ATLANTA – Georgia’s Bulldog Nation no doubt wants its 37-10 Southeastern Conference championship game loss to LSU on Saturday to be about talent, or lack thereof.
That way they can quite easily blame it on coach Kirby Smart for not recruiting enough outrageously gifted physical specimens to the Athens campus. Or, should they choose to do so, blame it on the rather large portion of that talent that has been less than 100% healthy for so much of this season and especially for this game, particularly running back D’Andre Swift, who still played, and wideout Lawrence Cager, who didn’t.
And that argument carries much legitimacy. The Dawgs almost certainly would have made a better game of this one with a roster full of healthy bodies instead of a bruised and battered one trying to tough it out.
But LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, the prohibitive Heisman Trophy favorite in the eyes of many, had a slightly different take on this win, one that sounds simple but leans on a good deal of luck and magic and chemistry, though presumably not the kind requiring test tubes and glass beakers emitting bubbles and smoke.
“When I first got here, you had an offense and a defense,” he said of his arrival at LSU after transferring from Ohio State in spring 2018. “Now you have LSU. This is as close as I’ve ever been to anybody.”