Well, at least Georgia won’t have to spend most of this football season being compared to its opening result.
Last year’s Bulldogs began defense of their 2021 national championship with a 49-3 humbling of Oregon inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which served as their most dominating 60-minute performance until January’s 65-7 massacre of TCU in the title game of the four-team playoff. There were also plenty of 30-minute segments a year ago in which Georgia separated from the opposition, most notably the second half against Auburn (28-10) and the first halves against Florida (28-3), Tennessee (24-6) and LSU (35-10) in the Southeastern Conference championship game.
We were all a bit surprised Saturday when the Bulldogs led UT Martin, a Football Championship Subdivision member with 22 fewer scholarships, just 7-0 with five minutes left in the first half of an eventual 48-7 whipping inside Sanford Stadium.
“We were going to lean on our defense because we had some guys who were nervous and had not played on offense,” Bulldogs eighth-year coach Kirby Smart said afterward in a news conference. “Everybody just thinks you’re going to walk out there and roll over these teams and how it ought to be 40-0 at halftime. Then it’s not, and you get tighter and guys get worried.
“I’m over that. I’m past that and past those days. I want to grow and get better. It’s not about who we play.”