Takeaways from Georgia at Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl Media Day
ATLANTA, Ga. — The entire Georgia football team made its way into the College Football Hall of Fame on Thursday. All players and coaches were available to speak with reporters ahead of the team’s Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl matchup with No. 4 Ohio State
Bare with us at DawgsHQ as we sort through the information and create the content, but for now, here’s what we took away from the session overall.
A loose Georgia football team…
It’s not hard to find a national college football analyst who thinks that all the pressure is on Georgia. The Bulldogs are expected to win it. They’re the defending champs and if they don’t, after getting to this point, some are going to consider it a failure.
The team sure doesn’t seem to be feeling any of that pressure. Georgia players were having fun inside the College Football Hall of Fame. They were joking around with their teammates and coaches. Even those nervous because it was their first time speaking with reporters settled in.
Loose football teams have lost plenty of big games. Having the right demeanor more than 48 hours ahead of the game isn’t going to put more points up than the Buckeyes in and of itself. But Georgia fans are probably at least encouraged that their team doesn’t seem to be pressing — not yet at least.
Respect for the Buckeyes…
The Georgia defense is about to be up against its third top-10 offense of the 2022 season. Tennessee and Oregon ranked inside the top 10 in yards per play. Ohio State does as well and there has been a ton of talk about it this week.
When posed with the question of whether or not they are tired of hearing how good Ohio State’s offense is, the Bulldogs didn’t bite — for once.
“I wouldn’t say you get tired of it because those teams wouldn’t be talked about as much if they weren’t as good as they are,” sophomore STAR Javon Bullard said. “So they earned the right to be talked about and we respect them. We respect them offensively and we just have to do what we need to do to come out on top. We know those guys have a lot of explosive players, a lot of great players on that offense — offense and defense. Like I said, we need to lock in on our assignment and what we have to do to come out with a win.”
No bulletin board material for Ohio State.
Georgia will get everything Ladd McConkey has…
The Bulldogs’ leading receiver wouldn’t comment on his own health. He said that all injury questions go to Kirby Smart. DawgsHQ has confirmed multiple times that he is expected to play. We also talked with some people at the College Football Hall of Fame, off the record, who say that if he’s able, he will.
Wide receivers coach Bryan McClendon didn’t speak on it off the record, but he did shed some light on McConkey the competitor.
“Ladd is one of those dudes who can kind of go overboard in the sense of wanting to get all the reps and wanting to get every look and everything thing else,” McClendon said. “That’s phenomenal and what I feel like makes him the player that he is. But sometimes you’ve got to make sure you save him from himself a little bit, tell him, ‘hey man, you’ve got that rep already.’ Like with anything else, you’d rather say “whoa” than “sic’em.”
