There’s a bit of a misconception in college football.

The misconception is that a team playing its best football probably doesn’t want a bye week. Some would say it slows down “momentum.” We can argue for days about whether week-to-week momentum is more or less real than Santa Claus, but we’ll save that for another time.

Georgia, by most standards, is on fire. With the Bulldogs off to a 7-0 start and playing easily their best offensive ball of the season, it’d be natural to assume that a better time for their bye week would be after a loss or a lackluster performance.

Instead, the Bulldogs will roll into their bye week having capped their best start in 12 years. The college football world will feed Georgia rat poison for the next two weeks. Fans will wonder how this team will respond after the bye week.

Well, the Bulldogs should come out stronger than ever. Why?

Because their bye week came at the perfect time.

Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

Lost in the shuffle of Georgia’s 53-28 victory on Saturday night in Athens was the fact that the Bulldogs had key injuries all over the place.

Trenton Thompson missed his second straight game, as did Reggie Carter. Georgia was without David Marshall and DaQuan Hawkins-Muckle on the defensive line. Leading receiver Terry Godwin left in the first half with a rib injury.

You wouldn’t know it from looking at the scoreboard, but Dawgs are banged up right now. All of those key injuries are believed to be non-serious, which means they could all benefit greatly from a week off. That doesn’t include guys like Nick Chubb, who likely just needs a week to heal some battle wounds after playing an active role in seven consecutive games.

College football is a grind. The injuries pile up, but it’s also not easy to go 10 straight weeks with a game. It’s not bad to have a midseason break like Georgia has. For a team in the national title hunt, it can be especially beneficial.

Did you see the common denominator between the four top-10 teams that lost to unranked teams over the weekend?

  • Clemson bye — Week 8
  • Washington bye — Week 8
  • Washington State bye — Week 12
  • Auburn bye — Week 9

None had their bye week yet. It showed.

All four looked like they were running on fumes in the final quarter of their respective losses. Would they have lost if they had bye weeks already? That question can’t be answered definitively, but it makes you wonder.

Georgia will now get the benefit of a bye before it hosts what’s usually its most important division game of the year. Kirby Smart and his staff will get extra time to prepare for a showdown with Florida that could essentially punch Georgia’s ticket to Atlanta.

Picture if that game were being played this upcoming Saturday. We’d have doubts all week about the status of key starters like Godwin, Thompson and Carter. The depth, which has been an obvious strength of Georgia all year, would be tested perhaps like never before. That, of course, would be after the Bulldogs toppled its first four SEC opponents by at least four scores.

It’s a nice time to hit the reset button.

Georgia needs to be fresh for the final five weeks of the season. Nobody on the remaining schedule has a losing conference record (that includes a Georgia Tech squad that nearly knocked off unbeaten Miami last weekend). The Bulldogs will run into plenty of squads who can hang with them if they aren’t at their best.

The goal is still as simple as it’s ever been for Georgia. If it wants to capture its first SEC title since that 2005 squad did so, it must take full advantage of the bye week. The Dawgs are rolling right now, and so far, they haven’t looked like a team running on fumes.

Now is the time to make sure that doesn’t happen at all in 2017.