Georgia junior running back Elijah Holyfield scores on a 10-yard run late in the third quarter of Saturday's 36-16 loss to LSU. The Bulldogs are off next weekend before taking on Florida in Jacksonville on Oct. 27.BATON ROUGE, La. - In the final minutes of LSU's 36-16 drubbing of Georgia on Saturday afternoon, Tigers fans began chanting "Overrated! Overrated!"
As a handful of Georgia players were being interviewed outside the visiting locker room, they had to listen to shouts of "LSU! LSU!"
With the Bulldogs now facing their lone open date of the season, it will take them a bit longer to replace those and other images from the surprise shellacking.
"I personally would like to play this next Saturday, but that's the way the schedule falls," junior running back Elijah Holyfield said. "We didn't execute the way we wanted out there, and they did. We'll definitely remember this final score, and we'll definitely get to work."
Holyfield's 56 yards on seven carries coupled with D'Andre Swift's 72 on 12 served as a rare bright spot for a team that struggled to throw the ball consistently, got ravaged defensively while allowing 475 yards, and, as coach Kirby Smart put it, lost the kicking game for the first time this season.
There is no shortage of issues to address for the Bulldogs, who fell from No. 2 to No. 8 in the Associated Press poll released Sunday.
"We've got what we've got, and we're going to keep getting better," Smart said. "That's the only thing we can do. We have not gotten out of this team what we should get out of them, and that's on me. That's on the coaches, and all the players have to buy into that."
Smart did credit the physical play of his offensive line at times against the Tigers (6-1, 3-1), whose ranking rose from 13th to fifth, but that's pretty much where his compliments began and ended.
For a sixth consecutive season, the Bulldogs have an open date before their annual showdown against Florida in Jacksonville. Georgia rolled to a 42-7 triumph in last season's contest, but those Gators were unraveling under former coach Jim McElwain, who was fired a day after last year's game when he failed to prove his claim he had been receiving death threats from unhappy fans.
The Oct. 27 showdown will have a huge impact on this season's Southeastern Conference Eastern Division race, with the Bulldogs and Dan Mullen's No. 11 Gators each sporting 6-1 overall records and 4-1 marks in league play. Florida defeated LSU 27-19 on Oct. 6, with its lone loss coming to Kentucky, 27-16 on Sept. 8.
"I wish we could just come in, look at this last game and go forward, but it doesn't matter when we play again," Georgia sophomore safety Richard LeCounte said. "We're going to be ready to play. I believe in everyone in that locker room. We're going to get to work. We've got this."
Said sophomore quarterback Jake Fromm, who was just 16-of-34 with two interceptions at LSU: "We're going to work this week. We're going to come together as a team, and we're going to be better when we play Florida."
Fromm fell from fourth to ninth nationally in pass efficiency, which is where he ranked after last season.
Smart said it's never ideal to have an open date after a loss but that the Bulldogs, just like every SEC team seven weeks into the season, have their share of players who are banged up and could use at least a little recovery time.
Georgia suffered its first loss last year in November at Auburn and recovered nicely with drubbings of Kentucky, 42-13, and Georgia Tech, 38-7, before exacting revenge against Auburn with a 28-7 win in the SEC title game. Smart brought up that analogy after the loss at LSU, though it was certainly an unexpected teaching moment.
"We never plan on losing and then trying to come back from a loss," Holyfield said. "This is nothing we planned on, that's for sure, but we'll go to work just like we went to work last year."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.