The Georgia Bulldogs went 11-1 during the regular season last year, making it to a fifth consecutive SEC championship game.

Many key faces from that team return, as the Bulldogs aim for another national championship.

Based on the season prediction by Brad Crawford of CBS Sports, the Bulldogs will be in a spot to do so once again.

In predicting every SEC’s team record for the 2026 season, Crawford had the Bulldogs going 11-1 and 8-1 in conference games.

That mark would put the Bulldogs back in the SEC championship game.

“Sparkling wins over Oklahoma, Alabama and Ole Miss would give the Bulldogs every ingredient the selection committee values in a top-five CFP seed,” Crawford wrote. “You know that Georgia has that matchup with the Rebels circled after what happened in last year’s quarterfinal down in New Orleans. With an 11-win finish, the Bulldogs would own one of the nation’s strongest résumés — likely with multiple wins over ranked opponents — a convincing strength of schedule and enough road-tested credibility to outweigh a single surprising blemish.”

The loss on the schedule, according to Crawford, won’t come against 2025 College Football Playoff participants in Oklahoma, Alabama or Ole Miss.

Crawford has the Nov. 21 game at South Carolina as the game the Bulldogs would drop. Per Crawford’s South Carolina predictions, the Gamecocks would enter that game with a 5-5 record.

Since taking over the Georgia head coaching job, Kirby Smart is undefeated in Columbia, South Carolina. The Bulldogs have won those four games by a combined score of 162-54. Smart is also 3-0 against former Georgia assistant Shane Beamer.

South Carolina did upset Georgia in 2019 when Will Muschamp was the coach. That proved to be Georgia’s only regular-season loss that year.

With an 11-1 record, Crawford does have the Bulldogs returning to the SEC championship game. The CBS Sports writer has the Bulldogs facing the Texas Longhorns, who are also projected to go 11-1.

Crawford does have Georgia losing to Texas, which would be a reversal of the last three times the teams have met. The Bulldogs won all three of those contests, including the 2024 SEC championship game.

Even with the two late-season defeats, Georgia is still safely in Crawford’s projected College Football Playoff field as the No. 5 overall seed.

The challenge for Georgia this year won’t come in the SEC championship game but in advancing deeper into the College Football Playoff. The Bulldogs have lost their first College Football Playoff game in each of the past two seasons, despite winning the SEC.

Smart knows that only winning a conference title will not be good enough.

“Apparently all we can do is win the SEC championship right now, so that’s not good enough, but you know those are good teams,” Smart said in an April interview with Paul Finebaum. “We got beat by the team that we beat. It’s hard to beat a good team twice. They beat us, and Notre Dame was a really good team. I got a lot of respect for them, so we did not play well, and that falls on me.”

Georgia opens the 2026 season on Sept. 5 when it hosts Tennessee State. The game is set for a 3 p.m. ET start.