Bulldogs keep foot on the gas

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Georgia players and coaches talk a lot about “playing to a standard.” It’s never about what opposing teams are doing to affect games, but what the Bulldogs are able to do that matters the most.

Saturday’s 62-0 rout of Vanderbilt was a good example of how that message has been received, after arguably Georgia’s most dominating SEC win since beating Florida 72-0 in 1942.

Although head coach Kirby Smart admitted his team outmanned the Commodores under first-year coach Clark Lea, the fact was the Bulldogs (4-0, 2-0) were able to stick to their season-long plan and executed it to perfection.

“The biggest emphasis for us has been this trajectory that we want to be on, and we talk a lot each week about how we want to do that,” said Smart, whose Bulldogs outgained Vanderbilt in total yardage, 524-77.

“We use the analogy of 1 in 60. For every degree you’re off your target in a plane, for every 60 miles you travel, you land one mile off course,” Smart said. “So, we’ve said, if we’re heading to L.A., for every 60 miles we travel, we could land 27-30 miles off target.”

Junior linebacker Nolan Smith echoed what his coach had to say.

When asked to give his take of Georgia’s “dominance” against the Commodores, the Savannah native said looks can sometimes be deceiving.

“Y’all may say we dominated, but Vandy played a good, hard game. They tried to run the ball a little bit, but as you know, stopping the run is always one of our team goals,” Smith said. “They tried to get things going with a little QB running, but it’s amazing how this team is able to play together, keep calm, and keep pushing forward.”

Correcting every single mistake—as relatively trivial as they may seem—will be critical if the Bulldogs hope to achieve all their goals.

This goes back to Smart’s 1 in 60 analogy.

“If we correct that degree and get back on track, we can hit our target,” Smart said. “But at any point and time we don’t think we need to correct the degrees we’re off, then we can get in trouble and miss our target. Our guys have kind of bought into that analogy of steering this plane in the right direction.”

That’s especially true as far as the defense is concerned.

Even with Saturday’s game clearly in control, some of Georgia’s most intense play came late, when the defense—consisting primarily of second- and third-team players—kept Vanderbilt off the scoreboard to complete the shutout.

“If you’re out there, you’re a starter. There’s no ones, twos, or threes. I’m cheering for them, just like I’m cheering for Adam (Anderson) if he’s out there,” Smith said. “But no, I don’t want nobody to score. I say no. Nobody in the end zone, that’s our standard for everybody.”

So far, the Bulldogs have done a very good job of doing exactly that.

Four games into the season, Georgia has allowed only one offensive touchdown. Per Smith, it goes back to the standard that he, other players, and Georgia coaches preach about every day.

“We say nobody is in our end zone, and we mean that. I don’t care if we’re playing the New England Patriots,” Smith said. “It’s a mindset, you’ve got to have that mindset. If you’ve got the mindset that they’re going to go out there, if you say the other team is going to score 21 points, they’re going to score 21 points.

“We don’t want to let anyone in the end zone, period. That’s not just my mindset. It’s the coaches' mindset, it’s the players' mindset—that’s something we buy into as the team’s standard on defense.”

Offensively, the Bulldogs were just as impressive.

JT Daniels’ day was done early in the second quarter, after completing 9 of 11 passes for 121 yards and two touchdowns.

Stetson Bennett completed 11 of 15 for 151 yards and one score, while nine different Bulldogs had stats count toward Georgia’s 241 rushing yards.

Individually, freshman tight end Brock Bowers scored three touchdowns (two receiving, one rushing), while redshirt freshman Ladd McConkey scored for the first two times in his career, one on a 24-yard reverse and the other on a 27-yard reception.

“From warm-ups throughout, we talked about it being early, not letting it be an excuse,” Smart said. “If you’re going to be elite as a team, you have to be elite all the time, not some of the time. That's not how elite teams play. Our guys embraced that, and I’m proud of them.”