Georgia vs. Tennessee prediction: Bulldogs offense will find life in road win

Georgia and Tennessee will both see their first big test of the season when they open up SEC play against each other in Week 3. The Bulldogs have dominated the recent meetings, winning eight straight as well as 13 of the past 15 games.

Tennessee will enter this game looking to prove itself against a perennial powerhouse in Georgia under Kirby Smart. College football analyst Josh Pate explained what must go differently for the Vols if they hope to come away with a win.

“Tennessee last year, they thought two things and both of those things were wrong and they need to be more right about these couple of things this year,” Pate said on Josh Pate’s College Football Show. “First thing they thought last year was that they had an edge at quarterback. Even on the road, they thought, ‘Nico Iamaleava, this is what we recruited him here for. This is what we invested in him for. Carson Beck’s looked shaky this year so far.’ Georgia was already a two-loss team by the time they played this game last year. So Tennessee, they’re coming off the Bama win. A couple of weeks later, they’re going down there and this is the moment they’re gonna take them down and we’ve got two edges, or so we think. Quarterback’s gonna be an edge for us and we’ve got the better run game. Neither one of those really played out. Beck thoroughly outplayed Nico Iamaleava.

“…The way you cut the head of the snake, which is what Tennessee needs to do to take Georgia down, is you gotta match physicality. To their credit, I thought this was maybe one of, if not the, hardest hitting games we saw last year. Tennessee does not struggle to match physicality. They are an extremely physical team. You gotta be able to run the ball effectively. That’s what Tennessee does best and has for a long time under Josh Heupel.”

Pate believes that for Tennessee’s run game to be effective, it will have to prove early on that it can be a threat downfield in the passing game. The Vols have a new quarterback in transfer Joey Aguilar, but he has plenty of weapons.

Of course, Georgia has a stingy defense. So putting in their minds early on that Aguilar is a threat will be crucial.

“This game last year, they ran it OK, but no one feared that they could throw it over the top,” Pate said. “So if you tell Kirby Smart, ‘We want to run the ball but also we can’t stretch the field on you vertically,’ that’s a losing proposition. Don’t really care who his personnel is. Personnel’s gonna be good enough. So you’ve gotta be able to erun the ball effectively and you’ve gotta be able to limit their run. …You’ve gotta dare Gunner Stockton to beat you and you’ve gotta trust Joey Aguilar to beat them. If that sounds scary, it’s ’cause it is. There are no sure things here. You gotta take some chances.

“Georgia still has a roster advantage on you. Not a gigantic one, but they do. So you gotta find little edges here and there where you can. One of them is, to my surprise, Joey Aguilar has looked like he’s been playing in this system for a while so far this year. It’s just the competitive level ramps up and the pressure level ramps up so significantly this week that maybe he’s just got it. If he’s that guy, Tennessee may win this game.”

On the other side, Pate brought up questions about Georgia’s offense. After putting up just 28 points against Austin Peay last week, there has been some concern from fans.

However, Pate believes the Bulldogs will show up against a higher quality opponent. In the end, he trusts the experience of a Kirby Smart-coached team to get the job done.

“Kirby Smart does not normally run inefficient offenses out there,” he said. “They may not throw for 550, but they don’t really care to throw for 550. What they care to do is be balanced. Last year, tight ends put Tennessee is a blender. Mike Bobo had a really, really good game against Tim Banks last year. They find ways to win and they tailor their treatment to get offensive linemen back for this game. They go and get wide receivers out of the portal knowing full well we’re really not gonna unleash what we do with these guys until we can match (Zachariah) Branch up against the star position on Tennessee’s defense. I could not care less what a two-hour rain delay and complete lethargic nature against Austin Peay means for this game. It means nothing for this game.”

In the end, that’s why Pate expects Georgia to pull out the win against Tennessee. He’s going off recent history, issuing a challenge for Tennessee to prove they can beat the big dogs.

“I’m waiting for Tennessee to finally make it happen in this matchup,” he said. “The mentality I had is, while I’ll sit there and say, ‘Stop saying they can’t.’ It’s also fair to say I’m gonna make Georgia prove me wrong by losing instead of prove me wrong by winning. …I’m riding with Kirby Smart and Georgia and I’m just gonna make Tennessee prove me wrong. They have. They did against Bama a few years ago. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. I think there is vulnerability. There is a lot of unknown for Georgia.

“That’s why I go back to what that ‘G” means to me. Independent of the individual personnel groupings, that ‘G’ to me means its a consistent outfit. When they go on the road, they can handle business and if you beat ’em, you gotta do just that. You gotta beat ’em. They’re not gonna hand you a game and they’re gonna have better athletes than you.”