Dawg From NC

I tend to agree. If he had a resurgent year it might have gone up a little, but I think teams know how good he is. His main limitations are physical, which won't improve much from another year in college. Heartbreaking for the Dawgs, but pulling for Jake.

Those are the three names on my radar. Jamie Newman is at the top of it because he's the only one of the three that was good last year, and he was VERY good (PFF gave him an 87.7 grade, which is very strong.) I know he's interested in Oregon too, will be a good battle. Hope he's at the top of our list!

Agreed, same with Ben Jones. Does show how good the SEC has been up front though, there aren't any of those guys listed as honorable mentions that would be easy to leave out.

Gilbert was such a bummer. Seems like we recruited him really hard for a long time, just one of those near misses.

Um, probably because our returning tight ends combined for 1 reception this season. We aren't completely screwed if we miss out this year, FitzPatrick might be alright and one of the redshirts could step up. But we would have been better this year if our tight end group could have buoyed our weak receiving corps. Always nice to have that safety blanket. I agree with TheDawgsofWar, Washington is at the top of my wish list of the remaining prospects.

As DawgsofWar points out, we've gotten a ton of in-state talent in the last few years. It's definitely important to be the biggest recruiting force in your own state, but no matter how far our program rises, we will never be able to rope off the state of Georgia for ourselves. So many top-notch programs (Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Tennessee if you can call them "top-notch") plan each year to sign as many or more guys out of Georgia than they do from their own state. Its extremely fertile recruiting ground, which will always benefit Georgia, but you're going to have big time competition for just about every top recruit in the state from other programs who have inroads at their school, it's just the nature of Georgia recruiting. At least we don't really have to worry about Tech.

Not sure how Kinlaw got left out of this entirely.

That's a good one.

I'm with you on that. Didn't have the full career to be deserving of a top two spot because of injuries, but still better than Guice or Collins.

The last sentence of that comment resonated with my very soul.

I'm with you, Mountain Dog. This may be silly, but I think it makes a difference that LSU beat Alabama in the regular season. I think the SEC Championship is extremely important, but when a division is decided by a head-to-head tiebreaker, the team that loses out on that should still have a shot to play for the national title (i.e. 2017 Alabama, as painful as it is to say.) I like the idea of the SEC Championship being a play-in game, but 2011 and 2017 are examples of the best team in the country not having a chance to play for the title because they lost out on a tiebreaker. LSU and Georgia unquestionably deserved their SEC titles in those years, but conference champion doesn't alway mean "best team in the conference".

I don't think the goal is to put in the best 4 teams, I think the goal is to find the most deserving national champion (or at least I think that's what it should be.) That is usually accomplished by including the best 4 teams, but I'll use last year as an example (even if it means going against my Dawgs.) Even after losing in the SEC Championship, many national media members believed that Georgia deserved the fourth spot in the playoff ahead of Oklahoma and Ohio State, both of whom had played inferior schedules. I honestly believe that Georgia had shown more to that point (before they no-showed the Sugar Bowl, embarrassingly) to prove they were one of the four best teams in the country. But the point isn't to find the four best teams, it is to find the one best team. Georgia had a great year, but if we were truly the best team in the country we would have gotten it done in a win or go home game against Alabama. Oklahoma therefore was the correct selection because they deserved an opportunity to prove, as Georgia had in the SEC championship) that they could beat Alabama. I'm not really weighing in on 2011, just arguing against the "best four teams" logic.

2018 Rose Bowl is the greatest football game I've ever watched (just ahead of the 2006 Rose Bowl.) It should be on the list somewhere.

*Meant to say Bamaman 234, not SECfan13.

This is likely to go down as the best team in LSU history whether or not they win the big one, so it's a bit unfair to expect Coach O and LSU to replicate it every year, especially with Bama, Georgia, and the rest of the conference to contend with. Its premature to say they've supplanted Alabama as the team to beat in the SEC, but for the reasons that SECfan13 pointed out, they're going to be a force for a while. They're comin', and they ain't backin' down."

I couldn't believe they were that low when I first scrolled to it, but as I kept reading I couldn't find a team that I could justify knocking down (especially because there were no 2-loss teams in the top 9). '17 UGA could have mixed it up with any of those teams, but the top 10 is truly a testament to how loaded the SEC was this decade.

Pretty good list. My nominee for biggest snub is 2017 Auburn, which beat #5 and #10 on this list in consecutive SEC games. The version of that team that Georgia played in Jordan-Hare was one of the best teams I've ever seen the Dawgs play against. They weren't themselves in the SEC Championship game, and an injured Kerryon Johnson (absolutely untacklable in the first matchup) has to have been a big reason why.

I know it's probably annoying to quibble about someone being left off the honorable mention list, but I think Trayveon Williams deserved to be an honorable mention over Collins or Guice. 2030 yards from scrimmage on 6.5 ypc is no joke, and he put in a very respectable first 2 years of his career (had already eclipsed 2,000 yards from scrimmage coming into his Junior year), so it wasn't just a one season wonder. I wouldn't give him one of the top two spots, but his career was noteworthy. You could also make the argument that Gurley deserved that spot over Chubb, but it's splitting hairs when arguing the dominance of UGA running backs.

I think it's about 50/50, maybe 55/45 that he goes pro. I wouldn't blame him for going, he's certainly had an accomplished career. But this year has sort of been a worst case scenario for him, and he has a chance to vault himself into the top ten of the 2021 draft if he stays. If he leaves, I think Carson Beck might be our best bet. Stroud will be in the mix if we get him, but Beck seems to be an underrated prospect who has the "it" factor. I expect him to compete for the job from the moment he arrives on campus if Fromm does leave. The transfer portal could help us out too. It's hard for me as a Georgia fan to imagine rooting for Feleipe Franks, but Justin Rogers from TCU could be an option. It will be interesting to see who enters over the next few months.

Georgia did not fall below Florida in the AP, coaches, or playoff ranking. The primary reason for that is that Georgia beat Florida head to head on a neutral field. There was nothing flukey about that game, and while Florida proved to be a solid team, Georgia showed their supremacy. Unlike Utah, who fell because they didn't have any quality wins to buoy themselves and were only ranked in the top 5 previously because of their one-loss record, Georgia had run through a tough gauntlet including wins against Notre Dame, Florida, Auburn, and Texas A&M. Florida is very good, but did not beat a team as good as any of those four (though credit to them for not having a toe-stubber on their record like South Carolina). In the end, both will finish in the top 5 with wins.

I think you could get away with calling Dee Ford an outside linebacker if you really wanted to run a 4-3.

Tae Crowder is also a senior, not a true junior. Great piece though!

I would give up one of my toes to have Mecole back. Or Ridley (though he was the most obvious to go pro.)

I agree that no team in the country is surviving the postseason gauntlet without their starting QB (Ohio State and Oklahoma perhaps would stand the best chance). But if an "extended period" would be 4 or 5 games, I think Alabama, Georgia, and Clemson could make it through with one loss with their backup QB. I agree with BC in NC, Stetson Bennett would keep the train on the tracks.

Kirby walked in to a good situation and made it a great one. I agree that Saban probably gets the nod for the degree of difficulty for where Alabama was when he took over, but I think it’s a pretty close contest. What Kirby did with that 2018 recruiting class (and 2019 for that matter) was incredible.

Kirby walked in to a good situation and made it a great one. I agree that Saban probably gets the nod for the degree of difficulty for where Alabama was when he took over, but I think it's a pretty close contest. What Kirby did with that 2018 recruiting class (and 2019 for that matter) was incredible.

*neck and neck

I would take AJ Green over Mike Evans or Jerry Jeudy. He and Julio were really neck, so it's a little weird that one of those guys was on the first team and the other didn't even make the second team.

This article is completely lacking in objectivity and I love it.