Coming into this season, I had D’Andre Swift as a first-team All-SEC running back.

Actually, if you go back to last December, I wrote about why I thought that the Georgia tailback would be a Heisman Trophy contender. He showed all the skills in his true freshman season to make people like me think that he was capable of becoming a household name in the first year without Nick Chubb and Sony Michel.

I was apparently high on Swift, at least compared to the rest of the SEC media. That’s why Swift was only a preseason second-team All-SEC selection.

In the first half of the season, even that looked ambitious. Swift didn’t record a game with more than 72 rushing yards, and his longest run of the season was 24 yards. It would have have been over the top to call Swift a “bust,” but to say that he didn’t meet some high preseason expectations would have been fair.

Swift has since delivered a loud and clear message since Georgia’s bye week. That is, he is that dude.

Three consecutive 100-yard games have all featured at least one run of 33 yards, including his 77-yard touchdown scamper against Auburn last week. The home-run play ability is back.

And so should the first-team All-SEC talk.

Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

It’s not too late for Swift to make a push to earn that honor, despite the fact that through 7 games, he had just 446 rushing yards and 4 touchdowns. Clearly, he wasn’t at 100 percent. Whether it was the ankle or just having a shuffling offensive line, Swift wasn’t the guy who made Georgia fans giddy about his future last year.

Swift is at 808 rushing yards (fifth among SEC running backs) and 1,012 yards from scrimmage (4th among SEC running backs). The odds of Swift catching Trayveon Williams — another first-team All-SEC selection if we’re choosing today — and Benny Snell are unlikely with the Georgia back trailing each of them by more than 275 rushing yards.

But it’s what Snell did en route to first-team All-SEC honors last year that should serve as a reminder of why Swift can follow that same path.

Following Snell’s seventh game of the season, he averaged 155 rushing yards and 159 yards from scrimmage in the final 5 contests. Swift, in his past 3 games, averaged 149 rushing yards and 173 yards from scrimmage. I’d argue that doing so against 3 ranked teams — all of which had elite defenses — was even more impressive.

If Swift finishes the season with a pair of 120-yard games and does so for a 1-loss Georgia team, he’ll certainly have a legitimate chance to earn the first-team nod ahead of Snell, who has been trending in the wrong direction the past month.

That’s obviously not a guarantee. Georgia could choose to rest Swift the entire second half against UMass, which is No. 124 among 129 FBS teams against the run. Perhaps the Dawgs try and limit Swift’s workload leading up to the SEC Championship.

Then again, we’re talking about someone who’s averaging 9.9 yards per carry in his past 3 games. One devastating cut is all it takes for Swift to take it to the house.

I mean, my goodness:

When he’s right, there’s not a better back in the SEC. Period. That’s not a knock on guys like Snell and Williams, or even the underrated backs like Ke’Shawn Vaughn and Scottie Phillips. Swift is just a different kind of talent.

By the way, that run was against an Auburn defense that had only allowed 5 rushing touchdowns in 9 games entering last Saturday’s matchup. All Swift did was rack up 229 yards from scrimmage against that group.

That was the type of performance many — myself included — expected to see throughout the season from Swift with a full workload. That didn’t happen early on, but he’s still ranked in the top 10 among qualified Power 5 players with 7.0 yards per carry. Only Vaughn has a better mark in the SEC at 7.5 yards.

Anybody can tell that Swift is hitting his stride at the perfect time. Whatever injuries bothered him in the first part of the season appear to be in the rearview mirror, along with every defense that tries to contain him.

Swift still has plenty of work to do to earn his way back into that first-team All-SEC consideration, though the focus will be more about helping Georgia continue to roll before the showdown with Alabama.

If these last 3 weeks were any indication, Swift won’t have any problems accomplishing both of those things.