Todd McShay predicts winner of Georgia-Tennessee game

ESPN 's College GameDay is in town for Georgia's road game at Tennessee, with the clubs set to kick-off their respective conference slates with the first ranked-on-ranked SEC matchup of the season.

For such a momentous occasion, NFL Draft and college football analyst Todd McShay dove deep into the contest on his podcast, the Todd McShay Show, explaining why the X's and O's don't tell the full story of this series. With the visiting Bulldogs, who've owned the series of late, it's all about settling in QB Gunner Stockton.

"Like, this game, to me, is kind of where are we with him," McShay said of Stockton. "I mean, we’ve kind of seen some glimpses of the good and the bad early in the season, but this is the first true test going on the road. When you look at this matchup on paper, you’re like, I don’t know, man. Like, this is a tough test. Tennessee might be better than we thought."

For Georgia, an efficient ground game is tantamount to success once again against the Volunteers, according to Todd McShay.

"They’ve got to be able to run the football," he emphasized. "We know that. (Stockton) gives them some numbers and some of the things they do with the QB run. But at the end of the day, when I look at this, I get it... a couple offensive linemen on the right side are banged up for Georgia, Nate Frazier’s a great back, they’ve got three backs, but can they run it against this Tennessee front?"

Those are the concerns dancing around inside Todd McShay's head regarding Georgia. However, he sided with history and took Georgia to tack on at least one more year to their current winning streak over Tennessee.

"Georgia has dominated this matchup," McShay declared. "Like, it don’t matter, in my opinion. Some matchups in college football, it just don’t matter, right? And this is one of them. Kirby Smart has owned Tennessee."

McShay went into detail on just how badly the Bulldogs have dominated this old SEC East battle.

"You go back, in Athens, in Knoxville, it doesn’t matter," he continued. "Ranked where they’re ranked in this, it doesn’t matter. They were ninth in the country, Tennessee was last year, (Georgia) beat them by 14. Beat them by 28 points the year before. They were ranked sixth, Tennessee was in 2022, beat them by 14. Beat them by 24 the year before that. Tennessee hasn’t beaten Georgia all the way back to 2016. And it’s not happening. Give me Georgia."

Georgia just has Tennessee's number right now, and Todd McShay is siding with the fairly bulletproof recent history of betting on Georgia to beat any team that isn't named Alabama.

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