Nick Saban shared why he likes this Georgia team so much during his weekly Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, which was being staged in Athens on the eve of the Bulldogs’ top-10 clash with Ole Miss at Sanford Stadium.
If anyone knows about facing Georgia in a big game, it’s Saban, the legendary Alabama head coach who went toe-to-toe with former Crimson Tide assistant Kirby Smart many times. Well, on Saturday, Smart has another big game with those Bulldogs he has been coaching since 2016, and it’ll come against Lane Kiffin‘s 5th-ranked Ole Miss Rebels in a 3:30 p.m. ET kickoff on ABC.
Georgia is ranked 9th, and it’ll be trying to avoid a 2nd loss of the season when it faces the Rebels at home. Saban knows this Georgia edition isn’t perfect, but he likes 1 specific characteristic these Bulldogs possess.
“For a team to show resilience, and that’s why I like this Georgia team. You either have that (resilience) or you don’t,” Nick Saban said. “You see a lot of teams that don’t have that (resilience). They’ve shown time and time again they can do that. When you have resiliency, and that’s what I told Kirby after the Tennessee game, that the one thing that your team showed in that game was resiliency to keep coming back in that game.”
The Bulldogs were down 21-7 after the 1st quarter in that Week 3 battle in Knoxville, yet got the game into overtime and prevailed in OT, 44-41. Two weeks later, Georgia lost at home to Saban’s former team, Alabama, and now it’ll have another big one at home on its hands on Saturday against Ole Miss.
Here is the full clip of Saban complimenting this Georgia team on Friday:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
