3 reasons Georgia is overwhelming favorite to repeat
By John Buhler
They still need to win two more games, but Georgia should be a massive to repeat anyway.
While the Georgia Bulldogs still have two more games ahead of them, it would be more shocking than not if somebody else besides Kirby Smart’s team won the 2023 College Football Playoff.
Georgia is the defending national champions. The Dawgs have not lost a game in a year. They are riding a nation’s best 15-game winning streak. Of course, they still have to beat No. 4 Ohio State in the Peach Bowl and then either No. 2 Michigan or No. 3 TCU in the national title bout in Los Angeles to be the first team since 2011-12 Alabama to repeat as college football national champs.
Here are a few things I keep going back to that leads me to believe that Georgia will likely repeat.
Why Georgia should be seen as the overwhelming favorite to repeat
3. Georgia lives to play with its food, but can get out its self-inflicted adversity
One of the things that was an issue with last year’s national championship-winning team was that the 2021 Dawgs were not largely tested throughout the campaign. They usually blew everybody they played out, but that caught up to them in the SEC Championship Game vs. Alabama. Fate would have it, that bitter taste of defeat propelled them into the playoff and well into this season.
Where it has been different this year is Georgia has been tested by the opposition, mostly of its own doing. After blowing out Oregon and South Carolina in the first quarter of the season, the Dawgs had issues at times with teams like Kent State, Missouri, Kentucky and even Georgia Tech. In short, the Dawgs lived to play with their food, but probably out of boredom more than anything.
Admittedly, it does sound stupid, but what those instances did was create an artificial sense of adversity this team had to overcome. The Dawgs would hone in and realize that they were not going to let an inferior team beat them. While this has not been the case vs. teams Georgia has a ton of respect for, we do know the Dawgs are capable of powering through adversity from within.
Simply put, if the game gets tight, Georgia is not going to bat an eyelash in the face of adversity.