ATHENS — The football offseason is always filled with unknowns, players pushing themselves to the max, frames filling out with age and maturity.
Competition, position changes, injuries, off-field issues and incidents and now transfers all play a role in team chemistry, as there’s a reaction for every reaction.
Each player, each piece, is part of a team’s DNA, a potential multiplier, divider, addition or subtraction.
RELATED: How Georgia football is winning the offseason
The Georgia Bulldogs have one of the more positive formulas for success in Year Six of Kirby Smart’s tenure as head coach.
Smart has built a successful football culture, the program having proven itself an annual national championship contender that grows and develops players for the NFL as well as in the classroom.
Georgia, like every other program, will and has been tested by the NCAA’s more liberal transfer policy, along with the threat to team chemistry that NIL deals soon figure to pose.
Beyond those sweeping nationwide issues, a deeper drill down into more specific areas reveals Georgia’s biggest offseason questions that have yet to be answered:
1. Dominick Blaylock
Blaylock is the biggest question mark on the injury front, as he has shown the ability to be a game-changer at receiver when healthy. It’s not known how soon he will be cleared to return to practice full-go or play this season.
All the talk last summer of Blaylock being a “fast healer” as he attempted to return just eight months after suffering a torn ACL in the 2019 SEC Championship turned out to be for naught.
Fast healer or not, Blaylock re-injured his left knee — another torn ACL last August — and missed the 2020 season and was still not cleared for spring drills. Blaylock was said to be “on the side running” during spring drills, and at each turn, his rehab has been described as “on schedule.”
2. Brandon Turnage
Will the former Alabama defensive be back in the fold at Georgia this offseason?
Or will Turnage, a former 4-star prospect from Mississippi who was buried on the Tide depth chart, transfer somewhere else where there’s less competition and a quicker path to the starting lineup?
Turnage, who has three years of eligibility left, chose UGA before the Bulldogs added former All-ACC cornerback Derion Kendrick from Clemson. Kendrick is the likely starter opposite of Jalen Kimber, with Ameer Speed and Kelee Ringo also in the fold.
Turnage hasn’t been around the program yet, but when it was reported he wasn’t with the team earlier this month, he sharply responded on social media to: “Relax with the rumors.”
That was on June 6.
Some three weeks later, Turnage is still not on the UGA roster and hasn’t popped up anywhere else.
3. Left tackle
Georgia offensive line coach Matt Luke and Kirby Smart have said from the start the five best linemen will be on the field for the Bulldogs.
Against Clemson’s celebrated defensive front, UGA might want to make sure the most capable left tackle is on the field to protect JT Daniels’ blindside.
The Tigers have four former 5-stars in their defensive line meeting room and is considered by some to have the best defensive line in college football.
The Georgia offensive line, meanwhile, is reloading after losing five starters to the NFL over the past two seasons and shuffling bodies around against Cincinnati in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
Redshirt sophomore Xavier Truss (6-7, 330) was lined up at left tackle in the bowl win over Cincinnati, but rising senior Jamaree Salyer (6-4, 325) was there the previous nine games before moving inside to his more “natural” position at offensive guard.
Second-year freshman Broderick Jones (6-4, 315) is said to have the best feet in the group, and then there is incoming freshman Amarius Mims (6-7, 330), who many believe has the highest ceiling in the group.
Four players, one position, nothing certain at this time. Stay tuned.
