Expectations, passion, and perspective make strange bedfellows. Reasons can be dubbed excuses. When you win, they all look winnable, when you lose, they all seem losable.
Let’s go back to what proved to be the final home game of Mark Richt’s 15-year tenure as Georgia’s head football coach. The Bulldogs were quite fortunate to eek out a 23-17 overtime victory over Georgia Southern between the hedges. A couple of weeks later, following a 13-7 win at Tech, Kirby Smart was named the Bulldogs head coach. In his first game at Sanford Stadium as Georgia’s head coach, a week after an impressive win over North Carolina in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic in Atlanta, the Bulldogs escaped with a 26-24 win over Nicholls State.