With Roderick Robinson and Trevor Etienne out, Georgia’s backfield depth will be tested in Week 1

On Monday, Kirby Smart announced that Roderick Robinson II, Georgia’s leading returning rusher will miss significant time after undergoing surgery on his injured toe. Smart was hesitant to put a timetable on his return by The Athletic’s Seth Emerson expects it to be ”several weeks, if not months.”

Robinson’s absence compounds a lack of depth at the running back position that arose with the departures of Daijun Edwards and Kendall Milton last offseason. That need drove Smart to the transfer portal where he landed Trevor Etienne from Florida, but he could also miss the Bulldog’s Week 1 opener against Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium serving a one-game suspension for a DUI arrest this spring. 

Smart has yet to confirm the suspension for Etienne, but he hasn’t denied it either, saying, “I don’t really talk about all the other stuff, with regards to suspensions, for any of our players,” on Monday.

All signs point to Georgia being without Robinson and Etienne against Clemson, so the depth of Smart’s roster will be tested in a big way. The leading candidate to command the lion’s share of carries is Branson Robinson, a redshirt sophomore coming off a torn patella tendon which he suffered around this time last year. 

Though, without much certainty around the health of Robinson’s knee, Georgia and Mike Bobo will almost certainly have to trot out newcomers in the backfield. If Etienne is suspended, walk-on junior Cash Jones be the only Bulldog running back available on gameday who saw any snaps for Georgia last year. Jones carries the ball just 22 times for 161 yards and one carry with 65 of those yards coming against Vanderbilt. 

Wide receiver Dillon Bell also took 25 carries for 157 yards and two touchdowns in 2023, so he could temporarily transition to the backfield for the season-opener if Smart and Bobo don’t trust their younger unproven options at the position. However, playing Bell at running back would further thin out a wide receiver room that lost Rara Thomas after he was dismissed from the team this offseason. 

The primary newcomer in the mix is 5-foot-10 210-pound true freshman Nate Frazier, the No. 2 running back recruit in the country last season. The Santa Ana, California product has impressed his teammate in fall camp, but it's unlikely that anyone on Georgia’s coaching staff expected to throw him into the fire this early in his career. 

The opportunity is now there for a true freshman to grab the reins of the backfield, and if Frazier’s explosiveness translates from the high school he’ll be tough to keep off the field. There’s a scenario in which he establishes himself as Georgia’s lead back and it wouldn’t be the first time a freshman has hit the ground running in Athens. 

In 2014 Nick Chubb posted 1,547 rushing yards as a freshman and two years prior, a freshman Todd Gurley ran for 1,385. Both were excellent right away, but neither was as dominant as Herschel Walker who set the NCAA single-season freshman rushing record at 1,616 yards and become the first-ever true freshman to be named a first-team All-American. That record has since been surpassed by the likes of Ron Dayne, Adrian Peterson, and Jonathan Taylor.

To have a successful season, Frazier doesn’t need to live up to those Georgia legends, he just needs to be good enough to help the Dawgs beat Clemson with Robinson and Etienne on the sidelines.