Is Georgia the SEC Team to Beat in 2021?
HOOVER, Ala. — Very rarely are the reigning Southeastern Conference champions not the talk of the league's Media Days but that's the case in 2021.
Georgia, not Alabama, is the team generating the most preseason buzz this week. Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart, quarterback JT Daniels and defensive tackle Jordan Davis made their rounds on Tuesday morning inside the Wynfrey Hotel.
The Bulldogs finished 8-2 in 2020 with both losses coming to the Crimson Tide and eventual SEC East champion Florida. However, the team hit its stride across the final four games of the year going undefeated with Daniels behind center, throwing for 1,231 yards, 10 touchdowns and only two interceptions.
"We need to be better everywhere," Smart said of what issues need to be fixed in 2021 for Georgia to return to Atlanta. "It starts with what we do. But the introspection was for us to find maybe a different way to do things and hear a different voice, and we've done that. The weekly meetings that we've had, that we've drawn time away from football, have been incredible. The gains we received in players being able to confront each other. It's easy to say the guy's not doing his job, to demand him to do it right, but it's hard when you have a unified group pulling the same direction to be the outlier.
"We've tried to make that more difficult through our introspection and through our meetings and through our growth as a team. I'm just excited to see the dividends of that in fall camp of where we can go and where we can get better."
Overall, the Bulldogs return 16 starters, eight on offense and four each on defense and special teams but it's Daniels who could be the key to all — a dynamic playmaker who can stretch the field and potentially elevate the program to its first national championship since 1980.
"Absolutely, he has that arm talent," Smart said when asked to compare Daniels' ability to former SEC signal callers in LSU's Joe Burrow and Alabama's Mac Jones. "Actually, I don't think that arm talent is the number one quality for being a great quarterback. There's a lot that goes into being an elite quarterback.
"The two guys that were the last two years' national champions, they were really good quarterbacks. They were great decision makers. They were actually better athletes that people give them credit for. The decision-making process, touchdown-to-interception ratio, protecting the ball, using your playmakers, which both had really good playmakers around them, JT has those skill sets. Coach [Todd] Monken has that experience doing it in the NFL. With Tampa Bay, they led the league in passing. We have the recipe for those things.
"We've got to stay healthy, we've got to protect the quarterback, and we've got to find more skill players to make plays for us."
One of the few question marks for the 2021 team is in the secondary as four defensive backs were drafted earlier this spring. However, Smart and company were active in the transfer portal landing both Clemson's Derion Kendrick and West Virginia's Tykee Smith.
"We're under our scholarship quota of defensive backs," Smart said. "We had two guys come out early, two guys come out of the portal. We're at a deficit just from scholarship numbers, not to mention experience. Those two guys bring an immense amount of experience."
Maybe the biggest acquisition in all of college football was Georgia signing former LSU tight end Arik Gilbert, who stands at 6-foot-5, 240 pounds and listed as a wide receiver now on the team's official roster.
"It just keeps developing," Daniels said of his relationship with Gilbert. "I've been asked more about Arik more than anything else today, and I keep saying the same thing. He is — like there are players who have great talent and like football, and then there's guys like Arik who have great talent and love football.
"He takes the time to — he spends time with coaches, like hours with coaches, to learn a brand-new system, learn the signals, learn how specifically we run routes and how specifically, as receivers and tight ends, they read defenses. He's a weekend worker. He does a lot of the things that really impress you regardless of his talent level, and then you add that to the level of talent he brings, and he's a special player."
Before Georgia can make its mark on the SEC schedule, it opens play against Clemson in Charlotte on Sept. 4 in one of the most anticipated games of the offseason.
"Obviously, it's a huge game," Daniels said. "It's Clemson-Georgia, it's two really good teams. But I think the biggest thing for us as a team, as much as we get hyped for it, because it's Georgia-Clemson, it's a Week 1 game. You can win Week 1, you can beat Clemson by 100 and have a terrible season, you could lose to Clemson by 100 and have a great rest of the season.
"I think it's important to keep in perspective that all it is is the week one game. As fun as it is competing against a really great team, let week one be week one."
Georgia could also be the team with the most expectations from its fanbase in the SEC. With the number of returning starters, high-level incoming prospects, a favorable schedule outside of Clemson and a down SEC East, the Bulldogs could be the trendy media pick to defeat Alabama in Atlanta in December, which will be announced at the end of of Thursday.
It would be the first time since 2004 that Georgia would be the media's pick to win the conference title. Alabama has been the projected preseason winner for the last five seasons and nine of the last 11.
"The preseason rankings are what they are," Daniels said. "We don't have any say over them. It's cool when they say you're good. It's cool when they say you suck. It really doesn't matter either way. You go out and play football.
"I don't know what they ranked our offense honestly. We just focus on like what we can do in this coming week to be ready for next week, and then next week it's what can we do to be ready for camp? Then camp, you go through camp, and it's what can we do to be ready for Clemson. As soon as the horn blows at Clemson, what can we do to be focused on the next week? We're too focused on week to week to take too much into consideration."
