Georgia fans? Hey, guys? You there?
*softly* Wake up, buddy. You've been sleeping for the past six weeks. It's time to get up and play a real football team for once.
With the pre-season finally over, are you guys excited for the defining stretch of the season, when we will finally find out what this Bulldog team is made of?
It's LSU on the road, Florida in Jacksonville, Kentucky on the road and Auburn at home.
By the time the clock hits double-zeros in Sanford Stadium against the Tigers, we'll know whether or not this team is a contender or not. (Or maybe before then, who knows.)
This week it's a 3:30 kickoff in Baton Rouge against a Bayou Bengals team that just lost to Florida.
Trap? Who knows.
Stats? Yes, please.
The last time...
1) These teams met:
College Gameday was in attendance the last time these squads met back in 2013 in what was, in no exaggeration, the loudest game I've ever experienced Between the Hedges.
Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger dueled for four grueling quarters before Georgia finally came up with one defensive stop in a heart-pounding 44-41 win.
Justin Scott-Wesley was among many heros on the afternoon, as he hauled in the game-winning touchdown up the right sideline with less than 90 seconds to play.
2) Georgia won a road game against the SEC West:
Mark Richt was the last Bulldog head coach to win a road game against the SEC West, guiding Georgia to a 20-13 victory over Auburn in 2015, a game that saw Isaiah McKenzie score via the run and the punt return.
Since then, with Kirby Smart at the helm, Georgia is 3-3 against the West, and it's insanely tidy in the way the numbers align.
Home: 2-0
Away: 0-2
Neutral: 1-1
The road losses came against Ole Miss in 2016 and Auburn in 2017, by a combined margin of 54 points.
Ouch.
3) LSU lost back-to-back games:
The Tigers are coming into this game fresh off a loss to Florida.
A loss Saturday would mark the first time since 2015 that LSU had back-to-back losses, going back to a three-game losing streak late in that season.
That group of Tigers started 7-0 before bottoming out with losses to Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss.
4) Georgia failed to force a turnover in two consecutive games:
In last week's 41-13 win over Vanderbilt, the Bulldogs failed to force a turnover for the first time since the 40-17 road loss to Auburn in 2017 — 10 straight games with a turnover.
If Georgia fails to notch a turnover on Saturday, it would break an even longer streak, one that dates back to 2012.
That's the last time the Bulldogs failed to record a turnover in two straight games — the 35-7 loss to South Carolina and the 29-24 victory over Kentucky.
Since then, Georgia has gone 86 consecutive games without back-to-back turnover-less contests on defense.
5) LSU lost two games against the SEC East:
My apologies if it seems like every stat is a "loss" stat, but when both programs have had sustained success for the better part (with a few hiccups) of 20 years or so, it can be harder to find a loss than a win to fit any given criteria.
With that in mind, the Bayou Bengals, fresh off that 27-19 loss in The Swamp, are threatening to make a neat little circle.
One decade ago, 2008, was the last time LSU lost two games against the East, when — two weeks after a road loss to Florida — Georgia came to Death Valley and left with a 52-38 victory.
10 years later, the Tigers have never lost more than one game to the East.
(It should be noted that this stretch covers the SEC's expansion. Until 2012, each team had three cross-division games per year. Now it's two.)
6) Georgia beat LSU and Oklahoma beat Texas in the same season:
Perhaps a good omen for the Bulldogs: The last three times the Dawgs and Tigers have met, they've aligned with the result of the Red River Showdown Shootout.
If the Longhorns win, Georgia wins. If the Sooners win, LSU wins.
The last time they didn't align was in 2004, when Oklahoma scooted past Texas 12-0, and the Bulldogs drilled the Tigers 45-16.
In fact, since 1979, the Red River Shootout has proven to be a pretty accurate predictor in years when Georgia plays LSU.
Following the metric above, the Red River Shootout or UGA-LSU has correctly predicted the other game's outcome 85-percent of the time, proving accurate 11 times in 13 chances.
The only years it missed were 1990, when a Texas win conincided with an LSU win, and the aforementioned 2004 season.
7) LSU allowed a 100-yard rusher to Not Auburn:
The last two players to break the century mark running the football against the Tigers are ... also Tigers, just of a different color scheme.
And they both lost.
JaTarvious Whitlow had 104 yards for Auburn in his team's 22-21 defeat at home to LSU this year, and in the Bayou Bengals 27-23 come-from-behind win in 2017, Kerryon Johnson carried the load for the Auburn offense, with 156 yards on 31 carries.
No other players have rushed for 100 yards on the Tigers defense since Jordan Chunn.
Of Troy.
Chunn had 191 yards on 30 carries in the Trojans stunning 24-21 upset in Baton Rouge in 2017.
8) Georgia returned someone else's fumble for a touchdown:
The good news: The Bulldogs have recovered/returned three fumbles for touchdowns so far this season.
The bad news: Georgia had the ball to begin with in each case.
Whether it was Juwan Taylor scooping up DeAndre Baker's drop-it-at-the-goal-line fumble of an interception return against South Carolina, Isaac Nauta whiffing on a block, seeing Jake Fromm get strip-sacked, picking up the loose ball and racing to the end zone against Tennessee, or Brian Herrien falling on his own fumble in a pile of humanity against Vanderbilt, we can't deny it has been a strange season for the Bulldogs and fumbles.
The last time they scored a touchdown on someone else's fumble? Florida, 2017.
On a sack of Gators QB Feleipe Franks, J.R. Reed scooped up the loose ball and darted three yards into the endzone to turn a 28-0 score into a 35-0 domination midway through the third quarter.
9) LSU lost a 3:30 ET/2:30 CT game at home:
I consider it a win for Georgia that this came was scooped up as the CBS 3:30 game, perhaps tempering (a bit) a normally raccous crowd that's used to playing at night.
But, maybe that's a bit of an oversight, when one considers the Tigers haven't lost a home game in that time slot since 2008, when it lost in that slot three times, against (in order) Georgia, Alabama and Ole Miss.
Since then, LSU is 10-0 in CBS 3:30 games. Over that same period, if you're wondering, Georgia is 8-3 in that network slot at home.
10) Georgia lost a game west of the Mississippi River:
The Bulldogs haven't lost west of America's longest river since 2010, when they fell flat on their faces in Boulder, Colorado.
In what may have been the worst loss of the Mark Richt era (in terms of the quality of opponent), Georgia fumbled its way to a 30-28 loss to a Buffaloes team that would finish 3-9.
Since then, however, the Bulldogs are 6-0 when playing west of the Mississippi. (I'm counting the trip to Notre Dame, which is really more north of the river than east, but since that's still the "other" side, it fits the bill for me.)
That includes four wins over Missouri in Columbia, and the Rose Bowl, too.
***
Last I saw, Georgia was a 7.5-point favorite in Baton Rouge.
While I think the Dawgs will win, I simply can't assume it'll be by more than a touchdown in such a hostile road environment.
Give me Georgia straight up, but LSU to cover.
Georgia 27, LSU 24
