ATHENS — There’s an old saying that, “what got you here won’t get you there,” and that applies to this Georgia football team.

The No. 5-ranked Bulldogs, who are idle this Saturday, need to tweak the formula that has led them to a 6-1 overall mark and 4-1 record in the SEC.

It’s not complicated: Georgia needs to start games faster.

Smart, no doubt, has plenty of film cut-ups to keep his team humble and hungry during the bye week, even as the fan base rallies around another top 5 ranking and marquee victory.

Smart keeps things as real as any head coach when talking about his team and was in midseason form ,moments after scoring a 43-35 win over Ole Miss last Saturday.

“Your question is, are we a fourth-quarter team? I mean, we have to be because we’re behind,” said Smart, whose team has trailed at halftime in four of the five SEC games it has played — as well as being behind in three of them entering the fourth quarter.

It’s important the takeaway resonates: This isn’t the Georgia team of 2021, 2022 or even 2023 that ran through the SEC schedules those seasons unbeaten.

There won’t be 15, 13 or maybe even 10 players selected off this Georgia team in the next NFL draft.

It’s also fair to wonder if UGA currently has a bona fide first-round pick, even if CJ Allen and Zachariah Branch are having All-American seasons.

Smart has called out the elephant in the room more than once, very aware the Bulldogs have led at halftime in only one of the past 11 games against Power 4 competition.

“You know, we’ve got to find a way to play better earlier,” Smart said. “I’ve always felt like we’ve got good fourth-quarter teams. We’ve always been a good, physical win-the-game-in-the-fourth-quarter team.”

Things have been different the past year playing from behind and coming out of the locker room after halftime tied or trailing against relevant opponents.

“We just have had so many leads in the fourth quarter (in previous seasons) because we have been better than everybody else,” Smart said. “We’ve had this distance and this margin that the game didn’t come down to one little thing.

“Our margins are smaller. The margins are tight everywhere.”

Indeed, and that has accentuated Gunner Stockton’s clutch plays and the Georgia coaching staff’s process-driven preparation and in-game adjustments and play calls.

A look at the defensive stop rate, through ESPN’s advanced metrics, reveals why it’s too early to celebrate the 2025 Georgia football season.

If the standard is playing in the SEC championship game — Smart’s teams have done so seven of the past eight seasons and are the defending champs — more hurdles must be cleared.

Also, the success to this point of the season must be qualified.

Georgia could be undefeated if not for a couple of plays in the 24-21 loss to Alabama.

But it’s also fair to suggest the Bulldogs could have as many as three losses if a few plays turned out differently in wins over Tennessee, Auburn and Ole Miss.

The Georgia defense, which has come under scrutiny for its uncharacteristic lack of success pressuring quarterbacks (last in the SEC and 120th in the nation with eight sacks), remains a work in progress.

This, even though the Bulldogs rank eighth in the SEC and 36th in the nation with a 66.1% “stop rate” — which is a measure of a defense’s drives that end in punts, turnovers or turnovers on downs.

Texas, one of five opponents remaining on Georgia’s regular-season schedule, leads the SEC and ranks third in the nation with an 81.7% stop rate.

Alabama, third in the SEC and 16th in the nation, has a 72.3% stop rate.

Auburn has the highest defensive stop rate of the teams the Bulldogs have beaten — 66.7%, seventh in the SEC and 34th in the country.

The stop rates for the other Football Bowl Subdivision teams Georgia has topped this season:

A look at what’s ahead for the Bulldogs suggests Smart is very much on point when emphasizing the need for faster starts as better defenses, with better stop rates, are ahead on the schedule:

The Bulldogs’ offense, for all its late-game heroics, remains largely mediocre, from a statistical standpoint:

“The one thing we are, we’re hard to kill,” Smart said of his team’s ability to overcome its shortcomings this season.

“We won’t go away, (but) we’ve got to keep getting better.”