Gameday Morning Dawg Bites and Open Comment Thread

It’s a beautiful Saturday in Athens (and presumably in Knoxville)! The temperatures have finally broken and it actually feels like autumn for a change. I haven’t had much sleep... the eldest child had a spend the night party for his 12th birthday, so I spent much of last night wrangling a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds. I do this for a living, so you’d think I’d be pretty good at it... but the way kids are in school is a completely different animal from the way they are when they aren’t. It always strikes me how much it’s like herding cats. Anyway, they finally went to sleep around 2:30 in the morning and now it’s writing time! Woohoo!

The Dawgs will be tested today. Not by the Volunteers. mind you, but by how well they can live up to the expectation of what they ought to do to the Volunteers. I’ve always been kind of a “win is a win” type, but it’s the nature of the beast in the playoff era so Georgia needs to come out kicking tail and taking names. I’m confident they will.

Let’s get this started:

And now for some Gameday Morning Dawg Bites:

• First up, if you missed it, @GeorgiaFootball brings it with another of their uniformly excellent game week trailers;

• Over at GoVols247, the writers have their picks for the game. It seems like everyone thinks the Vols will score a touchdown (late maybe) and a field goal or two... unless you want to engage in some epic Petrino Math. I have to imagine the defense will be trying to pitch a shutout, but I think given the way we’ve seen Kirby and the boys manage games late, that’s probably fair. At any rate, no one thinks this one is going to be in doubt.
• Dawgs247 has an analysis of how Georgia is coping with injuries on the O-Line. It turns out depth is your friend in these situations.
• OOOOH, SNAP!!! Seriously though, this is a great profile of Nakobe Dean, several other UGA players, and UGA’s College of Engineering. I’ve done a good bit of work with engineering faculty in integrating robotics in middle school STEM and they are building something great slowly but surely.
• The Red and Black has power rankings for the SEC. I can’t find much to quibble with here, although I’d probably place SCAR a tier lower (I have watched way more South Carolina football than anyone should). That said, if the justification is strictly comparative, I get it.
• Finally, off the gridiron, Georgia Swimming and Diving dominated the Crimson Tide in the first meet of the season.

This is also your Gameday Morning Open Comment Thread. Let us know how you’ll be spending your day until the Dawgs kick off at 7, your thoughts on the matchup with Tennessee, and whether an afternoon nap seems in order (Spoiler Alert: It does). Macondawg will be along in a few hours with comment threads for the afternoon games and for tonight’s action between your #3 Georgia Bulldogs, the Phillip Fulmer Succession Plan™, and the Tennessee Volunteers.

Until then...

GOOOO DAWGS!!!