Saturday was an easy game for Georgia to burn the tape and move on.

It was a collapse that we’re not accustomed to seeing from the Dawgs since the start of the 2017 season. With the exception of last year at Auburn, we never saw the Dawgs struggle for 60 minutes like they did Saturday at LSU. That much was obvious.

Jake Fromm played arguably the worst game of his career, the defense couldn’t stop the run, and for once, it looked like UGA was in over its head.

But lost in the hoopla of that was a key positive that should make Georgia fans sleep a bit easier through the bye week.

I thought D’Andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield looked better than they had all year. Well, at least in SEC play.

Obviously the final score wouldn’t indicate as much. The final numbers don’t even indicate that. A combined 128 rushing yards were about half of a solid day for Nick Chubb and Sony Michel. But take a closer look and you’ll see that Holyfield and Swift were much more like the legendary Georgia duo than their numbers indicated.

The natural assumption when a team loses by 20 points is that of course the running backs didn’t get a ton of work. Game flow suggested that Georgia needed to be throwing at the very end, which is exactly what happened.

The key sequence of that game, however, bothered me. A lot.

Georgia fans know exactly what I’m talking about. Fromm took that awful sack to force the Dawgs out of field goal range in a 10-point game early in the fourth quarter. It was costly. You know what was even more costly? Jim Chaney not trusting his backfield to make it a 1-score game.

To that point, Swift and Holyfield had a combined 18 carries for 124 yards (6.9 YPC). That included the 10-yard touchdown run by Holyfield on a drive that ended with he and Swift picking up the Dawgs’ final 35 yards on 4 plays to reach pay dirt for the first time.

Everything to that point screamed “Feed The Backs!” Swift looked as healthy as he had all year. That dynamic cut of his was back to devastating defenders, which was why he had a season-high 72 rushing yards. And speaking of devastating defenders, Holyfield ran like a man possessed when he got the opportunity on Saturday.

This poor soul:

Holyfield has had better days statistically, but a guy running like that needs more than 7 carries. Period. Shoot, he probably should have had more than 7 carries on that drive.

But the pass-happy Chaney deviated from Holyfield and Swift when his team was down 10 and he had over 14 minutes to get 2 scores.

Everyone is going to talk about Fromm taking that sack on third down, but on the first 2 plays, Chaney tried getting fancy with a run to Mecole Hardman — that didn’t gain a yard — and then he gave Brian Herrien his second carry of the game. So on the game’s most important possession with starting field position on the LSU 38-yard line, Chaney decided not to give the ball to Georgia’s 2 most successful players on a day when Fromm was clearly not on his game.

Baffling.

I say that not to just bash Chaney. Not all of his calls Saturday were head-scratchers. That one was, though. That’s something that you have to think he’ll catch on film.

Holyfield and Swift are ready to be relied on more in those crucial moments.

After the bye week, Georgia will face 3 consecutive top-15 defenses. The margin for error will be small, just like it was on Saturday in Baton Rouge. An offense that came in averaging 42 points per game clearly has to make some adjustments to prepare for a much more daunting stretch than the first half of the season.

There’s no guarantee that Holyfield and Swift look like they did Saturday. With how physical they are, both could be plenty banged up in the next month.

But if they’re running like they were at LSU and Georgia isn’t in obvious passing situations yet, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be leaned on. Heavily.

Kirby Smart said after Saturday’s loss that it was easy to question the way the quarterbacks were used. Fromm wasn’t able to provide the spark that the offense needed, and Justin Fields didn’t get many opportunities to try. Many will spend the bye week dissecting whether a change needs to be made because that’s what happens in football when there’s a promising backup and the starter loses a game.

But the good news was that heading into the bye week, Georgia looked like it had the 1-2 punch at running back it hoped it would have.

It’s even easier to question how they were used.