Urban Meyer’s right hand man for much of Meyer’s early career. Yet despite all this, he was not the people’s choice in Gainesville. More precisely, he was not the choice of one person whose opinion carried a lot of weight in those parts: Athletic director (now AD emeritus) Jeremy Foley. For reasons known only to himself and God, Foley twice passed on opportunities to hire Mullen away from Mississippi State. That chore fell to Scott Stricklin, the AD at Mississippi State who stepped in when Foley took on the emeritus title. Stricklin moved quickly on Mullen when it seemed Tennessee was about to get him. This set off that cartoonish cavalcade of a coaching search that saw AD John Currie canned (don’t I just rock this alliteration thing?) and Philip Fulmer riding in to the managerial rescue, as it were.
Ostensibly the marriage of Mullen and Florida should not send shivers down the spines of the Georgia faithful. He won consistently at Mississippi State, a place where wins are excruciatingly difficult to come by. But only once in nine years there did he manage 10 wins or more. That was in 2014, when they went to the Orange Bowl and were dismantled by Georgia Tech. Only once (same year) did he manage a winning record in SEC play. He faced Georgia in 2017 and lost 31-3.
Now halfway through his first year at his new school, he has Florida sitting pretty at 6-1 and No. 9 in the country. Yet we still don’t quite know what to make of them. They lost to Kentucky in the season’s second game. They only managed one touchdown in a 13-6 win in Starkville. They prevailed against LSU despite a second half that saw this mind-numbing sequence: Interception. Punt. Punt. Punt. Punt. The next week they trailed Vanderbilt 21-3.
Florida ranks 66th in the country right now in total offense. This is a major uptick: Since Urban Meyer left, Florida had ranked 105th, 103rd, 113th, 93rd, 116th, 111th, and 109th. They can play defense: they are tied for 21st in the country in yards against. There have been days in Jacksonville where playing defense was enough. Will that be the case this year? We just don’t know.
Three straight Kirby Smart recruiting classes–two in the top five and one (his first) just outside the top five–plus a coaching change at Florida, have given Georgia a significant talent advantage over Florida. (Feleipe Franks, their starting quarterback, would be third on Georgia’s depth chart.) This is an unusual position for Florida in recent decades, operating from a talent disadvantage. Does that mean Georgia is good enough to beat Florida even on a bad day? No. And Georgia has had way too many bad days in Jacksonville over the years.
While we don’t know what to make of Florida yet, neither do we quite know what to make of Georgia. They are 6-1 and No. 7 right now, but their 6 wins have come against teams that are a combined 20-22 overall, 3-13 in SEC play. Their next 3 opponents are 17-5 overall, 10-5 SEC. Their first real test against a worthy opponent saw them lose by three touchdowns (almost) to a team they had been favored to beat by a touchdown. Now Georgia, having been badly exposed by LSU, must face the team that exposed LSU the week before, and Florida will have had two full weeks to study the film on how LSU exposed Georgia. Good luck with that.
When Georgia takes the field in Jacksonville, they will have had two full weeks to stew over losing so badly to LSU. So they will have that going for them at least. Talent-wise, Georgia may hold the advantage over Florida and be the class of the SEC East. But what they showed at LSU was a young team with a LOT of growing up to do. I am not convinced that two weeks is enough time for that much growing up to take place.
I find it difficult to imagine Kirby Smart in Year 3 getting outcoached by Dan Mullen in Year 1. But two weeks ago I could never have imagined Kirby Smart being outclassed and outcoached by Ed Orgeron, yet here we are. Even with Georgia’s superior talent, they are still not good enough to beat Florida on a bad day. They have had way too many bad days in Jacksonville over the past three decades, and we have just seen what they are capable of when they are having an awful day. At this point I can all too easily imagine Florida–even at a talent disadvantage–doing more of what it has routinely done to Georgia over the past three decades.
If this had been the SAT, the 2018 Georgia Bulldogs would not have even gotten the 600 points (or however many it is these days) that one gets just for signing one’s name.
If this had been a high-stakes oral exam, the 2018 Bulldogs would have been graded thusly:
On a Saturday afternoon in a Death Valley that scarcely resembled anything even remotely close to the daunting Death Valley of Billy-Cannon-on-Halloween-night lore, Georgia was overwhelmed by the moment. Jake Fromm, who spent the better part of last season looking like a seasoned veteran, was made to look like a completely and totally clueless freshman. The defense wasn’t aligned properly on one of four successful fourth-down tries by the LSU offense. Coaches abandoned the running game even when it was clearly working and reduced Justin Fields to a bit player even as it was abundantly clear that Fromm was struggling profusely. And in the end, the formerly No. 2 team in the country was undone in excruciatingly graphic fashion by an LSU team that nobody has pegged for a playoff contender.
Kirby Smart–outclassed and outcoached by Ed Orgeron. Those words should never in a million years appear together in the same sentence, yet here we are.
Joe Burrow, the Ohio State transfer whose arm is not by any means to be confused with that of Joe Namath (there’s a reason why he is now at LSU and not Ohio State), found Terrance Marshall all alone in the Georgia secondary for a galvanizing completion early in the game. A Cole Tracy field goal ensued and for the second consecutive week, Georgia trailed 3-0.
Last week’s deficit lasted all of 15 seconds, the time it took Jake Fromm to find Terry Godwin for a 75-yard touchdown. The Georgia response this week wasn’t nearly as swift but it was much more forceful–eight consecutive runs for 71 yards all the way to the LSU 14–until it wasn’t. Two Fromm incompletions and on came our bespectacled hipster hero Rodrigo Blankenship to try a field goal.
But wait. It was a fake.
Now, a 3-3 tie on the road with 3 minutes left in the first quarter is never a bad thing. But the Georgia coaches had–wait for it–“seen something on film”. LSU lined up in such a way as to indicate that a fake would work. It didn’t. (Perhaps Ed Orgeron was trying to bait Georgia into attempting an ill-fated fake?)
Those three unbanked points completely changed the complexion of the game.
It was still 3-0 at that point, but would not remain so for much longer. The next five possessions: LSU touchdown. Georgia punt. LSU field goal. Georgia punt. LSU field goal. Halftime score: 16-0 LSU. At this point it was a wonder, not that Georgia was trailing 16-0, but that they were only trailing 16-0.
The game’s defining series came in the fourth quarter. Elijah Holyfield had scored from 10 yards out with 7 seconds left in the third quarter to draw Georgia within 19-9. LSU went three-and-out and Mecole Hardman returned a short punt to the LSU 38. The series went thusly: Snuffed jet sweep to Hardman. 4 yard run by Brian Herrien, the third-string tailback (Why were D’Andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield not in the game? Jim Chaney, your phone is ringing. Kirby Smart, your phone is ringing). Sack of Fromm to take Georgia out of field goal range. After a delay of game penalty, Georgia punted from the LSU 48.
That series was the signature of a team just begging to be beaten. LSU was more than happy to oblige. The ensuing series saw LSU cover 86 yards in six plays, four of which went for 10 yards or more. The sixth play saw Burrow burrow in (see what I did there?) for the touchdown that would remove all possible doubt.
That was a thing of beauty, a big-time drive in a big-time game. LSU, a team which just got undone by Florida last week and which nobody is confusing for a playoff contender, made it. Georgia, which hadn’t lost since January 2018 in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, stood back in awe and admired it.
After the game, all the talking points centered around the 2017 loss to Auburn. If there is any solace to be taken in this week’s beatdown, it is that Georgia recovered nicely from a similarly egregious loss, thereby proving that a good team is never as bad as its worst day.
But this is not a good team. That 2017 loss was to an Auburn team that was peaking at just the right time (the wrong time, from our perspective), in front of a supercharged Auburn home crowd. Even an elite team would have had to be at the very very top of its game to win under those conditions.
This loss was in a Tiger Stadium that nobody is confusing with the Death Valley of Billy-Cannon-on-Halloween-night lore. The game was played in midafternoon, under a pristine blue sky and an afternoon sun way up in the sky. The crowd was split 50-50 as the Georgia faithful showed up in force much as they had done at South Bend in 2017. There was no reason whatsoever for Georgia to be overwhelmed by such a crowd.
And this loss was to an LSU team that, as mentioned above, nobody is confusing for a playoff contender. This LSU team was undone last week by a Florida team that lost to Kentucky earlier this year. This LSU team will surely be destroyed by Nick Saban and Alabama three weeks hence, and they could very well be beaten by Mississippi State this weekend. Georgia was favored to win this game by a touchdown. They lost by three (almost).
That is unacceptable.
As convenient as it is right now to insist that the same thing happened last year…well, it didn’t. Last year’s team had already proven itself by going on the road and beating Notre Dame. As Notre Dame rose in the rankings they pushed Georgia up ahead of them, all the way up to No. 1 and ahead of a similarly unbeaten Alabama team which did not yet have such a signature win. But this year’s Georgia team has not beaten anyone of consequence. Of the six wins they have thus far, none is over a team above .500. The four conference opponents they have beaten are a combined 3-11.
At this point, Georgia is basically just living off hype–the afterglow of 2017 and their recruiting rankings. But they are not a good team. They are a young team that can’t get out of their own way. They play unfocused and undisciplined; up till now they haven’t faced anyone good enough to make them pay for their sins in that regard. When they finally ran into an opponent of similar resources, they emerged three touchdowns worse than a team they were favored to beat by one touchdown.
Everybody is saying all the right things, about how all our goals are still intact and everything is still out there to play for. Which is true enough, on the face of it. Win out, and Georgia goes back to the SEC championship. Win that, and it’s on to the playoff.
But the schedule doesn’t get any easier. After a bye week, we face the very Florida team that handled the team that just beat us by three touchdowns. And then we face the Kentucky team that handled that Florida team. And then we face Auburn. Lose any of those three and it’s Florida or Kentucky–Kentucky!!!!!!!!!!–going to the SEC championship in Georgia’s place.
Is Georgia good enough to rise to that challenge? We just don’t know. They haven’t yet beaten anybody any good, and when they did finally run into a similarly resourced opponent they lost by three touchdowns.
This is not a good team. This is a young team that needs to grow up before the next time it sets foot on a football field.
They came to Baton Rouge in search of a test. They now leave Baton Rouge in a desperate search for answers.
The 80’s. Reagan. Yuppies. Duran Duran. Michael Jackson was thrilling fans with his new album Thriller. (See what I did there?) E. T. was warming the hearts of moviegoers the nation over. Yes, all of this and more was a thing because it was the 80’s baby!!!!!!!!!
The year was 1982. The old Gator Bowl had just expanded with the addition of a new upper deck. Herschel Walker, who had led Georgia to a national championship as a freshman two years prior, had Georgia well on the way this year as Georgia entered the game 8-0, 4-0 in SEC play. Georgia started the season with wins over Clemson and BYU, and inched their way up the polls to No. 3 the week of the Florida game. Florida, meanwhile, was 5-2 with wins over Miami and USC in the season’s first two games and losses to LSU and Vanderbilt. A win over Auburn the week before had them back in the polls at No. 20.
Walker dominated the game, scoring the game’s first three touchdowns. In the first quarter, Georgia recovered a fumble at the Florida 37 and on the second play Walker broke free for a 30-yard touchdown. In the second quarter, Georgia drove all the way to the Florida 1 and then Walker leaped over everybody for the touchdown and a 14-0 Georgia lead. Two Kevin Butler field goals stretched the lead to 20-0 and once again Georgia faced third-and-goal at the Florida 1. Walker leaped again but this time he fell short. On fourth down QB John Lastinger mishandled the snap, but Walker snatched it from him and slid under everyone into the end zone. With Georgia now up 27-0 midway through the third quarter, Walker exited the game. He finished with 219 yards and three touchdowns.
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