Nick Chubb and Sony Michel could have gone pro in 2017. Instead, they opted to come back to the Georgia Bulldogs to potentially do something special.
Of course, it didn’t sit well. Losing to the little brother school in-state on Thanksgiving weekend is never good. It’s especially painful to see Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets mess with the sacred hedges of Sanford Stadium if you bleed Red and Black.
The Georgia Bulldogs had lost two games in a row at home to in-state rival Georgia Tech. It was a frustrating first year of the Kirby Smart era in Athens, one in which the Dawgs went 8-5 (4-4). Was this the new reality of Georgia football in the post-Mark Richt era? What did Georgia do to itself? Was throwing a guaranteed 10 wins a season out the window worth it? For this?
Fate would have it that THAT moment Between the Hedges versus Georgia Tech would help shape the greatest season of Georgia football in a generation. Georgia had a ton of talented juniors that could have entered the 2017 NFL Draft to make some life-changing money for them and their families. However, four decided to stay in school in 2017 to give it one last shot at doing something special.
Rather than playing on fall Sundays, running back Nick Chubb and his best friend, tailback teammate Sony Michel, thought that one more year of college ball was the right thing for their alma mater. You can’t go pro after seeing Georgia Tech desecrate your football cathedral like that.
Echoing Chubb and Michel’s sentiment, the upperclassmen pass-rushing duo of David Bellamy and Lorenzo Carter decided to stick around for their senior seasons as well. Together, these four became the pillars upon which Georgia would win its first SEC Championship since 2005.
Winning on the football field is hard enough, let alone trying to do it without a healthy crop of seniors. The senior leadership of this quartet was the stroke of good fortune this Georgia program needed. With Bellamy, Carter, Chubb and Michel all-in on Smart as their unquestioned leader, it was only a matter of time that this type of positive energy would set root in the entire Georgia team.
These guys made sacrifices to come back to try to do something great at Georgia. Chubb had already suffered one devastating knee injury college. Running backs don’t typically play four years of college ball anyway. You’ve seen Leonard Fournette with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Christian McCaffrey with the Carolina Panthers. Chubb would have done just fine as an NFL rookie in 2017.
But that’s not what it’s about this year for him, Michel or the rest of the Georgia team. It’s about leaving the program better off than when they had arrived. Bellamy, Carter and Chubb are all Georgia natives, probably wanting to play Between the Hedges all their lives. Though Michel is from the Sunshine State, he’s been right at home in the Classic City since day one in 2014.
While Chubb is the biggest name of the four, he didn’t garner any major accolades in his senior season at Georgia. He didn’t make it to New York for the Heisman Trophy, nor was he even a finalist for the Doak Walker Award. Instead, he’s just second place as the all-time leading rusher in SEC history behind only the Athenian Greek god of pounding the rock, the iconic Herschel Walker.
Michel could have been lighting it up in the flex for your fantasy football team. Bellamy and Carter could have left a year early to chase quarterbacks like Leonard Floyd did before them. What it really came down to trying to do something bigger than themselves one last time with their best friends of the last four years. Could you really blame them?
Knowing they’ll never be teammates again, this quartet set the tone for the best year of Georgia football since 1982: no excuses, just execute and play ball for each other. It’s never been about one guy with this team. Junior inside linebacker Roquan Smith might be a first-round talent after this season. He might have won the Butkus Award, but he was only able to be the best tackling machine in the SEC with Bellamy and Carter playing alongside him.
True freshman Jake Fromm has been the quarterbacking savior for Georgia once Jacob Eason went down with a knee injury. To Fromm’s credit, he has been sensational as a freshman. However, do you think he would have been a third as successful without Chubb and Michel to help him sell play-action?
While many though Georgia would go back to being a top-25 program this year, few outside of Athens and the Greater Atlanta area thought the Red and Black were going to contend for a national title in 2017. But here we are.
The on-field talent isn’t too far away from Athens anyway. A trip down State Route 316 to the metro Atlanta area could yield all the football talent the Bulldogs could ever hope to need. But what separates these four seniors from the rest is that they have truly put the team first over their own personal aspirations. Simply put, selflessness is contagious, and it has infected the Georgia team most wonderfully in 2017.
When Bellamy, Carter, Chubb and Michel look back on their senior seasons in Athens, they will have to look back only fondly, regardless of what happens in Pasadena and beyond that. Beating Notre Dame by a point on the road in South Bend made the return worthwhile. Going 6-0 in SEC East play for the first time in school history was totally worth it.
Preventing Georgia Tech from going to a bowl game on their own soil absolutely justified the return to school in 2017. But perhaps most importantly, beating the only team that beat them this year in the Auburn Tigers in a rematch in the SEC Championship. That win could not have felt sweeter.
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Million dollar bank accounts, Pro Bowls and Lombardi Trophies potentially await these four on future Sundays, but leaving the Georgia program better than they found it, this is why they came back: to compete for Georgia’s first national title since 1980. It is within reach. Two more weeks and it could be theirs.