Know Your Foe: Could Georgia be looking past Florida?
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In just a few days’ time, the banks of the St. Johns River will be flooded with orange and blue, red and black clad fans. It’s Florida-Georgia week, one unlike any in more than 30 years.
The No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs and Florida Gators will meet at TIAA Bank Field on Saturday and for the first time since 1981, Georgia will come into the game as the defending National Champions.
This will be the 100th meeting between the two schools, or 101st if you ask Georgia. Both teams had open weeks to prepare for the rivalry game but they come into this weekend on different paths. Florida is 4-3 and just 1-3 in the conference.
Other than a close game with Missouri, Georgia has rolled over everyone that has shared a field with them. It will be a tall task for the Gators this weekend heading to Jacksonville as 22.5-point underdogs.
To get a better picture of the Bulldogs we reached out to Palmer Thombs of Dawgs HQ to answer a few questions about the Gators’ opponent this weekend.
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It may be a silly question, given that it’s a huge rivalry game, but UGA has a game with massive implications next week against No. 3 Tennessee. Could Georgia get caught looking ahead?
Could Georgia be looking past the Gators and ahead to a top-3 matchup with Tennessee?
Palmer Thombs: I’ll start the week off here since it’s a question that has been asked quite a few times, especially last week after Tennessee’s upset of Alabama and Georgia being in the midst of the bye.
That’s a time that the Bulldogs always use to look ahead at some opponents and start to go over a few things that they may do differently. Kirby Smart and company don’t want the couple of days before the game to be the first time that their players see something that is unique. For example in the past, Georgia Tech’s triple-option offense was a major emphasis during the bye. I would imagine Tennessee’s tempo and Mississippi State’s air raid were harped on last week, however, I don’t think that means that Georgia is overlooking Florida.
In fact, Kirby was asked that last week and said that it wasn’t a concern of his. If it were an FCS opponent or a non-conference game ahead of Tennessee then maybe it’s a concern, but everybody in Athens understands the importance of this Georgia-Florida rivalry. As a result, nobody is going to take the Gators lightly, regardless of who comes after or what the stakes of the game are.
