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Georgia football focused on finishing strong

ATHENS — Kirby Smart hates comparisons. He doesn’t want to hear how Branson Robinson is “Baby Chubb” much less how his current team stacks up to the one that won the national championship a season ago.

The team that had 15 players drafted in the 2022 NFL Draft. The one that had a historically great defense, along with elite skill players at running back, wide receiver and tight end.

This Georgia team is different. There’s not so much talk of being elite but of a different team motto.

“Probably grit, toughness. The way they practice, I really like it,” Smart said when asked about the team identity. “They’re really a unique, connected group. A little different than last year’s group. Last year’s group feels like they had been around longer. This group has created a little bit of a identity of how they care for each other, but also the grit and toughness they play with.”

After the previous two games, one thing you can’t call this team is soft. As offensive lineman Broderick Jones told reporters on Wednesday, the team takes pride in its physicality. For as much hand-wringing as the last three games have produced for Georgia, they’ve that when things get tough at the end of games, they get going.

While it would be great to have more games like Oregon or South Carolina where the game is decided by the third quarter, Georgia has shown an ability to wear down opposing teams. To break them.

Much like it did against Alabama in the final quarter of the 2021 season.

“I feel like Coach Kirby does a great job of conditioning us throughout the week, so when the game comes, we are always prepared for all four quarters, 60 minutes, or however long it takes,” Jones said. “That’s always been our mindset from the beginning of the season to this point. We’re just trying to keep it going, keep pushing ourselves to the limit every week to the best in-shape team.”

Smart noted after the Auburn game that it seemed like the Tigers wilted down the stretch. The Georgia coach wasn’t sure if the heat had anything to do with it, but Georgia finished strong as it outscored the Tigers 21-7 in the final quarter. It was a similar case against Missouri when Georgia bested the Tigers 14-3 in the last 15 minutes.

The toughness and grit don’t just extend to the physical aspect of football. This team has also displayed a real mental toughness, something that isn’t always passed down from team-to-team.

Perhaps no player better embodies this than Jamon Dumas-Johnson. By now, you’ve seen or read about the viral discussion he had with Lassiter in the Missouri game. Dumas-Johnson was animated on the sideline, demanding excellence from his teammate.

The sophomore linebacker is not the physical freak that Quay Walker was last season. Nor does he possess Nakobe Dean’s processing speed. But his level of toughness is something that’s championship quality.

“Pop, he’s trying to be a leader and doing whatever he can to help us win, and me, I’m just going to listen to him,” Lassiter said. “He’s the middle linebacker. He makes a lot of the calls, and he’s one of the leaders on this defense. That’s a guy I respect. We came in together, we’ve got a really good relationship, so it’s nothing. It just blew up because of the way it looked, but nobody’s on the field except for us.”

Related: Jamon Dumas-Johnson does it all for Georgia football in win over Auburn: ‘I tip my cap to him’

Dumas-Johnson is just a sophomore linebacker. It’s his first year as a starter. Yet there is a fearlessness with him that inspires those around him.

Smart spoke often about the 2021 team being a player-led one. Dumas-Johnson is showing people what that looks like for this team.

And his fellow teammates respond well to it.

“I love playing with him because he got that same energy and pump that I bring,” Georgia edge rusher Nolan Smith said of Dumas-Johnson. “Sometimes when he yells me and tells me to come off it shocks me because usually I’m the only one doing it that. I love it.”

The 2022 Georgia Bulldogs won’t have 15 draft picks. The defense is still good — they’re giving up 10.4 points per game, just off last season’s mark of 10.2 average — and the offense is slightly statistically better.

But Georgia is currently working its way through the softest portion of its schedule. The Bulldogs are 38-point favorites against Vanderbilt this weekend. Auburn may very well be the worst team in the SEC West.

The November slate, the closing stretch of the regular season, looms large. The first three foes Georgia faces in that month are all currently ranked. Georgia hosts No. 6 Tennessee in a game that could very well decide the SEC East. Then it visits No. 13 Mississippi State and No. 23 Kentucky in the two following weeks.

That is a tough stretch to close out SEC play. One Georgia will need to dig deep and grind its way through.

“We are excited to get out there every day. I think the complacency is out the window,” offensive lineman Xavier Truss said. “We have a lot of guys that are hungry to get out on the field and put in work. Again, this week the main point has been to strike and attack. I think that is a big part of our identity.”

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