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Georgia Football: 2018 is not a ‘win or bust’ year for UGA

By Alistair Penny

ATLANTA, GA - JANUARY 08: Head coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs talks to his team during a time out during the fourth quarter against the Georgia Bulldogs in the CFP National Championship presented by AT
ATLANTA, GA - JANUARY 08: Head coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs talks to his team during a time out during the fourth quarter against the Georgia Bulldogs in the CFP National Championship presented by AT /
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Georgia Football will go into the season with a top 5 ranked team in 2018, however, despite how some are framing it, a championship is not a guarantee and that’s just fine.

As we get closer to the summer, I’m starting to see more and more preseason football previews. A lot of these have writers that are suggesting UGA fans will have a letdown in 2018. They are framing the upcoming year as one where Georgia absolutely have to win a national championship. If they don’t, some seem to think that Kirby Smart will find himself on the hot seat.

Let’s take a step back, shall we? I’m not suggesting that UGA fans should ‘settle’ for a season without a natty. But I and most UGA fans recognize that right now, we don’t know what the 2018 team is going to look like.

UGA lost a lot of great players from last years team. The leadership that unit possessed is going to be really hard to replicate this year. You also can’t ignore how hard a lot of those seniors played in 2017. It was their final season of college football and they did everything they could to win.

That doesn’t mean that the 2018 team cannot be better. From a talent standpoint, the roster is more talented than it’s been in a very long time. But a lot of those players are young and they don’t yet know what their former teammates did. Experience does matter when it comes to a college football season.

If anything, the 2018 season is going to be an experimental year for Georgia. We’re going to have a lot of youth see the field for the first time and they will likely make mistakes. But that’s ok because the vast majority of them will still be around for at least 2 more years.

Now, am I expecting UGA to be a ‘contender’ for the National Championship this season? Absolutely, we saw what Kirby Smart and his coaching staff could do with some lesser players last season. But if they don’t quite get there, that doesn’t make the year a failure and it doesn’t put Smart on the hot seat.

College football is a cruel and difficult sport to make guarantees in. Did anyone expect Ohio State to get blown out by Iowa last season? Do the past couple of failures mean that Urban Meyer needs to worry about his job? Of course not. It’s pretty damn hard to win a national championship in this sport. Nick Saban isn’t a common occurrence here. Besides him, Meyer is the only other coach who has won multiple national championships who is still coaching.

So let’s not think about this coming year as a ‘must win’ one for Georgia. We’re going to get to cheer for an incredibly exciting young team that is going to be in real contention for the CFP. Isn’t that all a fanbase can ask for?

Next: What will UGA's running game look like next year?

So enjoy it Dawg fans and don’t let writers out there convince you that this 2018 season is something that it’s not. UGA is going to be around for quite some time yet and that title drought is going to end at some point. With Kirby Smart at the helm, chances are that comes sooner rather than later.

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