ATHENS — Georgia knew its plan going into Saturday’s game against Tennessee.

The defense was going to be successful so long as it didn’t give up explosive plays in the back end.

By that metric, it was not a successful day for the Georgia defense. The Bulldogs gave up touchdown passes of 32, 56 and 72 yards on Saturday. Using Georgia’s own standard of an explosive pass play, Georgia surrendered six pass plays of 16 yards or more.

“When you get the ball thrown over your head and give up explosives, you don’t play well. It pretty much comes down to that,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “There’s 35, 40 plays in the game — there’s 35, 40 plays in a window of the game where we were in control of the game defensively, but it didn’t start that way and it wasn’t that way late when we gave up the explosives. So there’s good and bad. But I mean, all those DBs, they’ve all made that play before, but they didn’t make it when we had to make it.”

Tennessee opened the game by scoring touchdowns on its first three drives of the game.

It wasn’t just one defensive back repeatedly getting picked on. It was a collective effort, as Ellis Robinson, Daniel Harris and JaCorey Thomas all got beat deep.

Smart relayed this week that now is not the time for Georgia to begin focusing on playing the ball while in the air. It’s something Georgia works on year-round, as there are drills to help improve in that area.

“It’s not like we go, ‘Oh gosh, we’ve got a problem, let’s fix it.’ That’s a daily must,” Smart said. One of the three characteristics of defensive backs that you must have is play the ball in the deep part of the field. And it’s a critical factor, and it can be improved. Some people are inherently better than others at it, and we try to put them in those situations every day. I mean, you can’t do that enough to simulate it.”

The explosive plays are the most concerning area of the defense, especially with Alabama coming to town on the other side of the off week. The Crimson Tide have the No. 2 passing offense in the SEC, led by receivers Ryan Williams and Germie Bernard.

Williams won the matchup last year between these two schools, as he had the game-winning score on a 75-yard touchdown catch and run. The issues on that play looked similar to what happened to Georgia this past Saturday.

“You know, there was nothing they were doing,” safety KJ Bolden said of Saturday’s game. “It was something we were just killing ourselves. So we just kind of told ourselves, you stay composed, you know, coach Smart on the sideline. Always make sure we calm down, stay composed. Just look at our keys, and everybody just trust each other and do your job.”

Georgia’s defense did make adjustments, picking up some wins during the second and third quarters of the game. After scoring on the first three possessions of the game, Tennessee didn’t score again until its final drive of the third quarter, when Harris was bested by Chris Brazzell for a 56-yard touchdown.

On the most important drive of the game, Georgia’s secondary forced two incompletions in overtime to limit Tennessee to a field goal.

“They believe, and they’re a confident group,” Smart said on Saturday. “Now, we’ve got to play smarter. But, look, that’s a hard game to prep for. We worked the hell out of our guys to get ready for that game. We probably overworked those guys. It came down to things that we didn’t not execute. We got beaten over top or didn’t make a play. It was frustrating because I thought we would play better defensively.”

Georgia’s defensive backs, not just Robinson and Harris, are going to find themselves in single coverage again at some point this season. The ball will be in the air and they’ll be asked to make a play on it.

They won’t always need to come down with interceptions as Bolden and Joenel Aguero did on Saturday.

But the Georgia secondary knows it has to play better moving forward so as to not need 44 points and overtime to win.

“There’s probably more bad than good, obviously, but they’re not things that aren’t correctable,” Smart said. “There’s some eye control things.”