Should Georgia be concerned with a reinvigorated Florida State? Mailbag

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia won its opener by 41 points, and clearly that was unacceptable. So you had questions about Carson Beck, the offensive line and the offense in general. You also wondered why you had to watch it (if you did) on a streaming network.

And then, thankfully, one of you asked about David Letterman.

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But we’ll start with a different question, which you can probably guess from the headline. As always, some questions are edited for length and clarity, and to be fair so are the answers.

How concerned should Georgia fans be with a reinvigorated FSU? While we may feel all “enemy of my enemy is my friend” with the Noles, they recruited Georgia very well when they were on top of the college football world, and this year they have snagged several big UGA recruiting targets, most notably KJ Bolden and Landen Thomas. — Kyle L.

When I first moved to Georgia it was to Albany, where I discovered that Tallahassee, Fla., was actually much closer to the southwest part of the state than Athens. So it was no accident there were a good deal of Seminoles fans in that part of the state, and that the school was able to lure a few recruits. This was also as Mark Richt was getting things going at Georgia, so I watched as you started to see Georgia ascend and the Seminoles have some dips. Jimbo Fisher got them another national title in 2013 but then left, and Willie Taggart couldn’t sustain it. Now Mike Norvell appears to have things going, and as you watched Keon Coleman and those other receivers the other night, you couldn’t but think of the heyday of the ’90s, when guys like Tamarick Vanover and Peter Warrick were there.

That said, there are limits to the impact a resurgent Florida State would have on Georgia. You pointed to one of them, that this may hurt Florida as much as anybody. (Although the Gators are doing a good job hurting themselves.) And while Florida State may be rising, Clemson may be falling, and that’s another border-state power that has had some isolated success recruiting against Georgia.

There are so many elite recruits in the Southeast that there are plenty to go around. But Kirby Smart from the jump has made national recruiting a general strategy, to the point where the top six players in his No. 1 class right now are from out of state. Will Florida State, if it can sustain this, carry more weight on the recruiting trail and make life harder for Georgia? Potentially, but this also isn’t the ’90s. Georgia is in much better shape to withstand that kind of push.

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The greater lesson here is Georgia, because of where it’s located, is always going to face heated competition on the recruiting trail. Every school is going to come into its state trying to pry prospects away. And as long as passion and resources for college football stay this way in the South, other programs near Georgia are going to be dangerous if they get the right coach. Smart, in fact, has had the luck that Florida State, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and South Carolina have all been down at some point during his tenure.

Of course, Smart has contributed to them being down. His challenge is going to be keeping Georgia at the top in what’s about to be a much tougher SEC — one that, for the moment, does not include Florida State.

Why was the offensive line so bad against UT Martin? Should we be worried? — Preston G.

Not really. As I addressed in the Second Glance, it was a numbers issue. UT Martin was crowding the box, as its coach Jason Simpson said after the game: “We loaded up trying to stop the run, and they threw for 400 against us.”

Georgia’s offensive line was a finalist for the Joe Moore Award last year, and essentially four starters are back (Amarius Mims played a lot). The main question is how much they’ll miss the run blocking of Darnell Washington, and there isn’t enough data to know that yet. There is tape for opponents now to mimic loading the box to stop the run, if they’re willing to leave the secondary exposed. It’ll be up to Beck and company to burn them for that, and getting Ladd McConkey back may aid that.

The pass blocking, by the way, was basically flawless in the opener.

The more distance you get from the opener, hopefully the more perspective you get. It was a rough start, punting three of the first four possessions. And then the poor clock management at the end of the first half, which talking to people seems likely a hasty decision made on the field, probably a result of inexperience on Beck’s part.

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But in the end, Georgia still put up 559 yards and averaged 7.99 yards per play, which would have ranked fifth best among last year’s games. That was without two starting receivers, one of the top tailbacks and running a very vanilla game plan. And by “vanilla game plan,” that doesn’t just mean a few plays that may have been held back. If and when Georgia is in a “must-win game right now” mode, it will find a way to get Brock Bowers the ball, and after the opener Smart actually said they were trying to avoid giving Bowers touches, to save him and also develop other options. That’s why they were also shuttling in so many different receivers and tailbacks. Bowers had only one touch on those three first-half drives that didn’t result in points. He had six touches on the three scoring drives.

If Smart and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo had wanted to put up 70 points on UT Martin, they probably could have, force-feeding Bowers and reacting to UT Martin’s line-stacking by passing it on almost every down. But they wanted to see if they could run against that stacked front, and, well, they discovered they could not. Lesson learned.

That’s not to be Pollyannaish about it. While Georgia had success running to the outside, you wonder if some of the reluctance to do that wasn’t just holding back plays but lack of confidence in the perimeter blocking compared to last year when Washington was there. And you also want to see Beck have more of those “wow” throws. But with the defense behind him this year, there’s a reason Smart was praising his ability to avoid turnovers.

Hey, speaking of which:

Beck looked pedestrian in game one. How many games like that before Kirby considers making a change? — Preston B.

In the brief time Brock Vandagriff played, he flashed a great arm and the ability to scramble 30 yards very easily. Will it take an injury to Beck for him to see meaningful playing time? —Brad T.

Everything you’re seeing Smart say right now screams out that Beck will be the starter unless he gets hurt or starts turning it over multiple times per game. Smart also doesn’t share your opinion that he was pedestrian.

I know Vandagriff is very alluring because of his legs and the great throw he made in the third quarter. But if he hasn’t passed Beck in 2 1/2 years of practices and scrimmages, he’s not going to pass him based on a few good plays in garbage time.

Having the game streamed on ESPN+ was disappointing. When was the last time a Georgia game wasn’t on broadcast TV? Will it happen again this year? — Rey E.

That should be it for this year. Every SEC team is on ESPN+ once per year as agreed upon in the SEC television contract, and that also included Georgia last year when it played Kent State. Alabama will be on ESPN+ at some point, as will LSU, as will Texas and Oklahoma when they join the league next year.

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Also, what is this broadcast TV that you speak of? 🙂

We’re in an interesting time in sports television and in general. My family went from cable to streaming, back to cable and is now back on streaming, but there’s no guarantee we’ll stay there. Sports was the main reason we were keeping cable because we didn’t like the delay that came with streaming, but it got so expensive we decided to cut the cord again and deal with the (increasingly small) delays.

Now you’ve got Charter/Spectrum in a tussle with ESPN, which doesn’t seem a wise move for anybody but particularly the cable companies. Or maybe they’re starting to get more confident that streaming has become too spread out and spreading the consumer thin: You need a subscription for this network for this show, for that network for this show, and on and on. Seems the best way would be to put these streaming channels all in one place where you can pay in one lump sum, sorta like … a cable network.

I’m not sure it’ll land back there. But it does remind me of realignment: Everyone’s forming super leagues that are geographically unwieldy. At what point do they just say, wait, maybe we should form divisions within our leagues that look a lot like, say, the old Pac-8 or the old Southwest Conference? Might somehow common sense eventually trump money? Ah, answered my own question at the end of that sentence.

What time do you think the Auburn game will be played Sept. 30? — John A.

Don’t make any non-refundable plans on my advice, but right now that and LSU at Ole Miss look like the two best games on the SEC docket, and assuming Georgia is still unbeaten at that point, it will be attractive. The question is what Auburn will look like after going to Cal this weekend and Texas A&M in Week 4. CBS will also have had Georgia two weeks earlier against South Carolina, so I could see it passing on the Bulldogs, but if so it’d probably be waiting till the Florida game to have them again.

All this, by the way, is a good reminder why things should be better in 2024 when the Disney contract kicks in. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has said that by putting all games on the ABC/ESPN platform, they’ll be able to announce games further in advance. One can only hope.

Will Kirby leave tickets for David Letterman at will call this weekend? — Will R.

Ball State has David Letterman. Georgia has Three Year Letterman.

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My vote for the most notable non-football alumni of every team on Georgia’s schedule:

UT Martin: Pat Summit. (Honorable mentions: CNN commentator Van Jones, Florida State basketball coach Leonard Hamilton.)

Ball State: David Letterman. (Honorable mentions: Garfield creator Jim Davis, former Georgia football coach Glen Mason. Broke my non-football rule to get that one in there.)

South Carolina: All the guys in Hootie & the Blowfish.

UAB: Sam Hunt, country musician. (Honorable mention: Alexander Shunnarah, the lawyer who leads the nation in billboards.)

Auburn: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Kentucky: Ashley Judd.

Vanderbilt: Amy Grant, Fred Thompson, Rosanne Cash, Dinah Shore and author James Patterson. (I couldn’t pick a winner. Oh, and also Al Gore.)

Florida: Stephen Root, actor in “Office Space” and “NewsRadio” and generally just great in whatever he does. Yes, Florida actually has many more famous alumni, but this guy is great, and it’s my list.

Missouri: Jon Hamm, the “Mad Men” actor who was in these two great “Saturday Night Live” skits making fun of his name.

Ole Miss: William Faulkner, although he didn’t get his degree and John Grisham did.

Tennessee: Author Cormac McCarthy, who never actually got his degree but was there long enough (a few years) that I’ll let it pass.

Georgia Tech: Many, many engineers and astrophysicists who I’m sure are very famous in their fields, including Juan Carlos Varela, president of Panama from 2014 to 2019 and who one day could run again and campaign to get Panama in the ACC.

 (Photo of Kirby Smart: Steve Limentani / ISI Photos / Getty Images)

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