What kind of team is Georgia? Only time will tell (exclusive player quotes)

Georgia has been a different looking team over each of the first two games.

That much is clear after getting a big win over No. 22 North Carolina in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game in Week 1 to surviving a scare from Nicholls State of the FCS on Saturday. While Georgia did not look amazing in their first game, they certainly looked better that day than the poor showing from Saturday.

In the Nicholls State game, Georgia’s offensive line could not block anyone, and there was a direct correlation to how the running game fared. (Hint: Not great. Nick Chubb only rushed for 80 yards). Jacob Eason had a pretty solid debut (11-of-20 for 204 yards with 1 TD and an interception), but the offense as a whole was inconsistent and did not have a great flow to it. (Heck, Greyson Lambert was put back in at quarterback on the last drive, which is another story for another day).

It did not help that Georgia also committed numerous mistakes on offense including receivers dropping passes, turnovers, etc. The defense was also very inconsistent as well, and bad special teams was a factor again.

I talked to Nick Chubb after the game and asked him about the running game, the state of the UGA quarterback play and the Bulldogs as a team moving forward,

“You know, we always run the ball here at Georgia, so (we) got to get the run game going. We got great quarterbacks, so we just got a lot of work to do.”

Georgia fans were obviously disheartened after the narrow win on Saturday, which resulted in their team being dropped seven spots in the latest AP Top 25 Poll, and it was surprising in the wake of the huge performance the week before (33-24 over UNC), in which the defense played well and the offensive line looked formidable, among other things.

So is this Georgia team as bad as they played on Saturday? Only time will tell, but I doubt it. This team is a young one and is going through growing pains.

Just look at Tennessee for an example. Their first game was against Appalachian State. Now, obviously Appalachian State is definitely better than Nicholls State, but still, the Mountaineers were a huge underdog against the Volunteers in Week 1. However, they barely lost to UT in overtime.

Then, Tennessee turned around last Saturday and destroyed a good Virginia Tech team, 45-24, in the super-hyped Battle at Bristol. Now, everyone has seemed to jump back on the bandwagon, and everything is right in Tennessee fans’ world. That just shows you what one week can do.

It is still early in the season, and Georgia has a lot of work to do. They’ll have to mature fast as they enter the meat of their schedule starting with Missouri next Saturday night.

Lorenzo Carter summed it up best when asked by me about what can be taken away from this game,

“We got to improve in the little things and the big things. We got to get better all around, so we are all going to come out and work, watch film, see what we need to fix, and hopefully, we get it done.”