With Kirby Smart unsure as to whether Brock Bowers will suit up for the Bulldogs Saturday night against Ole Miss, Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin is countering with some juju of his own.
The way he sees it, ALL the pressure is on Georgia.
“We play them at night. I kind of feel that nobody is giving us a shot, which is a good thing sometimes. It’s kind of like we’re playing with house money,” Kiffin said during Wednesday’s SEC teleconference. “What do you have to lose when nobody expects you to win?”
The folks in Las Vegas seem to believe the Bulldogs will roll to their 10th straight win, which would be Georgia’s 27th consecutive victory.
Georgia is an 11-point favorite in the game, which suits Kiffin just fine.
“I think it allows you to play and coach looser, not uptight, not tense, not stressed,” Kiffin said. “I say that because, when we went to go play Alabama like we do every year, early on when we first got here, it felt like house money because nobody expected us to win – they’re Alabama.”
That wasn’t the case this year.
“This year, they had the quarterback struggles, played close the week before, they lost to Texas, and all of a sudden there was a different feel like, oh, Ole Miss might beat Alabama,” said Kiffin, whose team fell 24-10 to the Crimson Tide. “With this one, the fact they’re 42-1 or whatever, haven’t lost in five years at home, I think that takes some pressure off us. Being on the other side when you’re on those streaks, the pressure is more on the streak if the game starts to go the other way or is close late in the game. There’s more pressure on you when you’re that No. 1 team with that long streak.”
While all this may qualify as some good-natured gamesmanship between Smart and Kiffin, Ole Miss’ coach said the respect he has for his friend runs deep.
“I just think Kirby is really smart, and I really enjoy talking to really smart, intelligent coaches who you can bounce things off of and ask how they do things, or how they deal with a player issue, injury, or something,” Kiffin said. “He’s one of my first calls when I’m looking for advice.”
Even if Bowers does not play, Kiffin said Georgia has plenty of weapons to make up for the loss.
“I think the assumption they were going to struggle after losing Brock isn’t true. They put up 43 on Florida and did a good job against Missouri,” he said. “They’ve got great players. They get elite signing classes and they got a couple of receivers (Dominic Lovett and RaRa Thomas) in the portal who were their teams’ best players. They utilize them greatly. They do a great job of having run-pass balance.”
Kiffin praised Bulldog offensive coordinator Mike Bobo for making it all work.
“There are matchup concerns all over the place. They don’t get enough credit for what they’ve done offensively, including this year, because so much focus is on the great defense they play,” Kiffin said. “But these guys are up there statistically on offense in almost everything.”
