Georgia-Tennessee preview: Can the Vols finally beat the Dawgs?
Josh Pate previews Saturday’s clash in Knoxville. Subscribe to “Josh Pate’s College Football Show” on YouTube.
Video Transcript
Georgia, Tennessee, Saturday, 3:30 Eastern kickoff right there in Neyland Stadium on ABC.
The market has corrected on this 10, violent swing on the old odds board here.
You see at the bottom of your screen if you're watching on YouTube, Georgia minus 3.5.
Well, they weren't a couple of days ago; they were 7.5-point favorites when this thing first opened, and I got hammered down to 3.5.
I'll tell you what the model thinks on it in a little while.
I trust Georgia so much in spots like these.
That's earned trust, earned respect.
They, it's not that they're invincible.
Sure, Tennessee can win this game, sure they can.
But they've got to beat Georgia.
Now that sounds very, very academic.
Well, of course to win the game they have to beat them.
No, no, this is college football.
A lot of times, especially when a team, new quarterback breaking in new pieces, they go on the road for the first time, a lot of those outfits tend to beat themselves.
I just don't think Georgia is one of those.
So if you're gonna beat them.
You got your work cut out for you.
You will have to do absolutely that.
You'll have to beat them.
To me, the most shocking outcome here would not be Georgia losing.
Tennessee is a good team.
The most shocking outcome would be me watching it and at the end of the day saying, you know, Tennessee didn't really do anything all that special, kind of like we talked about the Florida-USF game the other day.
USF didn't do anything all that special.
Florida just, oh man, kind of gave this game away.
I doubt we're saying that about Georgia as the sun goes down Saturday.
But it is a cannot versus have-not situation, you know, we, we see this every now and then in college football when something hasn't happened in a long time.
In that case, uh, for instance, Paper popper here, close your ears in Knoxville, 8 in a row.
That's the streak Georgia has over Tennessee, 13 of the last 15, so there's a lot of that that leads people to think, well, hypo slash Tennessee cannot beat Kirby Smart slash Georgia.
That's not true, they just have not.
We're what, 3 years removed from turning the.
Had not beaten Alabama, but now they've beaten them 2 out of the last 3 years.
They had not beaten Alabama, but now they've beaten them 2 out of the last 3 years.
Oh, all it took was Saban retiring?
Wrong.
Wrong, they did it to Saban before he retired.
Maybe they'll clip Kirby here.
Don't say have or don't say cannot.
It's a have-not situation.
So here's what FanDuel thinks about the game right now.
Georgia's favored by 3.5.
Our model pretty much agrees, Georgia minus about 3.
I think 3.
One and a tenth of a point.
Yeah, I'm riding with Kirby Smart and Georgia, and I'm just gonna make Tennessee prove me wrong, and they have, they did against Bama a few years ago, so it's not out of the realm of possibility.
I think there is vulnerability.
I think there's a lot of unknown for Georgia.
That's why I go back to what that G means to me, independent of the individual personnel groupings.
That G to me means it's a consistent outfit, and when they go on the road they can handle business, and if you beat them you gotta do just that.
You gotta beat them; they're not gonna hand you a game.
And they're gonna have better athletes than you, and you gotta beat them as they don't hand you the game.
Now I could be wrong.
Fence-riding, according to some.
But if I am wrong, I'm gonna make Tennessee prove me wrong by pulling the mild upset there.