I could have entitled this "why I am confident Georgia wins the national championship", but that was too long. I won't write a novel about this topic but I do have a few thoughts. First off, I hated to see Carson's career at UGA end this way. Sure, I have been critical of him but not for one second would I ever have wanted to see him or Thorson get injured on an absolutely useless play. I know Kirby is being mum about his injury (like he always does), but this is most likely how it ends for Carson unless there's some major miracle to rehab a UCL in 3.5 weeks. I remember when he went down, my phone blew up and several of my dawg buddies were text-yelling at me "you're gonna get what you want! Let's see how you like it now! You wanted Gunner and now you're gonna see why he is #2." I just replied to all of them: "yep. I love our chances."
Here's why I am not freaking out about the Beck injury or the Gunner inexperience. We are not a team that is built solely around the QB. Look at our offense. Does anyone believe it to be top tier? Its not even mid-tier by the statistics. But it is effective at getting done what needs to get done. Kirby has called us a "blue collar team." He said after the SECCG "we just kept going out there day-after-day and chopped wood." This is a great thing, and it removes a tremendous amount of pressure off of Stockton coming into the Sugar Bowl. We don't need any special effort from him like 380 yards and 5 TDs. What we need is an efficient game manager and he more than proved he can be that guy with this squad under the most intense of pressures. The energy I saw out of the entire offensive squad with Gunner behind center was an energy I haven't seen all season. It was like someone plugged them into a wall socket. It had shades and memories of Stequavious Bennett on the field. It was almost like the dam broke and the water flowed again. I think we're going to be just fine. Will there be mistakes? Of course. Gunner made a stupid throw under pressure on a busted hook route right to the robber. But if we can minimize those hard knocks learning experiences, I think we'll be fine.
As others have said, we couldn't have drawn a better bracket to get to Atlanta.