It’s Sunday morning. You wake up a couple hours later than normal, and you’re nursing the remnants of a headache. A tray of half-eaten chicken wings sits on your stovetop, 2 empty bags of tortilla chips are next to a bowl that used to contain salsa, and a bag of pretzels sits still unopened on the kitchen table.

Nobody ever eats the pretzels.

Your memory is foggy, but you know you had been looking forward to Georgia’s game against Oregon almost since the horn sounded on the team’s victory over Alabama in the College Football Playoff. Now, all you can remember is a kickoff and a series of unfortunate events that left a more bitter taste in your mouth than any of the wide selection of cheap beverages now floating in lukewarm cooler water.

Somehow, the defending national champions have lost.

Don’t lie. I know you’ve run this scenario through your head, if only in the deepest depths, residing somewhere behind grandiose plans for a college football dynasty and bombastic assertions that Georgia would cover the sizable 17.5-point spread against Oregon on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Sure, you saw your team get a ring, but all the memories of close-but-not-quite, just-out-of-reach championship aspirations still make you second-guess. In your heart of hearts, you still know that Oregon, the No. 11-ranked team in the country entering the 2022 season, could — I said could! — knock off the Bulldogs in an upset that would undoubtedly reset the early-season hierarchy.

If that does indeed happen, you can look to these 3 keys as primary reasons why.

The Oregon linebackers

After the exit of 1st-round draft pick Kayvon Thibodeaux, redshirt sophomore linebacker Noah Sewell becomes the focal point of this defense. A former 5-star recruit, Sewell comes into this season with enormous hype. He has earned his place on watch lists like the Bronko Nagurski, Chuck Bednarik, Butkus and more. He is an Associated Press preseason All-American.

But he’s not the only one.

Let’s not forget about his batterymate Justin Flowe, who actually earned last year’s Pac-12 Week 1 Freshman of the Week before sitting out the rest of the season due to injury. Now healthy, he helps form a 1-2 punch that doesn’t look too different from the ones you’ve become accustomed to seeing in red and black.

Make no mistake about it: These guys — and by extension this defense, which returns plenty of experience both on the line and in the backfield — can be for real.

The hope for Georgia is that it can use its physical and athletic offensive linemen to establish a strong ground game early, force these guys down and allow quarterback Stetson Bennett opportunities with his talented pass-catching tight ends.

However, Oregon — with the help of a new head coach who knows a thing or two about the Georgia offense — has the ability to keep this game close into the 2nd half with its strong defense.

The Dan Lanning factor

Ah, remember the old days when people used to question whether Kirby Smart could really lead his own program or whether he was a product of his mentor Nick Saban’s strong defensive acumen?

For Smart, that question is asked and answered. A national title will do that for you. For Lanning, the jury is still out.

Lanning’s track record precedes him. He led a top-5 total and scoring defense in 2019, the nation’s best defense in 2021 and a better-than-solid unit in 2020. He helped develop 10 linebackers who were drafted during his time as the Bulldogs’ linebackers coach, and before you mention how highly each was recruited, consider Tae Crowder, who came in as a running back and ended up a starting NFL linebacker.

To take anything away from Lanning’s success at Georgia — that it was Smart’s defense, or that he coached guys with too much talent to mess up — would be a disservice and selective memory. There was once a time when Bulldogs defenders were known more for underachieving on a college campus before becoming NFL stars. That’s not the case anymore, and Lanning was a key figure in that transformation.

Will he replicate that success at Oregon? Hard to say. But he knows Georgia well, and he, perhaps better than anyone, knows how to attack this offense’s weaknesses.

Couple that with Oregon’s already talented defense, and the Ducks are going to have a chance to keep Georgia within arm’s length.

Bo Knows

Shocked to see his name here? So am I, and I was the one who typed it. If ever there was a guy who never needed to see another Georgia defense, it’s him. And yet, here we are.

Nix’s track record against the Bulldogs as a member of the Auburn Tigers lies somewhere between Schlitz and Keystone in terms of quality. He’s 0-3 overall and has completed just 56 percent of his passes for 639 yards, 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. He transferred to Oregon for his senior season, but he’s blessed again with the opportunity to face a team that has run him ragged for his entire college career.

Oh, I’m supposed to be giving reasons Oregon might win? Right.

I don’t know, call it a gut feeling. Fourth time’s a charm. He’s due. Whatever. At the very least, Nix is familiar with the defense he is playing against. The typical guessing game non-conference quarterbacks must do from film won’t be at play here. And because Bo knows the Bulldogs, there’s just something in me that says he finds a way to perform a notch above the mean in his last chance against a rival.

If he doesn’t — that is to say, if Georgia’s defense doesn’t miss a beat from the mass exodus of players who will now play on Sundays — then no amount of defense from Oregon is likely to be enough to overcome the odds.