Welcome to Free Form Friday, a long-running if sporadic feature in which we attempt to pass the time until the kickoff of college football season. Think of it as a virtual tailgate tent that never falls over or leaks, and has plenty of room under it even if Cordy Glenn and Amarius Mims swing by. Maestro, the tailgate music in honor of Brother Dickey:
And another one in honor of the late, great Rico Wade:
The upcoming 2024 season will be the ninth of Kirby Smart’s tenure in the Classic City. That seems both easy and hard to believe for those of us of a certain age, who remember Kirby the gym rat coach’s kid studying his playbook at the SAE house, as well as those of us who thought Mark Richt would likely retire at the University of Georgia.
It’s been a great run, almost from the word go. That’s attested to by the fact that Georgia just continues to reload with talented players, as we saw on display last Saturday in Sanford Stadium. There may be some areas of the roster for 2024 for which the Bulldog faithful have some mild questions. But there are functionally none which present great concern. There are no obvious thermal exhaust ports on this Death Star.
Which brings us to our question if the day: if you could bring one Kirby Smart-era Bulldog back, in his prime, to the 2024 team who would it be?
It’s a bit of a tricky question. Jordan Davis is probably the most dominant 0 technique tackle we’ve seen in Athens. But my sense is that we’re in pretty decent shape up front with the guys already there. I’m not sure any cornerback has ever been as dominant in the Red and Black as Deandre Baker was in his Thorpe Award-winning 2018 senior season. It might be nice to have that kind of veteran presence in a young secondary.
While I like CJ Allen and Raylen Wilson and the rest of Georgia’s interior linebackers, I’m not sure any of them had the kind of shutdown, lights out playmaking reliability of Roquan Smith. Offensively, how great would it be to replace Kendall Milton and Daijun Edwards with 2017 Nick Chubb (or Sony Michel)?
There really are a lot of different ways to go on this one, and we’d love to hear how you’d make the tough choice about who to put in your gridiron time machine. Until later…
Go ‘Dawgs!!!