It’s here! Time to load up the car for a road trip to Nashville. An invasion by Georgia fans is almost expected now for any road game, and Nashville is usually happy to accommodate. This isn’t a preview – there are plenty of those elsewhere – but more of a dump of things on my mind as we head into the season.

There haven’t been many surprises over the offseason, and any concerns have to do with the incremental improvements that turn a playoff contender into a champion. In other words, we more or less know the cards Georgia is holding, and we know they’re good ones. That can make for boring blogging at times as there are only so many ways to say that Georgia has a good team.

Kirby Smart touched on an obvious but important point at SEC Media Days in July: how weird is it for Georgia to be measured relative to a team not even on its schedule? As Smart reminds us, the Dawgs have a 12-game row to hoe first. The assumption of a postseason date with Alabama implies a couple of things: first, anything short of another division title would be a serious setback. Second, Georgia is nearly to the point as a program that Georgia advancing to face Alabama is expected as much as Alabama advancing to face Georgia. The Georgia program is now measured in all things relative to Alabama, and that in itself says quite a lot.

The Grown-Up in the Room

It seems as if he was hired yesterday, but only four SEC head coaches now have more experience at their current school than Kirby Smart. Entering his fourth season Smart has created a team and program largely of his own making. There are a handful of redshirt seniors (Blankenship!) and others who committed to Mark Richt for the 2016 class, but 68 of Georgia’s 83 scholarship players are juniors or below.

Smart, for the first time, is welcoming new coordinators. Replacing just a single coordinator has been enough to trip up other Georgia coaches. Hiring from within might lend itself to some continuity, but was that taking the easy way out? That’s no disrespect to Coley or Lanning who have earned their roles, but Georgia didn’t seem to conduct much of a search for its coordinators outside of the 706 area code. Why would they? Both the offense and defense were doing well, and these men certainly had their hands in that success.

There were two things keeping Georgia fans from worrying too much about two new coordinators. First was, again, the Alabama factor. Bama loses coaches all the time and chugs on, so why shouldn’t Georgia? That’s assuming quite a bit though about the state of Georgia’s program. Alabama has earned that benefit of the doubt; I’m not so sure Georgia has. Second is the presence of Kirby Smart. We know what kind of offense Smart prefers, and we know this team is meant to run that certain style. Coley might introduce his own wrinkles, but this isn’t Auburn bringing in Tony Franklin for a wholesale retooling of the offense’s identity. It’s a similar story on defense. It’s unfair to Mel Tucker (and Lanning) to call them figureheads running Smart’s defense just as it was wrong to say that about Smart and Saban at Alabama. What’s true though is that Smart will set the tone in both the players the program recruits and the insistence that the defense meets the same standards of composure and physicality he’s set for the entire program. Certain aspects – like this season’s emphasis on havoc – might change from year to year, but you’re never concerned that Kirby Smart doesn’t know what he wants from his defense.

But if our faith in the new coordinators lies largely in the belief that they’re instruments of Kirby Smart’s preferences, Smart’s own role in decisions deserves greater scrutiny. That doesn’t just mean fake punts late in the SEC championship game. If Coley gets away from the run a little too soon, will Smart be willing to correct? Hopefully it won’t take a Chubb/Michel type of meeting. If an opponent makes adjustments to attack Georgia’s offensive line as LSU did, will Smart be quick to recognize it and help craft a response? Can Smart step in when the defense isn’t getting lined up properly against hurry-up offenses?

The results on the field and on the recruiting trail show that Kirby Smart can build a winning program and culture. Will we see how Smart himself has improved with three years’ experience at the helm? This might be a harsh way of putting it, but will the coaches prove to be at the level of the players they’ve brought in?

Return on Investment

Smart has been the beneficiary of a tremendous investment in the program. Both donors and administrators have aligned to provide Smart with an impressive coaching and support staff, a jewel of an indoor facility, and an eye-popping West endzone addition to Sanford Stadium. We’ve seen the pockets opened for recruiting to the point where no program spends more to attract top talent. Soon the program will begin raising funds for the next capital project – a football facility and much larger weight room adjacent to the Butts-Mehre building. Will donors be as generous as they have been, or do they need to see at least another playoff appearance first? Is this an important year for Smart – not in terms of job stability but in terms of sustaining the no-questions-asked investment that has fueled his first four years?

Home Turf

These Georgia players have been in plenty of big games, and the pressure of expectations is last year’s news. The difference this year is that a couple of the biggest games of the year are at home. None of these players were around for September 2013 (or the 2015 Alabama game, but the less said about that the better.) About the biggest home game these players have seen is the 2017 Mississippi State game. Georgia hasn’t dropped a game at Sanford Stadium since 2016, but they also haven’t faced opponents this good.

For road or neutral site games you can put on the “business trip” blinders and insulate yourself from most things other than the business at hand. That’s tough-to-impossible at home. When there’s a big game coming up it’s all anyone will talk about that week in class, on campus, and all over Athens. Media will come in starting with Kirby’s press conference on Monday, and it won’t let up. If Gameday is here, as it will likely be for Notre Dame, the broadcasts will start on Thursday. I want to see if the coaches – and, more importantly, the team leadership – can get the team to tune out those distractions and prepare. It’s something Georgia is going to have to deal with a lot more often if Kirby builds the kind of program we expect and Georgia becomes everyone’s biggest game.

Something to Prove

Beyond big game hype, the Notre Dame game will come with something a little extra. We all saw the tweets last December from Georgia’s players as they watched Clemson dismantle Notre Dame. That mindset carried over to the bowl game, and we saw what happened.

I’m sure Notre Dame’s coaches will remind their players what Georgia’s players think of them. I hope Georgia’s coaches use it too. You said it, now back it up. Notre Dame was in the playoff last year, and the Dawgs weren’t. Do something about it.

The Z-Factor

Georgia fans have been anticipating Zamir White’s debut since his pivotal commitment in 2017. Remember – at the time he was Georgia’s highest-rated tailback commitment of the internet era. Two major knee injuries have pumped the brakes on any next-Herschel (or even next-Chubb) hype, but the idea that someone that good is on the roster and might be able to contribute has been enticing enough to keep the what-ifs alive in the back of our minds.

Reports out of camp have been promising with White showing a physical running style and no lingering effects from his injuries. Nearly every Georgia back has been lauded this offseason for his pass catching ability out of the backfield, and White has held his own there. There’s no need to rush him into 20 carries per game, but there also seems to be no reason why he shouldn’t be a part of the gameplan from the start. We should be confident enough in Brian Herrien’s ability to give Swift some relief, but Zamir White anywhere near his original strength gives Georgia a legitimate 1A and 1B punch in the backfield and suddenly makes this unit look fairly deep. It would allow the coaches some flexibility with Cook, put less of a load on Swift (who himself has battled injuries), and let the coaches approach the tailback rotation strategically.

White’s 2019 could even have ripple effects beyond the current team. Georgia currently has one five-star tailback committed and, according to reports, is near the top of the list for a second. It wouldn’t be the first time Georgia signed two five-star tailbacks (White himself along with James Cook were such a duo), but it would be unprecedented with White and Cook still on the roster. It’s not unthinkable that any prospective tailback commitment will be watching White and Cook for a sense of how crowded things might be at the top of the depth chart in 2020 if D’Andre Swift goes pro.

Depth

Georgia, according to Rivals, has put together three straight top three signing classes (and two straight #1 classes). Quibble about the exact rankings, but there is arguably more talent now in Athens than at any point in the program’s history. How does that increased talent level begin to manifest itself? Georgia has always had standout players and NFL-quality talent. The difference now is in depth. We saw an example of that depth last year when a player of the quality of Cade Mays could step in when Andrew Thomas had to leave the South Carolina game. We saw defensive backs Eric Stokes and Otis Reese push and even unseat starters during the season.

Depth offers you both of those luxuries: options when inevitable injuries occur and continuous competition that reinforces standards. We’ve already seen competition shuffle things around in the preseason. Hopefully we won’t have to discover how resilient the team’s depth is to injuries.

Since we started with Alabama, we’ll finish there too. Georgia’s collapses on both sides of the ball in the fourth quarter have led to narrow losses in the past two meetings with the Tide. Key injuries – Wims in 2017 and Walker in 2018 – couldn’t be overcome. This is where you expect to see depth show up. Will the team be able to rotate players throughout the season to have something in the tank for the postseason? Will more position groups develop players ready to step in with minimal loss of production if a starter is unavailable? Georgia should now be deep enough that you don’t have to stretch to get the right 11 on the field for most any situation, and not many teams can say that.