Georgia Moneyball

Kirby Smart spent the week praising Alabama’s quarterback like a man who’d watched rather a lot of film, and the Georgia defense now has to catch the fellow he described.

Kirby Smart called the trip to Tuscaloosa a brand game, and by Friday the betting line had quietly changed sides.

Updated game-day morning: Isaias came ashore Friday night and is fading over Alabama. Tuscaloosa gets a wet, gusty kickoff; Albany still has a Flood Watch. Plus who’s out, and the line moved overnight.

Chauncey Bowens, Georgia’s goal-line hammer, is out for Tuscaloosa, and the last yard on Saturday night now belongs to somebody else.

Five games in, the Bulldogs’ run game has been stopped at or behind the line on 12 of 147 designed runs. The margin over opponents, though, has narrowed every week. Next up: Tuscaloosa.

Sophomore Rasean Dinkins got his first start at strong safety against Vanderbilt, and his second exam is Keelon Russell in Tuscaloosa on a Saturday night.

Georgia and Alabama arrive Saturday with the two highest-scoring offenses in the country, and the old idea of a nice 13-10 rock fight has been taken out back and retired.

Georgia hasn’t won at Bryant-Denny since 2007, and the Bulldogs who’ll try to end that streak on Saturday seem to find all the history a little tiresome.

With rain and wind in the Tuscaloosa forecast and Alabama favored by a point and a half, the Bulldog who matters most on Saturday may be the one who is on the field the least.

Kirby Smart opened Alabama week by praising Keelon Russell, and after what happened in Starkville on Saturday, nobody in Athens could call it idle flattery.