ATHENS – The No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs have played at a neutral site and at home so far. Now they venture out of state for their first true road game of the season with Saturday’s SEC opener against Kentucky.
While the gravity of this Saturday’s outcome has not changed, some of the intrigue surrounding the matchup was lost with the Wildcats’ startling 31-6 loss to South Carolina at Kroger Field a week ago. In that game, the Gamecocks pressured Georgia transfer quarterback Brock Vandagriff throughout, paralyzing the offense in the process. The lopsided loss was unsettling enough to send ESPN’s College GameDay to Columbia, South Carolina, instead of Lexington, Kentucky, and stole some steam from the “Vandagriff Revenge” storyline that has surrounded this game since he left UGA last December.
Not that it’s gone altogether. A junior from Bogart, Vandagriff still has a lot to prove to both fan bases about his ability to excel as an SEC quarterback. Meanwhile, neither Vandagriff’s solid performance in Game 1 against Southern Miss nor his less-than-stellar work against the Gamecocks was all his doing.
“Last week, we didn’t give him much of a chance to be totally honest with you,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said. “That’s not all on Brock. But obviously this is another great challenge facing the No. 1 team in the country.”
The Wildcats’ defeat didn’t alter coach Kirby Smart’s perception of Kentucky as a hard-hitting and competitive opponent. The Bulldogs’ average margin of victory in four trips to Lexington under Smart is 10.1 points.
“I saw a team that had some turnovers and lost momentum,” Smart said of Kentucky (1-1, 0-1 SEC). “Certainly the score did not indicated the way the game went.”
Here’s everything you need to know about Saturday’s matchup:
When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Lexington, Kentucky; Kroger Field at C.M. Newton Grounds (cap. 61,000)
What: 2024 SEC opener
TV/Radio: ABC/Georgia Bulldogs Sports Network
Weather: Mid-to-high 70s at kickoff with only 3% chance of rain
Series: Georgia leads 63-12-2 and has won 14 in a row.
Last meeting: Bulldogs won 51-13 in Athens on Oct. 7, 2023, in Athens.
Tickets: The game has been sold out for months, but tickets flooded the secondary market after last Saturday’s loss and are available for as little as $26 apiece.
Storylines ahead of Georgia-Kentucky
‘Pop’ is prepared: Most pregame chatter has surrounded Kentucky’s quarterback from the Athens area. But senior linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson also spent three years with the Bulldogs and he was a starter and All-SEC player while earning a pair of national championship rings.
So Georgia already knew it will would be facing one of the league’s best middle linebackers in the 6-foot-1, 245-pound senior from Hyattsville, Maryland. What the Bulldogs learned this week is they’ll be facing an extremely motivated Dumas-Johnson, who reminded one and all that he had not lost a regular-season game in college until the Wildcats fell to South Carolina last week.
“I don’t really got words on how I feel about losing because I’m just not used to it,” Dumas-Johnson told reporters in Lexington this week. “And I don’t plan on getting used to it, either. So, I’ve got to correct some things.”
Dumas-Johnson has six tackles,1.5 tackles for loss and an interception in two games with the Wildcats. At Georgia, he played in 38 games, starting the past 24, and accumulated 125 tackles and 9.5 sacks.
Like Vandagriff, there are no hard feelings in Georgia’s camp toward the linebacker they knew as “Pop.”
“That’s my brother at the end of the day,” sophomore linebacker Raylen Wilson said. “He took us under his wing just like Smael (Mondon) did and was helping learn the system. So, it’s just brotherly love out there. It’s still a competition at the end of the day, but that’s still my brother.”
Familiarity factor: Dumas-Johnson has another thing in common Vandagriff. Having participated in well over 300 sanctioned practices in three seasons at UGA, plus countless meetings and unlimited volunteer workouts, they know Georgia’s system and methods inside and out.
Both coaches, though, downplayed what effect that might have on Saturday’s game.
“Whether he’s familiar with them or not I don’t think matters much, especially with how multiple Georgia’s defense is,” Stoops said of Vandagriff. “They change up looks and play it well. I mean, you still have to beat somebody one-on-one and they have a lot of very good players. Brock will be fine but obviously we have to play well.”
Dumas-Johnson might have more of an advantage. He has gone against Georgia’s offense so much and knowing its keys and checks. Helping the Bulldogs’ cause, though, is being able to use headset communication and fewer sideline signals this year.
Count Smart as skeptical, too, as far as the former Bulldogs’ knowledge of the system providing them a leg up. “Very little,” he said of any advantage that might provide.
Beck check: Vandagriff’s no longer playing at Georgia because Carson Beck still is. The Bulldogs’ fifth-year senior quarterback in the first two games picked up where he left off last year. He earned co-SEC offensive player of the week honors for his 278-yard, two-TD outing against No. 14 Clemson in the opener. Last week, Beck tied a UGA record with five TD passes in a 48-3 rout of Tennessee Tech. With that win, the Bulldogs are 15-1 with Beck as the starting quarterback.
Injury update: A pair of Bulldogs were downgraded in the Thursday night update of the SEC Availability Report. Defensive linemen Mykel Williams (ankle) and Warren Brinson (lower leg) were each dropped from questionable to doubtful in the Thursday report. Meanwhile, fellow defensive lineman Xzavier McLeod (unspecified) remained questionable.
If you’re sensing a theme here, there is one. Georgia has a lot of injuries on the defensive line. Sophomore defensive lineman Jordan Hall (leg) is one two Bulldogs listed as “out” for Saturday. The other is running back Roderick Robinson (toe).
Notable: Georgia’s 2024 seniors have not lost a regular-season game. They’re 38-0 heading to Kentucky. The Bulldogs are 48-2 overall in the past 50 games, which includes 27 consecutive SEC victories.
They said it: “The feedback we get from the NFL is there’s nowhere they’d rather have players than here developing. Countless GMs have told me, ‘The kids that come out of your program are so much better off and developed for having stayed even over playing because of what kind of practice they get and who they get to go against at practice.’ They feel like their best evaluation is when they come to our practice and see guys go against each other. That’s not anything directly at Brock and Pop, not at all. Both those guys were awesome young men, great young men for our program. But just as a whole, asking about transfer-portal stuff.” – Georgia coach Kirby Smart on the transfer portal
