The preseason Coaches Poll was released on Tuesday afternoon, with the Bulldogs coming in as the No. 3 team in the poll.

Ahead of the Bulldogs are Ohio State at No. 1 and Oregon at No. 2. Texas slots in at No. 4 while Notre Dame rounds things out at No. 5. The Bulldogs received seven first-place votes.

Georgia is the highest-ranked of the nine SEC teams in the initial poll. Half of the top 10 is made up of SEC teams, with Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Ole Miss ranking as the No. 8, 9 and 10 teams.

Of the nine ranked SEC teams, Georgia will face four of them. Georgia has games against Oklahoma (Sept. 26), No. 11 Alabama (Oct. 10), Ole Miss (Nov. 7) and No. 25 Missouri (Nov. 14). No. 13 LSU and No. 18 Tennessee are the other SEC teams.

The last time Georgia opened the season as the No. 3 team in the Coaches Poll was 2022. Georgia went undefeated that season, winning the national championship.

The Bulldogs have won the SEC in each of the previous two seasons but have been unable to sustain that success into the College Football Playoff.

“I like to look back and say, OK, what did with do well in those games and what did we do poorly and how do we improve on it? That’s no differently than I do week five, week six, week seven,” Smart said at SEC Media Days. “So I would love to see — and I don’t make this an excuse — but I would love to see the flow of the season go like a football, a week to week, maybe a bye week in there, but a continuous thing. No sport that I know of shuts down for 25 to 30 days between performances.

“We have not had our best performances when we needed them most, and I don’t want to blame it on that.”

Georgia was recently picked as the preseason SEC champion, edging out Texas by an 88-57 margin in terms of votes. Georgia placed 12 players on the Preseason All-SEC team, tied with Texas and Oklahoma for the most in the league.

The Bulldogs open the season on Sept. 5 when Georgia takes on Tennessee State. The first AP Poll of the season will come out on Aug. 17.

You can see the full Preseason Coaches Poll Top 25 for 2026 below.

Coaches Poll Top 25 for 2026 season

(Parentheses indicate first-place votes)