Georgia is a top-10 football program for the first time under Kirby Smart.
That can be viewed as an early milestone for the second-year Bulldogs coach, who spent the previous eight seasons as Alabama's defensive coordinator under Nick Saban and aided the Crimson Tide in winning four national championships during that stretch.
It can also be viewed as a challenge, especially as the Bulldogs (4-0) venture to Tennessee (3-1) on Saturday looking to halt a two-game losing streak to the Volunteers.
"If you have a mature team, they can handle things like that well," Smart said Saturday night in a news conference after Georgia opened Southeastern Conference play with a resounding 31-3 defeat of Mississippi State inside Sanford Stadium. "It does concern me, because I worry about these guys reading it and believing it, but I was around a guy for 10 years who did a good job managing it."
Smart's Bulldogs jumped to No. 7 in Sunday's Associated Press poll and to No. 8 in the Amway coaches' poll.
They used a national stage on ESPN to dismantle a 3-0 Mississippi State team that was coming off a 37-7 shellacking of LSU. Georgia's first play from scrimmage was a 59-yard touchdown pass from Jake Fromm to Terry Godwin that occurred after Fromm gave the ball to Nick Chubb before Chubb flipped it back.
"It's a momentum play," Smart said. "It doesn't win everything for you, but it certainly slows them down and makes them a little less aggressive on the run. It looks like a good call when it works. If it's second-and-10, it doesn't."
Said Chubb: "That kind of loosened them up, because they had to think about that the rest of the game."
Georgia marched 78 yards in eight plays with its second possession, with Chubb reaching the end zone from 7 yards out. The Bulldogs wound up with 203 rushing yards and 201 passing yards.
"We can run the ball. We can throw it, and our defense is strong," Bulldogs sophomore tight end Isaac Nauta told reporters afterward. "That's what we strive for every day."
The Bulldogs are the highest-ranked team from the SEC other than Alabama, which remained No. 1 after its 59-0 trampling of Vanderbilt. This week, Georgia could all but eliminate Tennessee from the SEC East race, with the Vols having already lost to Florida and having never won an East title with losses to both the Gators and Bulldogs.
Florida and Georgia are the lone East teams without a league loss, but one is winning a lot more impressively than the other at this moment.
"We're becoming a great football team," Bulldogs senior outside linebacker Davin Bellamy said. "We're kind of not worried about anybody else. We're kind of just trying to fix ourselves every week."
Not too worried
Smart was asked Saturday night about senior running back Nick Chubb returning to Knoxville, where he suffered multiple torn ligaments two years ago on the first play from scrimmage. Chubb had a streak of 13 consecutive 100-yard games entering that contest.
"Nick's not the kind of kid who worries about that," Smart said. "Nick will be out there Monday ripping and snorting and running the ball. He blocked well on two or three runs tonight that sprung (freshman D'Andre) Swift. I don't think he gets into that.
"He's into toting the rock and punishing people."
Chubb was asked in July at SEC Media Days about his return trip to Tennessee.
"I'll be excited to go back," he said. "I kind of like stuff like that. I use it for motivation."
He said what?
Georgia senior outside linebacker Lorenzo Carter was surprised to learn after Saturday's blowout that former Bulldogs quarterback and current CBS analyst Aaron Murray had picked Mississippi State to win.
"What? He picked Mississippi State?" Carter said among laughing reporters. "I hugged Aaron on the sideline pregame. I wouldn't have hugged him. I'd have pushed him if I had known that."
Odds and ends
Georgia held Mississippi State to 44.7 points below its season average. ... Smart said Saturday night that injured starting quarterback Jacob Eason was not cleared to play in the game. ... Georgia leads the series against Mississippi State 18-6, which includes 10 straight wins in Athens. ... Rodrigo Blankenship has 14 consecutive touchbacks dating to the final kickoff of the Notre Dame game. ... Senior cornerback Malkom Parrish, who broke a bone in his foot last month, saw his first action of the season Saturday night. ... Georgia is up to 14th in the 247Sports.com team recruiting rankings for 2018 after receiving a commitment Sunday from three-star safety Aaron Brule, a 6-foot-1, 205-pounder from Metarie, La. ... The Bulldogs climbed to No. 7 in the AP poll after a 3-0 start two years ago in Mark Richt's final season but fell out of the rankings after consecutive losses to Tennessee and Alabama.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.