Georgia vs. Tennessee: Playing For Pride

“We’re pissed off...That’s our thing right now. We’re pissed off right now. We’re 1-4. We’ve got a lot of fans saying this, a lot of fans saying that. And I mean, we just want to make everybody happy. We want to be happy. We’re tired of walking around the locker room, quiet, coaches yelling at us all the time for no reason, because we’re losing. So we’re just going out there and to get our respect back. We’re pissed off right now...I’m speaking for everyone at Georgia...We can’t change the past. We’ve gotta move forward. The main thing is we’ve gotta stick together.”

- Orson Charles, Georgia, Sophomore TE (credit: Seth Emerson from The Bulldog Blog)

I did a piece earlier this year that looked at Georgia's most competitive rivals during the Mark Richt era and it turned out to be Tennessee who has the evenest series with the Dawgs as Georgia leads 5-4. On Saturday, you have two teams that have been evenly matched through the last 10 years. You have a Georgia team that got embarrassed at Tennessee last year. We have a snakebit Georgia team the has fumbled away or missed a key block that directly led to 3 losses and one fumble that kept them from getting back into a close game. Georgia is 1-4 with their only victory being a dominated of Louisiana. Tennessee is coming off of a heart-breaking loss to crazy Les Miles and the LSU Tigers. Tennessee is 2-3 with wins over Tennessee-Martin and a UAB Overtime win. This game is going to be about who wants it more on the field. I would expect Tennessee to try to mash the ball down the middle of the field (following the blue print that worked for South Carolina and Colorado) with Tauren Poole and David Oku. The question is if Georgia has enough heart and enough pride to step up and stop the Vols and win a game that on paper they should.

Other Georgia Notes:
- Look for true freshman Kenarious Gates to line up at right guard on Saturday. Josh Davis appears to be out of the mix, he's the guy that missed the block that caused Caleb King to get hit at the point of hand-off and fumble away the game at Colorado.
- Mega recruit Isiah Crowell of Carver High School in Columbus appears to be inching towards Alabama over Georgia. But with Dee Hart making his decision between Alabama and Michigan will that have an effect on Crowell?
- Georgia practiced in full pads on Monday, the first time during the Mark Richt era that this has happened.
- Branden Smith has his second concussion of the year and will miss Saturday's game. Might this open up punt returns for A.J. Green?
- It looks like Caleb King will still start at TB despite his fumble at the end of the game against Colorado (which honestly should be credited more to the OL than to him).