Georgia won a rivalry game by 18 points on Saturday afternoon. And yet, it didn't feel entirely satisfying for the No. 5 Bulldogs.
The offense muddled its way along for stretches of the game, still not hitting entirely on all cylinders. The defense limited Auburn to 13 points, but still gave up 337 total yards and had a few tackling issues.
All in all, Georgia improved to 4-1 but still seems to be searching for its identity.
Offensively, the Bulldogs are still trying to figure out how to make the most of every play.
"We still have plays that are like a play where Arian (Smith) is running, we're going to take a touchdown shot. He thinks Carson (Beck) is scrambling, so he breaks off the route and we throw a long incompletion. Well that’s second-and-10," Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said. "I mean, you cannot waste plays. You might throw incompletions, but you can't waste plays. You might not block a guy, but the back's going to make you miss. You can't waste plays. And I don't know, I can't say how many plays we've wasted today. We were much more efficient. But we've got a quarterback, an offensive staff, and offensive players that can be efficient. And there's teams that, they screw it up. I mean, jump offsides, go the wrong way. We usually don't do those things. We're very efficient. We have to maintain that.”
Georgia hasn't hit the ground running despite returning Beck from last season's team. Numerous other contributors also came back for 2024.
But the Bulldogs haven't grown frustrated by the lack of early success.
"Every offseason, everybody will go through that," offensive lineman Earnest Greene said. "Because every offseason, it's a different team. No matter how many returning starters there are, or whatever the case may be, every year is its own new team, its own mission. So I feel like you'd have to do that every season."
As for the struggles generating explosive plays, Beck doesn't think it's any reason to worry.
"I think everybody thinks attack, they think deep shots, deep balls," Beck said. "But I think our offense attack today, whether that was with the inside zone, mid zone power or play action pass or with the short game or screen, you know, there's so many different ways that we can attack the defense. And when you're just moving the ball down the field and you start converting on third down, it starts to wear defense down. And then ultimately, you know, next thing you know, we're in the end zone and it's been 13 plays and the defense is defeated."
Still, Smart saw flashes of the 2023 offense in the win over Auburn.
The Tigers scored early in the third quarter to make the game 14-10. The Bulldogs then responded with a touchdown drive of their own to extend the lead back to 11 points.
"That was closer to the offense that we had last year where it was like, when we get punched on defense, they respond," Smart said. "They had more third-down conversions. They had throws and catches that were more efficient in the run game, and could have even been more efficient in the run game, but that was what we need.”
Defensively, the Bulldogs have struggled to tackle. Smart said as much after the game, although he noted that he has observed poor tackling at all levels of football in recent years.
But his players feel that the team's resiliency has shown through. The defense believes that its best days are still ahead.
"We’re far from where we're going to be at the end of the season, I can tell you that. So we're where we need to be right now, but week to week we focus on getting better," linebacker Raylen Wilson said. "That's our message. We’ve got to get better every day, because it's going to be the team that gets better at the end of the season that win."
