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Georgia balancing hype of Tennessee game: 'Welcome to the SEC'

Jeremy Johnsonby: Jeremy Johnson8 hours agoJeremyO_Johnson
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart at SEC Media Days
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart at SEC Media Days (Gary Cosby Jr. / Imagn Images)

Big games seem to find Georgia every week in the SEC. Georgia tries to make every game mean the same, but that’s hard to accomplish.

Georgia left tackle Monroe Freeling admits there’s a little something different in practice this week as opposed to the last two weeks. Georgia will travel to Knoxville to face No. 15 Tennessee on Saturday. The Bulldogs have won games against Marshall and Austin Peay to open the 2025 season.

This week has been different.

“I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a difference,” Freeling told reporters on Tuesday. “We try to prepare for each opponent the same way, but when it comes to SEC schedule, we really ramp up the intensity. We built our program on, you know, team run. That’s our practice. That’s our period of the day where we really try to attack each other. So just attacking every play.”

Saturday is just the first leg of Georgia’s SEC ‘guantlet’

Games like this seem to get Georgia’s best. In the last three seasons (since their last national championship), Georgia is 8-4 in games where they face opponents ranked inside the top 20 in the AP Poll.

Saturday likely won’t be the last instance of facing a top 20 opponent. As of today, there are four more such instances on the schedule.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart again warns that this is what life is like in the SEC. The Bulldogs can’t make Saturday the Super Bowl, but there is also a sense of urgency in the building.

Smart preaches in the moment, thinking to his team.

“Yeah, just live in the moment,” Smart told reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t get ahead of myself. There’s going to be big games after this one. I mean, there was last year. Welcome to the SEC, where it seems like every team’s ranked and every team’s got a ranked opponent every week. I mean, it’s just a physical gauntlet, and there are no easy pathways. So I don’t get too caught up in one game. I try to look at it like every game’s a big game, and we’ll get ready for the next one when the next one’s up.”

Georgia will kick off with Tennessee at 3:30 p.m. from Knoxville on Saturday.

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