Georgia Bulldogs: Is 10 Wins Still Possible?
By John Buhler
The Georgia Bulldogs are 6-3 (4-3) on the season. Is there a decent chance this team can win the rest of their games and get to ten wins in 2015?
After securing bowl eligibility for the fifteenth straight time in the Mark Richt Era with last week’s 27-3 victory over Kentucky, it begs to question: Can the Georgia Bulldogs win the rest of their games in 2015 and get to 10 wins in back-to-back seasons?
Mathematically, the answer is yes. For Georgia to get to ten wins, they would have to win at Auburn, at home versus Georgia Southern, and at Georgia Tech in the regular, not to mention win their bowl game against TBD.
-= Related: Georgia Bulldogs Beat UK, 27-3 =-
Georgia enters Saturday’s game against Auburn as a slight under dog on the road, but that was probably expected between these two non-contending teams. Auburn is 5-4 (2-4) with Georgia, Idaho, and Alabama left on their schedule. Assuming they beat the Idaho Vandals, the Tigers should make a bowl game.
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After losing an embarrassment to Florida on Halloween, the Georgia Bulldogs rallied through a tumultuous week to beat Kentucky on Saturday. The Kentucky win gives UGA hope for a 10 win season, but ever so slightly.
Assuming Georgia beats Auburn down on The Plains in a revenge game for 2013’s Josh Harvey-Clemons boneheadedness, the Dawgs should stand as the favorites to beat Southern at home and a Tech team on the road that might already be eliminated from a bowl bid. Tech can’t lose to Virginia Tech, Miami, or Georgia if the Jackets want to go bowling this holiday season.
So Georgia could find themselves at 9-3 (5-3) when it comes time for their bowl bid. I doubt that UGA will sit in the Top 25, or would deserve to, when the Selection Committee picks the 2nd Annual College Football Playoff and the New Year’s Six.
Georgia will probably play another three or four loss team in the Power 5 somewhere in the Southeast around New Year’s Eve/Day. Let’s for the sake of simplicity say that the Dawgs will play a team out of either the Big Ten or the ACC. If it’s the Big Ten, Wisconsin or Northwestern make sense. Should it be from the ACC, I’d say Duke, Florida State, or North Carolina State sound like reasonable adversaries.
Assuming that UGA will get to play one of those five teams, I’d like to believe that taking a four-game winning streak into the bowl season bodes well for the Dawgs. The bowl practices will help the team grow and get better. Maybe the quarterback play won’t look so bad in the bowl game. Or we can all laugh at it, knowing Jacob Eason is coming in a month for Spring Semester classes.
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Thinking that this team can win 10 games without its best player for the second half of the season sounded almost impossible a few weeks ago. UGA won 10 games last year, going 9-3 (6-2) and finished in the AP Top 10.
What if this team went 10-3 and finished in the Top 15? That still sounds ridiculous, but the hardest part of Georgia’s season is thankfully over. Like Georgia, both Auburn and Georgia Tech have underwhelmed in 2015.
However, those are both major rivalry games for the Georgia Bulldogs and we know how those type of games can go: throw away seasonal records and point spreads, as many years of sheer animosity rises to the surface. Auburn would love to earn bowl eligibility after beating Georgia. For Tech, beating Georgia might stand as the program’s bowl game this year should they drop either game to Virginia Tech or Miami.
Next: Georgia Bulldogs: 4 Observations from Kentucky Win
If you would have asked me after the Florida game if the Dawgs could have gone 10-3, I would have said absolutely no way. That’s how down and out many of us in Dawg Nation felt about the state of the program. Now that the Kentucky game went Georgia’s way, it’ll be tough but with a decent bowl matchup, the Georgia Bulldogs could actually win ten games in 2015. One week at a time. Go Dawgs!