Georgia football's first game of the season is finally here. The Bulldogs are gearing up to take on Marshall in their season opener in a game that likely will be extremely lopsided. In fact, Georgia is favored to win this game by nearly 40 points.
Georgia having such a massive advantage over Marshall means that simply winning this game isn't good enough. Beating Marshall by a large margin still wouldn't be considered a success either, especially this early in the season. So what are some ways that UGA will be able to look back at this game as a success when the game is over?
Kirby Smart was asked this question during his press conference on Monday, and he discussed that Georgia has set some internal goals for themselves to help them determine if they were successful against Marshall or not.
"Hitting goals. We have some really lofty goals. We go in and say, 'OK, we've got 15-20 goals that we look for.' If we hit those goals, we usually play well,” Smart shared via 247Sports.com. “If we don't, then we usually — there's run goals involved with that, third-down conversion rate, red-zone rate, yards per completion, turnover rate, penalty rate — there's a lot that goes into that.”
Kirby Smart, Georgia choosing to focus on themselves this week
Smart shared on Monday that they are setting nearly 20 goals for themselves when they play Marshall, and that is what they will use to define success in this game. Sure winning is the ultimate goal, but they need to dominate Marshall in every way possible if they are going to get better on Saturday.
Some of these goals Georgia might set for themselves include winning the turnover battle, reaching a certain number of sacks, third-down conversation rate, total penalties and winning the time of possession. Regardless, all of these goals will be focused on Georgia and what they need to accomplish if they want to make a run at winning some championships again this season.
So while fans likely will be paying close attention to the final score, be sure to also take a look at the box score after the game because those stats will be what Smart and Georgia are looking at the most Saturday night.