One close call for Georgia and ESPN is done believing in Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs

The Georgia Bulldogs won their 42nd straight regular season game in Week 3 with a 13-12 victory over the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington. Georgia submitted its worst performance of the young season in the team’s SEC opener and it didn’t just drop the Bulldogs from No. 1 in the AP poll to No. 2 behind the Texas Longhorns, it also caused ESPN and their “football power index” to stop believing. 

One week after a 31-6 home loss to South Carolina, Kentucky pushed Georgia to the brink. The Wildcats may have even been a Mark Stoops cowardly punt in the fourth quarter away from beating Georgia and ending the Dawgs' run of regular-season dominance. With so many great teams coming up on Georgia’s schedule including trips to play No. 1 Texas, No. 4 Alabama, and No. 5 Ole Miss on the road along with a visit from No. 6 Tennessee, ESPN’s FPI drastically dropped Georgia’s chances of making it through the gauntlet unscathed. 

Heading into Week 3, Georgia had the third-best projected win total by FPI and has now dropped to 18th in the country. The Bulldogs have been given just a 1.4% chance of winning the rest of their games on the schedule which is the 26th highest in the country, down from 7th. 

Georgia’s near-disastrous win over Kentucky affected ESPN’s FPI metrics so drastically that it now projects Georgia with a 7.8% chance of winning the SEC which is the fifth best behind Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Tennessee. None of those teams have played another SEC opponent yet and all are on Georgia’s schedule, so if Kirby Smart is interested in using an ESPN analytic as a motivational tactic, then he has a pretty good one. 

The Bulldogs played very poorly against Kentucky, especially on the offensive and defensive lines, but it would still be shocking if Smart’s team somehow finished in fifth place in the SEC.