ATHENS – Georgia soccer fans can finally catch up on the season with the SEC release of the 2020 schedule.
Once again, it doesn’t seem like the league office did the Bulldogs a favor, this time with a head-heavy schedule that includes arguably the most physical four-game stretch in the league.
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The opening against the western resident of SEC West, Arkansas is the only positive as Kirby Smart and Todd Monken have the opportunity to resolve the new offense.
However, the Bulldogs better make the most of their trip to Fayetteville because it gets tough afterwards.
Here are four things that pop out:
Loaded in front
The great depth of Georgia matters, but November it won’t be as important as it was on the ridiculously subpoenaed schedule that the SEC bureau has worked out.
The Bulldogs are urged to synchronize their offensive quickly as their hopes for a fourth straight title with the SEC East are decided in the second week of November.
Georgia plays Auburn (October 3), Tennessee (October 10), Alabama (October 17), and Kentucky (October 24) for consecutive weeks before a bye week, and then the Bulldogs play in Florida.
Physical toll
The Bulldogs’ annual Auburn rivalry is always a physical battle, regardless of score or margin.
According to Cole Cubelic, ESPN analyst and Joe Moore Award (best team offensive line), Georgia will rival the SEC’s top three offensive lines against Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky in weeks 3, 4 and 5.
Georgia will have a chance to prove that they have the nation’s best line of defense this season and a deep rotation among the top seven becomes more important than ever during this brutal stretch.
Street fighter
The Bulldogs will have six weeks between home games this season, also due to the UGA administration’s request to continue playing a specific home game 340 miles away in Jacksonville.
The contract runs until 2023, but that would have been a season to request an exemption in the interests of player safety. Studies have shown that traveling increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
Georgia plays Tennessee at home on October 10 and does not return to a home game at Sanford Stadium against the state of Mississippi until November 21.
Georgia must be a street fighter in the middle of the season and avoid the COVID-19 bug on consecutive trips outside of the city to hotels in Tuscaloosa, Lexington, Jacksonville and Columbia, Missouri, to be healthy near the season.
Out of sight
One final stretch of Missouri, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt may seem attractive, but only if Georgia is in control of the SEC East Division by then.
The league’s schedule sees Florida and Tennessee in the final regular season of the game, one of the league’s most popular rivalries in the past due to its impact on the East Division.
The last time Tennessee and Florida played at the end of the regular season was in 2001 (9-11). The Vols derailed the Gators’ hopes for the national championship in Steve Spurrier’s last home game at The Swamp.
Meanwhile, in the Shadow, Georgia is joining a humble Vanderbilt program that, at this point, appears to be utterly dilapidated. At the Commodores, top players have already signed off, and the season has not even started.
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Our schedule for 2020‼ ️????#ETC #GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/XIGYO8tBGT
– Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) August 18, 2020
