Coach Richt provided a partial answer this morning:

After getting beat so bad by Tennessee, without much emotion, I was taking inventory of that game. I was kind of wondering what went wrong. As I looked around, I was seeing that everybody was kind of waiting on someone else to do something, coaches and players. I was getting kind of mad at them until I looked in the mirror and realized that they were just basically reflecting me. I was sitting there watching, waiting for somebody to do something, too.

For my part, I provided another portion of the answer shortly before the game:

Since his first full season as his alma mater’s head football coach in 1993, Phillip Fulmer has posted a 20-8 record against Southeastern Conference opponents following an in-season open date during the Volunteers’ regular fall slate. Since becoming Georgia’s head football coach in 2001, Mark Richt has posted a 2-7 record against Southeastern Conference opponents that are coming off of an in-season open date.

Bottom line: Tennessee had a better game plan, executed it well, and played with greater intensity. It is a rarity for a Mark Richt-coached Bulldog squad to come out looking flat and appear unprepared when playing on the road, but Georgia performed badly and the Volunteers performed well.

The Big Orange earned the win in a game that was nowhere near as close as the 35-14 final score suggested, which illustrates several maxims, among which are these truisms:

1. Any team can beat any other team on any given day.

2. Coaching matters.

3. Between comparable combatants, open dates can make a big difference . . . as Georgia found out during Florida’s dominant run in the 1990s and early 2000s, and as the Gators found out in Jacksonville last year.