College football 2018: Biggest Achilles’ heel for every Top 25 team

3. Georgia

Achilles’ heel: Big shoes to fill

Most people expected the Georgia Bulldogs to be an absolute force in the 2017 season, a team on the rise with head coach Kirby Smart taking them in a new and more positive direction.

What those people with the high expectations didn’t expect, however, was that the team would be led by freshman Jake Fromm instead of Jacob Eason and would still be able to find themselves in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game (and even some 20 minutes away from winning).

Of course, Fromm’s rise to prominence last season puts a ton of eyes on him entering the 2018 season. The hope is that he won’t regress in his second year as the starter, but will instead take a leap forward and develop into more the heart of the offense. That’s entirely possible, though some might look at Fromm and ultimately deem that he’s the Achilles Heel of this team.

That would be wrong, however. Instead, the potential downfall of the Bulldogs in 2018 is something that every major program has to deal with: the loss of superstars. On both sides of the ball, Georgia has to replace guys who were absolutely vital to their success. On offense, that means players will have to replace the losses of Nick Chubb, Sony Michel and Isaiah Wynn, to name a select few. For the defense, replacing Roquan Smith, who was the best linebacker in the country last season, will be no easy task.

The offense is ultimately less of a worry as D’Andre Swift appears to be the next Georgia sensation at running back. Replacing Smith, however, won’t be quite as easy. The hope is that Juwan Taylor and Monty Rice as a duo are up to the task, but if they aren’t, Smith did so much for this defense that his departure could spell bad news for the Dawgs.