It’s always amazing how perceptions change throughout the course of a college football season. The talk this week is that unbeaten and No. 2-ranked Georgia finally plays somebody this weekend when it travels to No. 13 LSU, and that the Dawgs have built their 6-0 record on a bunch of cupcakes.

That’s what they say now. And that would be wrong. Well, at least slightly wrong.

Remember in early September when opening the SEC season at South Carolina was everyone’s upset special? That South Carolina was Georgia’s team to beat in the SEC East? The Bulldogs won 41-17, but now that the Gamecocks have also lost to Kentucky, then that game didn’t mean anything.

Wrong.

And what about going to Missouri? Missouri quarterback Drew Lock is a top pick in the NFL Draft next spring. Beating him means something, but not to the critics, for some reason. It should.

So now LSU rolls around and, finally, there’s something for the Bulldogs to hang their hat on. Clearly, now that we’ve seen six weeks of football, we recognize that the Tigers are better than we thought they’d be, and that’s even despite losing at Florida last weekend for their first defeat of the year. Saturday’s game (3:30 p.m. ET; TV: CBS) is huge, a battle of the big boys for sure.

“As far as questions about our defense or our defensive line, they’ll be answered this week,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Monday. “They better knuckle up, because it’s going to be physical, hard-nosed football game.”

LSU tumbled eight spots in the AP poll after the loss, going from No. 5 to No. 13. That’s a shame, because a top-5 matchup in Death Valley would have been much more fun. It also would have been more impressive for those criticizing Georgia’s schedule. A top-5 win means much, much more than a win over a 13th-ranked team.

This is the first of four consecutive games against ranked opponents for Georgia, with Florida, Kentucky and Auburn to follow. ESPN’s FPI ranks Georgia’s remaining schedule the 9th-toughest in the country. A month of tough Saturdays should end the soft-schedule debate, but we’ll still have to see about that.

The real naysayers will look at their rankings  — LSU 13, Florida 14, Kentucky 18 and Auburn 21 — and say none of them are great, either.

Maybe they aren’t, but these are still SEC games, and especially on the road, the challenge that lies ahead is a big one. LSU is one big, tough football team.

“Coach (Ed) Orgeron has installed a lot of toughness in their program, they play extremely physical,” Smart said. “They’ve got big people, that’s how LSU is built. They are physical across the board, that’s who they are.”

It’s a shame that SEC expansion has taken away more regular LSU-Georgia games. They’ve only played seven times since 2000, and three of those showdowns were in the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta. This is Georgia’s first trip to LSU since 2008, a whopping 10 long years ago. LSU holds the series edge 16-13.

The Tigers have been something of a surprise this season, playing well under Ohio State transfer Joe Burrow. They started the season with a win against then-No. 8 Miami and then went to then-No. 7 Auburn and won. Being ranked No. 5 just a month after opening the season ranked No. 25 was impressive.

Georgia has been in the top 3 of the AP poll all season, and despite winning all six games by at least 14 points, the critics are still out there. Maybe that will change after Saturday.