Georgia enters 2024 with a greater margin for error.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com.
The Georgia Bulldogs had an outstanding team in 2021, a group which brought home a national title to Athens for the first time in 41 years. That squad dominated most of its games and thrashed a good Michigan team in the College Football Playoff semifinals. The 2021 Dawgs ruled the 2022 NFL draft with a historic haul of 15 players, five in the first round. Compared to that 2021 steamroller, the 2022 Dawgs weren’t quite as good, but they were still better than everyone else. Georgia became the first team since Alabama in 2011 and 2012 to win back-to-back national championships. The bar was set so high in Athens, and so many elite players left the program afer the 2021 and 2022 seasons, that a dip was bound to occur. Indeed, in 2023, Georgia wasn’t as good as it had been, but the regression did not feel like failure. It felt like the laws of averages more than anything else.
Notably, even in a season when Georgia did not make the College Football Playoff (for the first time since 2020), the Dawgs produced a great record. They went 13-1. Their only loss was to Nick Saban’s last Alabama team in a close SEC Championship Game. Stop and contemplate the absurdity of it all: A “down year” for Georgia and Kirby Smart was a 13-1 season. Only a handful of programs can have that kind of “down year.” Ohio State is one. Alabama is another. Clemson was so thoroughly successful a few years ago that the Tigers might still regard a non-playoff season as a total failure, even if the team lost only one time. However, Clemson has fallen off the pace in recent seasons such that a 13-1 campaign wouldn’t feel like a failure, even if it didn’t lead to a playoff berth.
Georgia was hurt in 2023 by forces outside its control. In other seasons from the four-team playoff era, 13-1 would have been enough to get in. Last year, however, Georgia’s strength of schedule deteriorated. Games which were supposed to convey more of a schedule boost did not build value over the course of the season. Georgia was not the inevitable flying death machine of previous seasons. There were times – such as a less-than-comfortable win at Auburn and an ordinary performance against South Carolina – when Georgia looked genuinely mortal. Moreover, this lack of heavyweight strength continued to manifest itself later in the season, when Georgia ground out a nine-point home win over Missouri and an eight-point win over an average Georgia Tech team. This didn’t feel like a 13-1 team, which – in a sense – created the feeling this team didn’t deserve to be in the playoff in the end. Yet, Georgia was legitimately unlucky that the workings of the 2023 season didn’t unfold in a way which would enable a 13-win SEC team to make the playoff. Worse SEC teams have gotten in, due to receiving the right result at the right time.
If Georgia and its fans feel unlucky after a one-loss regular season did not translate into a playoff berth, they might find that the pendulum of fortune will swing their way in 2024. Margin for error was slim last year with a four-team playoff. There simply weren’t enough available spots on the playoff lifeboat with Texas, Washington, Michigan, and SEC champion Alabama finding safe harbor. This year, however, the 12-team playoff provides a lot of different seats.
The math should be friendly to Georgia this year: Whereas one loss was enough to keep UGA out of the playoff in 2023, the Dawgs could go 10-2 this year and comfortably get into the 12-team field.
The schedule for Georgia is difficult … and that’s a good thing. Strength of schedule won’t hurt Georgia in 2024, unlike 2023.
Georgia plays Clemson, Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss, and Tennessee. All five teams are ranked in the preseason top 20, three in the preseason top 10. Maybe one or two of those five teams won’t live up to its preseason ranking, but as long as three of them do, Georgia – should it finish 10-2 – will have high-quality wins to show to the committee. Other teams which finish 10-2 won’t be higher than UGA in a selection committee debate. Moreover, with 12 playoff spots up for grabs and lots of at-large berths at stake, it’s not as though a 50-50 debate for a No. 10 seed would seal Georgia’s fate. The Dawgs could slip to an 11 seed and still get in the field.
To be sure, Georgia and the other powerhouse programs in college football this year are playing for a top-four seed and a chance to get a first-round bye. Winning one fewer game increases the odds of winning the national championship. Georgia will feel it left something on the table if it doesn’t get that first-round bye. That said, the main goal is to be part of the 12-team playoff. Seedings and bracket paths certainly matter, but qualification is the first priority. On that score, Georgia has more margin for error – not less – than it did in the four-team playoff era.
If we accept the claim that a 10-2 record – a record worse than 2023’s final mark – will be enough to get Georgia to the playoff, which of the big games on the 2024 schedule is the biggest one for UGA? The Clemson season opener certainly looms large, but Clemson has been so vulnerable – and so unwilling to hit the transfer portal – in recent seasons under Dabo Swinney that a win over the Tigers feels less like a huge conquest and more like a result which is completely expected. That isn’t a 50-50 game. That’s a 75-25 game for Kirby Smart.
The key to the season – more precisely, the key to ensuring a 10-2 record at worst (and thereby a CFB Playoff berth) – is for Georgia to make sure it splits the two highest-profile road games on its schedule: at Alabama on Sept. 28 and at Texas on Oct. 19. If Georgia does take care of Clemson, a Bama-Texas split would enable the Dawgs to enter their Oct. 26 week off with just one loss. Florida should be easy pickings on Nov. 2. This leaves the two-game stretch at Ole Miss and versus Tennessee as the final set of big obstacles on the road to the playoff. If Georgia has just one loss heading into the Ole Miss-Tennessee pair of games, it could lose one of the two and still make the playoff.
Of course, Georgia fans will expect better than 10-2, and to be honest, they should expect better than 10-2. Yet, we focus on 10-2 because against this schedule, that should be more than enough to send Georgia back to the playoff, where it can compete for a third national championship in four seasons. UGA has been living in a world where one loss can have enormous consequences. In the new world of the 12-team playoff, the Dawgs have more room in which to breathe.
It’s why they’re a central national title contender this year, and should remain so for as long as Kirby Smart chooses to ply his trade Between The Hedges.
