Yesterday was the media day for the start of fall camp. Nick and Gentry have that covered well on the main GC site, and the event is still ongoing as I write this on Sunday afternoon.
Rather than give you something incomplete on that topic, I’m going to do some quick hitters on a few of Florida’s opponents. Always got to keep your head on a swivel, and all that.
Utah
Utes QB Cam Rising, easily the best and most experienced option on the roster, was optimistic at Pac-12 Media Days about being ready for the opener. He tore his ACL in the Rose Bowl early this year, so his appearance in the game is still not totally guaranteed. If he does go, he may be limited. We’ll all have to see.
He’s not the only important player on the offense to be returning from injury. Their best tight end, Brant Kuithe, tore his ACL a few games into last season. Because his injury came months before Rising’s did, he’ll be way farther along health-wise. I’m not aware of anything that’ll keep him from being 100% for the Gators.
He torched the UF defense a year ago to the tune of 105 yards on nine catches in the Swamp. Had he not gotten hurt, he’d most likely be on an NFL roster right now. If Utah does get its revenge, it’s highly likely that Kuithe’s return from injury will be a major reason why.
LSU
It’s hard to keep LSU football down for long. It has such a natural advantage in such a good talent-producing state in Louisiana that it takes some major incompetence for the program to experience a lost decade. Curley Hallman and Gerry DiNardo managed such in the ’90s, when Steve Spurrier went the same 11-1 against the Tigers as he famously did against UGA, but Nick Saban got them back on track.
The Nicktator’s rebuild began in 2000, and he experienced his first true peak season four years later in 2003. The Tigers did upset Tennessee in the SEC title game in 2001, but that outfit still went 5-3 in conference play. In ’03, only a home loss to Ron Zook of all people blemished the record.
Ever since then, no matter what happens, the Tigers have peaked every four years. They won another national title in 2007 under Les Miles, and then only a rematch against Saban himself in the 2011 title game kept them from winning another. Miles slid towards mediocrity after, but he still experienced a brief upswing in 2015. It was his last good year, and the Tigers finished No. 11 in SP+.
Four years after that, Ed Orgeron had his stars-aligning season in 2019 for another purple-and-gold national title. It didn’t last, but neither did Coach O’s tenure.
Brian Kelly outperformed expectations in winning the West last year, and most of the key players are returning this year. It would not shock me if the pattern continues with another peak performance this year.
Every head coach LSU has had this century has won a national title save Kelly, who’s only had once chance at it. I don’t relish the idea of it, but this fall he very well could make that pattern continue too.
Georgia
I prefer to analyze things that are quantifiable, but not everything in college football is. Sometimes teams are more, less, or about equal to the sum of their parts. That can come through in the quantifiable parts, of course, but sometimes you just know it when you see it.
I think the 2021 UGA team was better than the 2022 team that repeated. You can rebut this assertion if you want, of course. The ’21 team lost a game where as the ’22 team went undefeated. If you look through the major computer rankings, they generally put them about even or have last year’s team ahead.
My theory for this is the fact that the 2021 defense was so crushingly good that Kirby Smart kept his offense on a tighter leash. The ’22 defense was still excellent, but it wasn’t the generational unit he had the prior season. He let the offense do more because he couldn’t trust his defense to snuff out literally everything the opponent tried (Bama excepted, as we found out).
Either that, or with the 40-year monkey off the program’s back, Smart lightened up and loosened up a bit in 2022. Maybe both. Either way, I think the ’21 offense could’ve done more and made the final ratings higher had it been allowed to.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to get to is that the core of those two teams is mostly gone. There are still some extremely good players left, but the combination of the the specific players that made 2021-22 so good is not there anymore. There’s no guarantee that the new set will work as well together. See Texas A&M, or honestly last year’s Alabama, for examples of how a great collection of talent doesn’t necessarily result in a championship-caliber team.
I do still think UGA will be one of the best squads this year; there are too many good players and too much competence on the staff for them to fall off much. However we did actually see some cracks last year despite the better record.
Georgia’s problem under Smart, past his initial year, was that his team would always have some terrible clunker. The 2021 team didn’t have one per se, except maybe the SECCG they didn’t have to win when they played everything vanilla to make game prep harder for the likely rematch in the Playoff. Alabama still played them tough in the national title game until Jameson Williams went down, as the Tide was good enough to push and beat the Bulldogs when fully healthy.
Last year, Georgia didn’t go back to having one clunker. It had two. It’s just that they both came in consecutive games against Kent State and a pretty mediocre Missouri team. They could out-talent those opponents and win despite playing well below their potential.
I expect we’ll see at least one clunker from them again this year, because that 2021 team just had everything come together perfectly. It’s hard to make that happen consistently, even for the likes of Saban, and I don’t think Smart will crack that nut again.