ATHENS, Ga. — Kirby Smart may enjoy the College Football Playoff, but it’s safe to say he isn’t a fan of the College Football Playoff committee. On two separate occasions after Saturday’s crucial 31-17 victory over Tennessee, Smart took a moment to castigate the committee’s decisionmaking and question its football acumen.
“I don’t know what they’re looking for. I really don’t,” said Smart, whose team was ranked 12th but effectively locked out of the playoffs after last week’s loss to Ole Miss. “I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eyeball test where they come down here and look at the people we’re playing against and look at them.You can’t see that stuff on a TV.”
What the committee would have seen had they been at Sanford Stadium—and what 93,033 in the stands saw live—was a Georgia team that’s capable of healing itself on the fly, both in the middle of the season and in the middle of a game. If Wolverine wasn’t already aligned with another university, the Dawgs could claim him as an avatar.
“They’re not in that [in-game] environment,” Smart said in a press conference beneath the bleachers, as delirious Georgia fans celebrated outside. “They’re not at Ole Miss in that environment, playing against that defense, which is top five in the country … They don’t know that, they don’t understand that.”
“Their offense hasn’t been consistent, the committee discussed that, they’ve struggled with some turnovers,” CFP chairman Warde Manuel said last Tuesday in announcing the latest rankings. “Defense has been solid, although in the loss to Ole Miss, we felt that (inconsistent offense) plays a factor … with the offense struggling, their defense was on the field quite a bit.”
You can’t throw out red meat like that and expect Smart not to snap at it. “They’ll probably look at this week and say we just played against one of the best defenses in the country, and we put up 453 (yards of offense), and could have been more,” he said. “It’s just the tale of each week, and we’re trying to be the cumulative, whole, good quality team, and not be on this emotional rollercoaster that’s controlled by people in a room somewhere that may not understand football like we do as coaches.”
Whew. Got all that? Thing is, Smart has every reason to be sore—and every reason to believe that his team is absolutely one of the best in the country, regardless of what arbitrary week-to-week rankings say. Georgia smothered Tennessee, holding the Vols scoreless in the second half and containing the Vols in a way no other team has managed this year.
Assuming no further hiccups, two losses and their current trajectories ought to be enough for both Georgia and Tennessee to make the playoffs. Both teams are 8-2 overall, but the Bulldogs are finished with SEC play at 6-2, while UT falls to 5-2 in league with a game at Vanderbilt still to come.
The Georgia-Tennessee rivalry may not have the juice of, say, Georgia-Auburn or Tennessee-Alabama, but it’s fast becoming a matchup of heavyweights. Four of the last five games have featured both teams ranked in the top 20, and Saturday night was, in many ways, a playoff play-in. At stake: a potential SEC championship berth for Tennessee, a likely playoff berth for Georgia.
Early on, Georgia punter Brett Thorson — the only Bulldog who came out of the gate strong — unintentionally set the early mood for Georgia in the first half. The Dawgs had gone three-and-out on their opening series, Thorson punted the ball away, and a Tennessee player knocked him to the ground. Flags flew, and Thorson lay on his back, gloating, expecting a roughing-the-punter call that would give Georgia a fresh set of downs.
It wasn’t to be. The officials picked up the flags, ruling that the Tennessee player had been blocked into Thorson. And Tennessee would proceed to score a touchdown on its ensuing drive to take a 7-0 lead.
It was a pretty stark message: If Georgia wanted a victory over an initially feisty Vols team Saturday night, the Dawgs would have to earn it.
The status of each team’s starting quarterback dominated pregame talk. Would Nico Iamaleava be available after undergoing a reported concussion protocol? Would Carson Beck continue his slide from his Heisman Trophy candidacy into interception-slinging irrelevance?
The first half answered both questions fairly effectively. Iamaleava got the start and led the Vols on touchdown drives of 78 and 75 yards, with a field goal in between. Beck, meanwhile, came out firing, throwing 29 first-half passes. Sure, many of those passes flew high or wide, but that’s better than into enemy hands, right? Beck connected with tight end Oscar Delp — also known as Brock Bowers 2.0 — for two touchdowns and drove the Dawgs to a late first-half field goal.
Halfway home, the game was tied at 17, with no clear edge for either side.
Georgia struck first in the second half, with a very un-Carson Beck-like drive from Beck consuming 7:22 and covering 87 yards over 12 plays. Beck, who’s spent the last few weeks as the target of Georgia fans’ rage, appeared as composed and centered as he has all season on the drive, finding open men, eluding the Tennessee rush and guiding Georgia with a confidence he hadn’t shown in weeks. He took the ball into the end zone himself on the drive’s final play, scooting 10 yards to put Georgia ahead 24-17.
Tennessee’s offense, so reliable in the first half, sputtered and staggered in the second, punting on three consecutive possessions. Following a 2-yard touchdown run by Nate Frazier that gave the Bulldogs a 31-17 lead, Tennessee took over with 2:26 remaining in regulation but turned it over on downs with an Iamaleava fumble. The Vols’ offense was held lifeless for the final 30 minutes.
The final line on Beck: 347 yards on 25-of-40 attempts, with two touchdowns, plus 32 yards and a touchdown on the ground. After a week in which the outside world ripped Beck and the Georgia offense, it was some sweet redemption.
“Those guys, they took a lot of criticism from people, and really unwarranted, in my opinion,” Smart said.”’Cause it’s funny, when you talk to people that actually know football, they know how hard it is to play in that [SEC] environment.”
It’s a theme Smart has struck repeatedly this year: The SEC is a crucible. Every week is a battle. Losses here aren’t the same as losses elsewhere. It’s PR spin, sure, but it’s also got the ring of truth, especially when you see what a team like Georgia is capable of doing when everything is humming.
Georgia will rise in the next set of CFP rankings, but probably not high enough for Smart’s liking. Unless and until the committee comes and watches him play in person, he’s going to hold onto that grudge.
“I respect their decision. respect their opinion. But, I mean, it’s different in our league,” Smart said, and then added one little twist. “So … go Dawgs.”
And with that, he was gone, statement made.