ATHENS — College football was turned upside down on Saturday when five of the seven highest-ranked teams — including the SEC’s top three — all lost.

“I think you’re going to see more of that,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said at his Tuesday press conference during the Bulldogs’ bye week.

Miami, the third program to be ranked No. 1 in as many weeks, narrowly escaped losing to an unranked Florida State team at home, and No. 3 Ohio State announced it expects to be without its starting quarterback the rest of the season.

Georgia, on the heels of its first loss to an unranked team in seven years, is watching the health of its playmaking All-American safety KJ Bolden after he missed the last game and looks to be without TD-leading tailback Chauncey Bowens for the foreseeable future.

This, with a game against a Florida team riding the momentum of a Top 10 upset on deck on Oct. 31 followed by a road trip to face a No. 7 Ole Miss team coming off a dominant 31-3 home win in a top-15 matchup with Missouri.

Smart is like everyone else in the respect he doesn’t know how the 12-team College Football Playoff field will shake out or who might ultimately win.

“It’s actually going to be who deals with (adversity) best,” Smart said. “Who can manage and deal with this best?

“You can say that teams used to having three, four five losses deal with it better than a team that’s used to having one, two or three losses …. we have to do a good job of managing it because the margins are just tighter.”

To that end, Smart said Georgia looks to “get better incrementally” during the bye week “and gain inches when the margins are tighter, (and) the inches are everywhere.”

It was surely no coincidence that Smart chose transfers Khalil Barnes and London Humphreys as the two leadership representatives to talk to the media and share the bye week narrative of recovering from the shocking loss to Auburn.

Humphreys, who has been in the UGA program since 2023 after escaping a Vanderbilt program that was 2-10 and 0-8 in SEC play his final season there, stressed personal accountability and focus.

“We all see the final scores, too, like everyone else, but we just have to worry about ourselves,” Humphreys said, sounding and looking more like a future CEO than a football player at the podium.

“There’s too much going on outside of this facility to worry about, so as long as we focus on ourselves, our day-to-day schedules, then we’re going to be alright and we’re going to continue to get better.”

Barnes, a charismatic defensive back who has revelled in his return back home after signing with Clemson out of North Oconee High School, stressed the immediacy needed at this point of the season.

“A bye week is still a week that you’re either going to win or you’re going to lose,” Barnes said. “And I think the most growth in a season can sometimes happen through a bye week.”

Barnes said that, as sour as the taste of a loss will be, Georgia players must continue to trust and embrace the process.

“The same as every other week …. before that game, we had six really good ball games we were able to win,” Barnes said. “So you kind of take that loss, everything that comes with it, Sunday, you have that recovery day, and then by Monday, you’re focused on what’s next.

“it sucks because you got to kind of sit on the loss for not just this week, but next week …. But we also understand we got five more opportunities to do exactly what we want to do. We can still do everything that we want to achieve this season.”