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.
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