BATON ROUGE – The play of Jake Fromm, and Kirby Smart’s reluctance to hand an opportunity to Justin Fields, have been the topic du jour in the hours following Georgia’s disappointing 36-16 loss to LSU.

More on that later.

One aspect of Saturday’s debacle cannot be ignored: physicality. The Bulldogs continue to struggle pushing that area of their game to where it needs to be.

We’ve seen spurts, but as Smart has mentioned on numerous occasions, we’re just not seeing the level of toughness from the team that is needed, and that’s a big concern.

That’s especially true from the defensive perspective. If you can’t at least slow down the run, particularly in the SEC, you’re going to have trouble. Right now, the Bulldogs have problems.

Georgia didn’t play as physically as it needed to against Missouri, nor against Vanderbilt, despite the lopsided scores.

Watching LSU rush for 275 yards should be disturbing if you’re a Georgia fan. If this trend continues, the final five games of the season, sans UMass, are going to be much more interesting than most of us imagined.

So, what do the Bulldogs do?

That’s a good question. It’s not as if you can change the defense, and defensive coordinator Mel Tucker has exhausted many of his personnel options.

However, that’s still not an excuse. Even a casual Bulldog fan can tell that despite the team’s 6-1 record, Georgia has not played to its potential. It’s up to Smart and his coaches to start finding some solutions while the team’s goals are still under Georgia’s control.

Smart was asked in Saturday’s post-game press conference if physicality was a mental thing.

“It’s who you are. It’s who you believe, who you create. It’s something we’ve got to create. Right now, we’re not as physical as we need to be. I can promise you that. We practice physical. We try to play tough. I think our offensive line is physical a lot of times, but defensively we haven’t been able to sustain that,” Smart said. “We’ve got some young guys out there and we’ve got some guys out. It doesn’t matter, guys. It’s the next man up. You’ve got to go out and play physical in this league. There’s no need for excuses. They’ve got guys out, too. So, hey, we’ll play physical, strike people, get off blocks. That’s what football is.”

Smart is correct, and the ugly truth is that Georgia is simply not as physical as it needs to be.

He and his assistants try to make practices physical; the Bulldogs practice tough, but when it comes to actual games, there’s been an inability to sustain that level of play.

Until Smart and his staff can find those solutions and make the Bulldogs a tougher team than they currently are, it’s not going to matter if Georgia’s other issues are corrected or not.

It all starts up front.

. . . As for the quarterbacks:

Put me in the camp of being surprised that Fields was not given an extended look, particularly after the game got out of hand. My take: what would it have hurt?

Coach Smart has been steadfast that Fromm and Fields take a similar number of snaps in practice, execute the same number of plays; you get the drift.

However, it looks as if the trust factor is not there with Fields. At least that's how it appears from the outside looking in.

When all Fields does is hand the ball off, or tuck and runs, that’s a pretty good indication that there’s some sort of concern. If you’re as confident in Fields as you say you are, put him in and let him play. Find out what he can and can’t do.

Fromm played a stinker. No doubt about it. In our brief conversation after the game, he owned it, took the entire outcome on his shoulders. He’s not the first Georgia quarterback to do so and he won’t be the last.

This is my 22nd season covering the Georgia football team and every quarterback I’ve ever seen play over the course of time has stunk up the joint at some point. Quincy Carter, D.J. Shockley, David Greene, Aaron Murray, Matt Stafford—it happens.

Nevertheless, when your quarterback is struggling, and the game is out of hand, putting Fields in for an extended look would have at least given the freshman an opportunity to gain some valuable experience.

In the hours that have passed, it’s been suggested to me that one of the reasons we didn’t see Fields, Smart’s post-game answer notwithstanding, is there was a concern that throwing Fields against a dialed-in Tiger defense might have hurt the freshman’s confidence.

Even if true, Smart would never admit that publicly.

What is true is that Georgia’s quarterback situation will continue to be a hot topic of conversation, and it’s going to be very, very interesting to see how Smart handles Fromm and Fields moving forward.

. . . There is no way Elijah Holyfield should have been given only seven carries, especially with how hard he was running. Can’t figure that one out.

. . . Hindsight being what it is, I get trying to gain understanding with the fake field goal attempt, but that was not the time to do it in my humble opinion. Tie the game. The crowd at LSU was already getting whipped into a frenzy, so tying the game should have been Priority No. 1.

. . . Maybe it’s time to give punter Landon Stratton an opportunity. Jake Camarda has the leg, but he hit some fishhooks Saturday that didn’t help Georgia one bit.

Bottom line: The Bulldogs just need to respond.

Georgia did that last year after losing to Auburn, and in many respects, Saturday’s night’s loss bore an eerie resemblance.

Questions about physicality and offensive play-calling were prevalent following that game, too. The only real difference that I see is the 2017 team had much better leaders in Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, Davin Bellamy, Lorenzo Carter, and Roquan Smith.

This year’s team has some young players who are trying to fill those roles, yet they are still missing what those 2017 players brought from the leadership perspective.

Smart made one promise after last night’s game: that the team would bounce back and the mistakes would be corrected.

While that certainly sounds nice, ultimately talking about it doesn’t matter. It’s doing it that counts.

Football is all about learning from your mistakes, forgetting the past and responding after adversity.

LSU did so after its loss to Florida. In two weeks, against the Gators, it’s going to be Georgia’s turn to do likewise.