Two weeks ago, Alabama went into Vanderbilt and shredded any hope of an upset. A 59-0 shutout victory served as a reminder to the world that the guys in crimson and white were a pretty good football team.

A week later, Georgia went into Tennessee and quieted any thought of the home team turning things around. A 41-0 shutout victory served as a notice to the world that the guys in red and black were also a pretty good football team.

What did we learn from those two games? Well, that Alabama and Georgia might not be allowed back into the state of Tennessee anytime soon.

We also learned that Georgia looks a whole lot like Alabama. The defensive domination, the smart young quarterback, the versatile rushing attack … all of those similarities were obvious. Add Kirby Smart’s Alabama roots to the mix and even an idiot like me can make that connection.

But as Georgia looks to defend its first in-season top-five ranking since 2012, we should be reminded of something else.

There’s one major difference between Alabama and Georgia, and it’s not something that can be obtained in September.

Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

Alabama has won 26 consecutive regular season games. In its past 20 regular season victories, the Tide were ranked No. 1 or No. 2. Nobody has embraced the target on its back more than Alabama in the modern era of college football.

There’s a difference between having a target and having expectations. Expectations are when a team is predicted to win 10 games and go to a nice bowl game. Georgia knows all about that.

But this Bulldogs team doesn’t know what it’s like to play with a target on its back.

Being a seven-point favorite to beat an unranked Tennessee team is hardly a target. That’s simply an expectation to win. Being a target is being predicted to win by four touchdowns like Alabama was against Ole Miss … and then cover by twice as many points.

This isn’t about point spreads. This is about Georgia learning how to handle success week in, week out. The Bulldogs have been expected to be contenders basically every year in recent memory. Since the Bulldogs went to the 2012 SEC Championship — that was their last appearance — they haven’t had to deal with the season-long grind of defending that target.

Look at how long it took for Georgia to lose its first game of the season from 2013-16:

  • 2013: Aug. 31
  • 2014: Sept. 13
  • 2015: Oct. 3
  • 2016: Sept. 24

With the exception of 2016 against Missouri, Georgia had a top-10 ranking entering each of those first losses (they had one the week before the first 2016 loss, but a nail-biter against Nicholls ruined that). And for what it’s worth, three of those four Georgia teams had two losses by the midway point of the season.

One-loss teams don’t have targets on their backs. Undefeated top-five teams in November do.

For all of its success in the Mark Richt era, Georgia hasn’t started a season 7-0 since 2005. Saban’s Alabama squads did that twice in the past four years alone.

Smart was on the sidelines for one of those teams under Saban, but that doesn’t mean he’ll handle the target just like Alabama did. In his second year as a head coach, this is uncharted territory for Smart and his team.

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Anybody can play the “disrespect” card and come out like it has something to prove. The bigger test is how a team performs when the world is telling it how great it is.

Will guys still put in extra time in the film room? Will players start to go through the motions during practices? Will egos inflate and impact the locker room? Will guys start playing like they’re afraid of making mistakes?

All of those are real things that Georgia could experience in the next two months. To be fair, so could Alabama. But the Tide have been in this spot countless times before, which is why nobody questions the team’s mental makeup.

Smart’s second season in Athens has a chance to be special. His team looks like it has what it takes to soar past the ceiling that Richt’s later teams struggled to break through.

But that will only happen if Georgia can embrace the target and turn failed expectations into a thing of the past.