No Team Is Better Prepared Than The Georgia Bulldogs To Win Without Its Best Player
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With news that Georgia Bulldog Brock Bowers is expected to be out for the next four to six weeks, Dawg fans can take some comfort in knowing that their team is built to withstand a major loss like this better than any other. This is not just because Georgia recruits at the highest level. Rather, the key is Coach Kirby Smart’s emphasis on a team first, developmental approach, rather than statistic padding at the expense of building roster depth. Recall that Alabama and Ohio State – the only teams whose rosters have more high school blue-chips than Georgia – still blame injuries to their best receivers for recent failures to win College Football Playoff National Championships captured by Georgia.
Georgia has demonstrated that it can win, notwithstanding injuries to significant contributors. As a reminder, large portions of Georgia’s back-to-back CFP Championship seasons were without its best players, including receivers George Pickens and AD Mitchell, and future NFL first-rounders Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith.
As explained after UGA’s 2021 CFP National Championship win over the Crimson Tide
One approach, seemingly favored by Saban, features a few players who receive the lion share of the statistics and game repetitions, almost regardless of the game situation. The other approach, the player rotation approach favored by Kirby, involves game snaps that are spread out among more players…. The wisdom of each approach was starkly on display in the 2021 National Championship Game.
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Georgia’s team development approach is always less likely to produce pass catchers that compile the gaudy statistics required to win the Heisman Trophy, or the Biletnikoff Award for the best college receiver. Perhaps Bowers was going to be the exception this year, as he was in the Heisman discussion and was on pace to break numerous Georgia season and career receiving records. Nonetheless, even with arguably the best player in college football, Georgia was still getting touches for many other players. While Bowers led the Bulldogs in receptions, yards, and touchdowns through the first seven games, he was one of nine pass catchers with at least 100 receiving yards. In contrast, despite being recently bitten by their overreliance on a few stars, Bama and Ohio State only have five players over 100 yards receiving.
Georgia’s recruiting, player development and, most significantly its team-based approach, ensures that Bowers’ absence does not foreclose it from a quest for an historic third undefeated regular season in a row and a CFP Champion three-peat. The optimistic fan (of which there should be plenty these days) might consider the possibility that receiving targets that would have gone to Brock will now be directed at newcomers, including Dominic Lovett and Rara Thomas, and young tight ends Oscar Delp and Lawson Luckie. Such increased usage could help develop even more lethal receiving weapons (along with Marcus Rosemary-Jacksaint, Dillon Bell and a recovering Ladd McConkey, among others) to be deployed upon Bowers’ return.
All teams lose top players to injury in the “collision” sport of college football. In recent years Georgia has been able to overcome such injuries and win, nonetheless. Time will tell, but as Kirby has preached: Georgia prepares (its entire roster) not to win a particular game, but to win them all.