Georgia Football 2024 Preview: Kirby Smart's Best Team Yet?

Georgia College Football Preview 2024

2024 Georgia Football Preview
Offense | Defense
Win Total, Predictions, Season Keys
CFN 2024 Preview: All 134 Teams

Going 42-2 with two national titles in three years isn’t good enough?!

Yeah, of course it is, but this year might be different. This really could be Kirby Smart's best Georgia team yet, and it should be so good that the drama element might be missing this time around.

Yeah, 42-2 and two championships are amazing, but Georgia was WAY too close to being the best program going that can't win the big one.

If Ohio State's kick goes straight in the 2022 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, those Buckeyes are hanging 65 almost instantly on TCU in the CFP National Championship.

And how about getting the Horned Frogs instead of Michigan? (Georgia almost certainly beats the Wolverines, but that would've been a whole lot different in LA.)

I’m not totally on board with the thought that Bama wins the 2021 national title over the Dawgs if Jameson Williams doesn’t hurt his knee in Indianapolis, but …

Georgia had its mix of good and bad breaks, but to paraphrase the promo line, they just meant more.

There's a flip side to the big moments to help get two national titles.

Georgia got hit with Tua-to-DeVonta, and it would’ve made a whole lot of noise a year later had it not been for the Justin Fields fake punt call.

Also, count me in on the idea that Georgia might have won it all last season if it got in - and starting in late September, no one believed that Michigan was going to win the national title more than me. Instead, the 12-0 Dawgs lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship and didn’t make it into the College Football Playoff.

(Side rant: lost in all the misguided weeping and gnashing of teeth over Florida State was that Georgia should’ve been fifth, and there was little talk about how it theoretically should’ve received more consideration on a four-best-team basis that’s supposed to be how the CFP rankings are determined, and … sorry. I’ll get there faster.)

That all means that THIS is when Georgia can create the dynasty.

Georgia was really, really close to winning as many as five national championships over the last seven years - it would’ve been in an expanded 12-team CFP all seven seasons if the format was in place - and it was also really, really close to not winning any.

This goes to the NCAA Tournament theory in basketball. All you can reasonably do is send great team after great team to the dance every year, and eventually you get your breaks. Unless, of course, you're this year's men's UConn team, and ... that could and should be 2024 Georgia football.

Best of all, Smart has a heater of a team and a safety-net margin for error.

Georgia can have that one off day among the first 12, and more likely 13 games, and it won't matter. It might not need the help, but it's there in an expanded CFP.

Get in, Georgia, and go into full playoff mode.

Get in, and that’s when the program can turn it up several notches and go all-your-guys-were-still-three-and-four-star-recruits 63-3 vs. Florida State, or 2022 49-3 season-opener over Oregon, or 65-7 on TCU for three straight games in mid-December through late January and win a third national title in four seasons.

This is what this 2024 Georgia program and team are prepared for.

Those near misses, close calls, fortunate breaks, and crushing moments under Smart since he took over in 2016 have led to this.

No program, no staff, no school - not Bama now without Saban, not Ohio State, not Michigan - is more ready to handle what this new style of season will be than Georgia.

Talent-wise, there are the Bulldogs, the Buckeyes, a 75-mile chasm, and then everyone else.

Georgia lost eight players to the 2024 NFL Draft. That’s nothing compared to the ten it lost in 2023 and 15 in 2022.

Carson Beck has become an elite quarterback, just about everyone is back on what might be the nation’s best offensive line, the rest of the skill players are amazing, and the depth is in place and ready to roll in case any of them aren’t.

The defense gets back almost everyone who matters along with a world of great backups, and the kicking game is rock-solid.

Georgia will get into the College Football Playoff, and it’s so good that it should do it without having to deal with that one game that could screw things up. And once you let this year’s team into the party, look out.

And yes, of course, going 42-2 with two national titles in three years is good enough …

Except when it’s 58-2 with three national titles in four years.

2024 Georgia Football Preview
Offense | Defense
Win Total, Predictions, Season Keys
CFN 2024 Preview: All 134 Teams