I laughed out loud as Ladd McConkey scampered into the end zone.

It wasn’t that the Georgia receiver stopped mid-play and told a gut-busting joke, though with how the Dawgs pushed Florida State around in Miami, McConkey probably could’ve done an entire standup set and gone untouched. It was that kind of day.

It was comical to watch McConkey, who played instead of nursing a nagging back injury, take a busted trick play to the house. McConkey fielded what was supposed to be a double-pass play. Instead of throwing it — Florida State got away with a blatant hold on the receiver that was supposed to be targeted — the veteran wideout made a devastating cut in space, got upfield and made a mockery of a depleted, overmatched defense for 6.

Saturday night’s Orange Bowl game was a laugher that was never in question. The Dawgs’ 63-3 victory bested their record for the most lopsided bowl victory ever, which happened in last year’s 65-7 national championship drubbing of TCU. If you were at home playing a drinking game every time Joe Tessitore or Jesse Palmer referenced Kirby Smart hammering home Georgia’s “culture” with its Orange Bowl prep, well, much like that game, it would’ve been all she wrote by the start of the second quarter.

Motivation was never in question. But there’s another question that I’ll always have.

What could this Georgia team have done in the Playoff?

Don’t get it twisted. This isn’t the part where I go off about how “the best 4 teams” should’ve made the Playoff, nor am I using the lopsided results of a post-opt-out/transfer portal version of FSU as the foundation of any Playoff snub argument for the Dawgs.

Georgia lost to Alabama in the lone 2023 game that it couldn’t afford to lose. Frustrating or not, Georgia fans knew that reality the second they left Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

But Saturday, in an indirect way, was a reminder that Smart’s team with a month to prepare has been money in the bank. Anyone who still questions that because of the Texas debacle at the end of the 2018 season is probably unaware that the Dawgs have now won 7 consecutive bowl games. All of them were either Playoff games or non-Playoff New Year’s 6 Bowls.

Yeah, that includes Saturday. I know, it didn’t ‘feel like that. It felt more like when Mercer shows up to Athens and collects that $1.5 million check.

And yeah, I know. Georgia fans have already moved on to next year as likely a preseason top-2 team with Carson Beck returning, and it’s all the more painful to live in the past.

Just allow me the opportunity to do so.

Georgia had national championship upside. I say that as an initial skeptic of the Mike Bobo hire to replace Todd Monken. I admitted I was wrong about that after the Tennessee game. That was when the Dawgs took a jab to the mouth on the opening play, and then proceeded to land every haymaker it threw the rest of the day in front of a capacity crowd on Rocky Top.

The Dawgs had the offensive firepower to win it all. We saw that when Georgia’s offense somehow got better once Brock Bowers went down with his ankle injury. No, I don’t fault Bowers for sitting out on Saturday. He wasn’t the same player in the SEC Championship coming off a self-expedited return from the tightrope ankle procedure. I shouldn’t assume that a month of rest would’ve turned him into the version of Bowers that was the best tight end in college football history. I get that.

But would those odds of returning to full strength have been in his favor? Absolutely.

Bowers was the straw that stirred the drink in those previous 2 title runs. Along with McConkey, senior captain Sed Van Pran, Arian Smith, Daijun Edwards and Kendall Milton, there was no shortage of offensive experience back from those teams. That’s why the Dawgs were No. 1 in the country.

(Gosh, Milton was finally healthy, too. FSU didn’t have a prayer against him. I’m pretty sure he took a soul on that 43-yard run.)

And no, the 2023 Georgia defense wasn’t at 2021 or even 2022 levels. It was still a top-15 unit both in scoring and yards/play allowed. We’ve seen worse defenses win a national title in the Playoff era (2014 Ohio State and 2019 LSU come to mind). We’ve seen worse quarterbacks than Beck lead a team to a national title (Cardale Jones and Jake Coker come to mind).

The most painful pill to swallow is we’ve seen plenty of worse teams than 2023 Georgia make the Playoff. It’s nothing but bad luck that the Dawgs didn’t have the margin for error with the surrounding field that the 2021 or 2022 squads had. Both had a Playoff bid locked up before arriving in Atlanta. We know that this year’s squad, even as a No. 1 seed, didn’t have that luxury and it became the first No. 1 seed heading into conference championship weekend to miss the Playoff.

It’s a game of inches. For the last 3 seasons, Georgia made us forget that until the SEC Championship.

Maybe the Dawgs were a clean misdirection handoff away from 3-peating. Or perhaps if that Isaiah Bond catch had been reviewed, we’d be talking about a team that was 2 wins away from history.

This 2023 Georgia team should be remembered in a similar way to 2013 Alabama. That squad’s pursuit of a 3-peat ended when the Kick-6 happened. Like the 2023 Dawgs, the 2013 Tide still would’ve had to win another 2 games to push 1936 Minnesota aside as the most recent 3-peat in college football. But unlike the 2023 Dawgs, the 2013 Tide season ended in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Tide got whipped 45-31 by Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

Georgia didn’t get whipped in its bowl game. Smart’s culture prevented that (drink!). Maybe it would’ve done the whipping to any team in that Playoff field, including Alabama, which turned out to be a UGA revenge game in the national championship rematch 2 years ago.

Lord have mercy on a Playoff team if gets its teeth kicked in. UGA fans will be ready to pounce. The narrative will shift to “this is why UGA should’ve made it as one of the best 4 teams.”

Do I believe UGA was 1 of the best 4 teams? Absolutely. Do I also believe that Alabama and a Texas team who beat Alabama deserved to make the Playoff? Absolutely. So did a 13-0 Washington team and a Michigan team that hasn’t trailed in a game later than the 11-minute mark of the second quarter.

UGA got wildly unlucky in 2023. It got unlucky that it missed the 12-team Playoff by a year. It got unlucky that in any other season, it wouldn’t have been the third-ranked 1-loss team in the final Playoff poll.

In an alternate universe, could Georgia have won it all? There’s no question about it.