AP college football Poll reaction – What we’ll learn about teams in
Georgia begins the 2023 college football season in the same place it finished the last two — atop the AP Top 25 poll. The two-time defending champ Bulldogs were a runaway pick for the top spot in the preseason poll.
While the Bulldogs will be breaking in a new quarterback, there aren’t a lot of unanswered questions with Kirby Smart’s squad.
What about for the teams chasing Georgia? No. 2 Michigan looks like it will have coach Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines in September, after he was staring at a four-game suspension. Ohio State and Alabama, like Georgia, will both have new signal callers this year, replacing C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, respectively.
We expect to hear plenty from these teams in November, December and beyond. But what can we learn about them — and the rest of the AP Top 25 — in September? Let’s break it down.
2022 record: 15-0
What we’ll learn about Georgia in September: Given Georgia’s especially soft schedule in September, the first month of the season is about finding this team’s identity after it lost another boatload of players to the NFL draft. After Saturday’s first scrimmage at Sanford Stadium, coach Kirby Smart told his players that they’ve yet to earn anything after the Bulldogs won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022. “We have an extremely long way to go as a football team,” Smart said. “So many people make an assumption off of last year’s team and their accomplishments. I asked this team, after the scrimmage and after we ran, ‘What have you done to deserve anything you have gotten?’ They have done nothing. We have got to get the right guys in the right spot, find the guys that can really compete.” That starts at quarterback, and all signs point to junior Carson Beck taking over for Stetson Bennett. Beck completed 26 of 35 passes for 310 yards with four touchdowns as a backup last season. He has the strongest arm of the contenders and has the edge over Brock Vandagriff and Gunner Stockton. There’s also a new playcaller in…
