All season long Georgia football has been known for starting slow. There are countless games you can point to where Kirby Smart’s squad started slow and dug themselves into a massive hole.
Thankfully Georgia was able to climb out of that hole enough times to have a great season and win the SEC, but every UGA fan wishes the team made it a lot easier on themselves.
Now as Georgia heads to the College Football Playoff against Notre Dame, the hope is the exact opposite will happen this time and the Bulldogs will start fast and get off to a big lead. That however has not been the case for the teams who had a bye in the first three quarterfinal games.
Wild stat:
— Peter Burns (@PeterBurnsESPN) January 2, 2025
The teams without a bye have outscored bye opponents 42-3 in the 1st quarter.
Top seeds have all started slow in CFP
According to Peter Burns with ESPN, the three teams who had a bye in the first round of the playoff have gotten off to horrible starts in their quarterfinal CFP matchups. So much so that they have trailed their opponents by a combined 42-3 at the end of the first quarter.
That stat is a very scary thing for Georgia to see after the issues they’ve had at starting games all season. But what could be the cause of this interesting stat?
The likely reason is that the bye for the top seeds was in fact not in their best interest. The teams who had to win to get into the quarterfinal all have a lot of momentum and are feeling great about themselves after winning their respective first round games. The teams on a bye however are coming into the quarterfinal matchup cold and not having played for about a month.
The teams on a bye also likely have a lot more nerves they have to deal with because it’s their first CFP game compared to their opponents who have already experienced the playoffs and what it’s like to play with that pressure.
It will be interesting to see if this trend continues for Georgia or if they will be the only top four seed to start their game well. But it goes without saying that it will be tough for Georgia to win if they start slow considering the top seeds who had a bye all lost their quarterfinal game.