ALL THE EXCRUCIATING WAYS THIS COULD END

The University of Georgia has a very good defense, an elite-level codeine drip of an offense, and a pretty stellar special teams unit.

We are in an excellent position. We control our own destiny. Win and you are in. We can play with anybody. Sure, we’re boring. But maybe boring is really hot this year!

It might just be our time, right? Right?!

Lol no all of this is going to come crashing down in an avalanche of hellfire and diarrhea.

You might be thinking, ‘but hey wait a minute, we suffered an abysmal OT loss on a fluke missed field goal to a South Carolina team that couldn’t find their collective car keys in a room made of their car keys!”

Yes, dear one, this is true.

Was that bad?

Oh absolutely.

Are things going to get worse?

INDUBITABLY, YOU IDIOT. ARE YOU NEW HERE?

Let me take you back to 2013. Aaron Murray’s senior season.

The Dawgs started off the year with an incredibly important win over a South Carolina team that would finish 4th in the AP poll. They then beat LSU in one of the most incredible games of football I have ever witnessed. They then ran into the buzzsaw that was Michael Sam and the Missouri Tigers and lost.

It’s ok, we thought, South Carolina has a loss. Mizzou has a loss. We should be fine.

Then we lost at Vanderbilt.

But even THEN, we still had hope. Mizzou had games against Ole Miss and A&M left (both teams were ranked at the time), Carolina had lost inexplicably to Tennessee, and so all UGA had to do was win out and a BCS Bowl was still within reach.

THEN THIS HAPPENED

Lesson?

THINGS CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE FOR THE DUDES THAT WEAR RED AND BLACK.

So if that hasn’t whet your whistle already, come with me now on a journey wherein we contemplate the worst possible ways this thing go from here on in:

I’M NOT MAD I’M JUST DISAPPOINTED: Loss to Texas A&M, Loss to LSU, Orange Bowl win over REALLY BAD TEAM exciting football team from Virginia.

Georgia has trouble, historically, with mobile quarterbacks. Texas A&M has a mobile quarterback.

Georgia has trouble defending generational talents at QB and offenses that could score 45 on the 300 spartans of Thermopylae. LSU has a generational talent at QB and an offense that could score 45 on the 300 spartans of Thermoplyae.

Virginia and Virginia Tech have the opposite of most of that and will be easily dispatched, at least in this scenario.

The loss to A&M sucks. The loss to LSU is fine, if it is quick. The win over UVA/VT is fine and no mascot tries to murder Uga before the game.

THERE IS SO MUCH MORE I COULD’VE GOTTEN DONE TODAY: Win out, Loss to LSU, Loss to Virginia Tech in a 9-6 Orange Bowl.

We don’t want to be there. It’s been raining for something like sixty hours. It is also somehow cold. Everyone but Fromm is hungover. DeAndre Swift sits out the game and declares for the draft. Rod shanks a game-tying field goal.

I’M NOT OWNED. I ENOY BEING A CORNCOB. THIS IS MY TRUTH: Really really dumb call from Kirby leads to OT loss against LSU in a game in which UGA leads in the 4th quarter.

I wish that Kirby Smart would stop coaching like a man trying to discreetly fart in Church and instead become more like (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) this sitting U.S. Congressman and just let em air out before God and his momma and everybody.

(Note: my take on this is that Matthews bazooka’s on the set whenever he wants and finds it hilarious that it gets blamed on his guests).

Kirby Dumb (do you get it?) appeared very briefly in the 4th against Auburn, allowing Gus back into the game by dropping back into a soft zone that would have made even Todd Grantham a bit nervous.

Could Kirby build a lead and be dumb enough to sit back against an LSU team that came to Atlanta to kick ass and throw twenty-yard slants but are fresh out of ass? Very possible.

Does Kirby call a fake field goal with Hot Rod as the lead blocker? He might!

Does Kirby call the SAME fake punt he did against Bama late in the 4th quarter because the elusive “look that they want” is finally there? YOU REALLY COULD SEE IT.

A fake punt RPO combo waggle Y-banana goes for a pick six, tying the game. UGA succumbs in OT.

OK I AM ACTUALLY MAD NOW: Win over LSU, Loss in the CFP Semifinal to Justin Fields.

We beat the greatest offense the SEC has seen since Urban Meyer’s Florida and saunter our way into the College Football Playoff. The big show. The big dance. We have never lost in the semifinal game of the College Football Playoff. Never. NOT ONE TIME. In fact, the last time we were here it was arguably the single greatest game in the history of UGA football. We won the Rose Bowl.

It’s not like we’re gonna, I don’t know, meet another generational talent at QB. One from our own state. One that committed to UGA. Signed for UGA. Even faked a punt for UGA in an SECCG. Not like we would play that team....

You tell yourself it is unlikely. Sure. I tell you this is the better option of a possible outcome that is, in fact, more likely. More on that to come....

I WOULD LIKE A FIREHOSE OF BOURBON PLEASE: Loss to Georgia Tech.

I don’t want to make you all nervous, but I will be watching the Tech game with my Father-in-law who went to Tennessee. The last time I watched a football game in person with him was the Tennessee game in which Nick Chubb blew out his knee. My Dad once watched a game in person with him—it was the Josh Dobbs Hail Mary game. Those random losses to Tech in 2016 and 2014? Oh yeah, sitting right next to him.

Regardless of how the season would end—a win over LSU and then a tripppppp, where? The Sugar Bowl? Do we get a mercy bid to the Playoff? I honestly don’t know—this would take basically all the fun out of it. Like, how do you go on after losing to this Tech team? I truly don’t know.

GOUGING MY EYES OUT LIKE OEDIPUS REX: Miracle win over LSU, Get absolutely boatraced by Clemson in the Semifinal.

Let’s say the unthinkable happens. Even more unthinkable than just a win over LSU.

A MIRACLE win.

A RUN LINDSAY or a BUTLER KICKED IT 60 YARDS or a HOT ROD FAKE FIELD GOAL at the last second wins the SEC Championship.

Georgia feels lost in ecstasy, safely ensconced in the glow of the presence of Auburn Jesus and his (its?) favor.

But then UGA meets one of its historic rivals and just gets beaten into teeny-tiny smithereens, which Dabo Swinney fashions into Crosses to bedazzle his evangelism tracts.

Like we get beat so bad Dabo has to apologize after, like his controller got stuck on auto-fire as Oddjob in Goldeneye and as much as he wanted to stop it that little son of a you-know-what just kept running through the Archives blowing people’s legs off.

People earnestly ask if Dabo violated his Christian ethics by beating UGA by 90 on national television.

Georgia goes down in history by being on the wrong side of the largest margin of victory in the history of the College Football Playoff. A record not to be broken until B1G Champ Northwestern sneaks into the 2038 Playoff and faces Florida and their freshman-sensation quarterback, Urban Meshach Tebow, son of Tim Tebow.

BTW, assuming a win for tOSU and Clemson in their Championship games and a win over LSU for us, I think Clemson is almost surely our opening round opponent. 1. tOSU 2. Clemson 3. UGA 4. Pac-12 champ or LSU. So gear up.

PLEASE LIGHT ME AND ALL THAT I OWN ON FIRE: An OT loss in a National Championship that we lead for four quarters...

OH WAIT THAT ONE ALREADY HAPPENED HAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU CANT HURT ME ANYMORE FOOTBALL.

I WILL NEVER FEEL AGAIN: Loss in the National Championship via a Justin Fields TD Pass.

It is highly unlikely the University of Georgia will beat Louisiana State University in football. It is even more unlikely that, if we did that, we would be able to beat Clemson University and Trevor Lawrence in the CFP semifinal.

BUT IF ALL OF THAT HAPPENED, Georgia would then have to play the most complete team in College Football, in my opinion—Ohio State. The quarterback for Ohio State is a guy you’ve heard of.

Given our propensity to stop the run, the Buckeyes have to lean on Fields to get them the victory. Being overrun by the strength of Ohio State’s receiving core and just unable to figure out which way the endzone is on offense, Georgia holds Justin Fields to his worst game of the year but still manages to give up the game-winning touchdown pass. Fromm’s stat line is average at best.

And riding the biggest bet of the Kirby Smart era, the University of Georgia finally craps out in a dramatic, tragic fashion.

But that wouldn’t really be the worst of it....

CURSE GOD AND DIE: National Championship loss to another Alabama back-up Quarterback.

Ok let’s say all hell breaks loose. Like the whole seven circles of it.

Ohio State ends the year with losses to Penn State and Michigan. Penn State makes it to the B1G Champ game, but loses to Minnesota who lost a week prior to Wisconsin who lost a week prior to Purdue.

Clemson moves to #1 and holds serve.

Joe Burrow suffers a catastrophic injury in the last game of the season and UGA blows the doors off of LSU in the SECCG.

Baylor beats Oklahoma but looks absolutely awful doing it.

The Pac-12 falls into the Pacific Ocean.

It is plausible at that point—assuming they beat Auburn—that Alabama sneak into the playoff. Let’s assume they end up on the opposite side of the bracket. Georgia beat whoever the hell the committee send at that point (Oregon? Utah? Minnesota??? Baylor??? NOTRE DAME???????).

Alabama stuns Clemson in Overtime.

Then UGA somehow finds a way to lose to the back-up QB for the back-up QB who beat us in the national championship, the same back-up QB whose back-up QB (the QB for whom he was backing up in the national championship game) Disney-movie’d us out of last year’s SECCG.

Mac Jones goes down a legend.

Georgia’s legislature finally bans the play of football in the state.

Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

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All of these things are possible, but not likely. If there is some comfort to be had here, it is that the good outcomes—a decent showing against LSU, a fluke playoff berth, even a National Championship—are sorta kinda just as likely as the wildly awful outcomes.

But it doesn’t feel that way to me.

And that is very ‘Georgia’ of me I suppose, but I can’t help it.

Maybe this is our year to ruin absolutely everything by finding a way to win a national title in a way that even we don’t enjoy. That could certainly be our lot.

But I don’t buy it. That’s not the kind of suffering that tends to find us.

Some worse luck is sure to be on the way.