The Georgia Bulldogs held their final on-campus workout Wednesday for their Liberty Bowl date with TCU on Dec. 30.
Players will be off until Christmas evening, when they are scheduled to report in Memphis. The team will resume workouts Monday morning at Rhodes College.
Georgia began this season ranked No. 18 and vaulted to No. 9 after an opening 33-24 triumph over No. 22 North Carolina in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, but a 26-24 escape of Nicholls State in the second game quickly tempered expectations. The Bulldogs will take a 7-5 record to Memphis, which includes two wins against ranked teams (North Carolina and No. 9 Auburn), two losses to unranked teams (Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech), and countless on-the-job discoveries for first-year coach Kirby Smart.
“The biggest thing as far as running the program and with the kids is just being positive with those guys and re-enforcing the positives and showing them good things they do on tape and keep emphasizing that for them,” Smart said this week in a news conference. “That’s especially needed when things get tough and guys aren’t having success. They need to see themselves doing it right as much as they need to see themselves doing it incorrectly.”
Georgia recently received good news when junior tailbacks Nick Chubb and Sony Michel and junior outside linebackers Davin Bellamy and Lorenzo Carter announced they will return for their senior seasons. The Bulldogs also are assembling, at the very least, a top-five recruiting class nationally, and a win over the Horned Frogs certainly would add to a lot of potential offseason momentum.