{"id":1203,"date":"2026-10-01T18:10:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T22:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/dawg-sports-report-2026-10-01-evening\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T18:10:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T22:10:05","slug":"dawg-sports-report-2026-10-01-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/dawg-sports-report-2026-10-01-evening\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Has Been Close Enough to Argue With"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evening Edition \u2014 filed after the afternoon news cycle.<\/em><\/p>\n

GEORGIA MONEYBALL \u2014 Thursday, October 1, 2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Georgia has yet to play a game within 28 points, and Kirby Smart spent the week insisting Vanderbilt is built to change that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ALBANY, GA \u2014 \u00b7 By the RFA Sports Desk<\/small><\/p>\n

A football town goes quiet in a particular way when the home team keeps winning by too much. Nobody gets nervous and nobody chews a fingernail. The Associated Press put it plainly this week: Georgia is 4-0, 2-0 in the conference, and has not played a game within 28 points. That isn't a season so far. It's a month of fourth quarters spent watching the backups and checking the other scores on your phone while the pimento cheese goes warm.<\/p>\n

Into that comfortable silence walks Vanderbilt, 3-1 and fresh off a 21-15 loss to Auburn. Kirby Smart has never met an opponent he couldn't praise, and he told reporters the Commodores are "a physical football team made in the same mold with a defensive coach as us." He called Clark Lea's bunch "fundamentally sound," with "twitchy guys" on defense. I have been called a good many things in my life, but never twitchy as a compliment.<\/p>\n

\n

The question isn't who wins Saturday; it's whether anybody finally makes Georgia sweat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is where a columnist has to check the arithmetic. Saturday Down South reported that ESPN's Football Power Index moved Georgia to No. 1 after the Oklahoma win. Vanderbilt sits at No. 51 in the same rankings. Dawn of the Dawg reported the line opened at Georgia by 24.5, and this desk has it at twenty-five and a half and calls it a lock. Vanderbilt hasn't beaten Georgia since 2016. Same mold is a lovely sentiment. The numbers suggest the mold came with a rather different budget.<\/p>\n

The best case for a close game is on the injury report. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that running back Nate Frazier, receiver Isiah Canion and outside linebacker Chase Linton are questionable, with Linton upgraded. Tyriq Green, Amaris Williams and Marcus Harrison are out. That's a fair amount of gauze. But this offense is gaining 0.48 points per play, up from 0.42 in 2023, and an offense doesn't get that efficient by leaning on any one fellow.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, down in Gainesville, somebody else was busy winning by too much. Florida ran over fourth-ranked Ole Miss 52-28 in the Swamp, piling up 498 yards, 302 of them on the ground. Jadan Baugh ran for 142 yards and three touchdowns, and Ole Miss tumbled from No. 4 to No. 9 in the AP poll. Georgia people would rather swallow a bumblebee than say anything nice about the Gators, but a team that runs like that deserves a good long look this autumn.<\/p>\n

So on Saturday at 12:45 on the SEC Network, the question isn't who wins. It's whether anybody finally makes Georgia sweat. Smart says the mold is the same. Lea says the week is about "playing the best possible version of Vanderbilt football," which is exactly what a coach ought to say. My advice is to bring something to read for the fourth quarter, and a pencil too, in case this turns out to be the week somebody makes us do the math.<\/p>\n

The Notebook<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • IN IOWA CITY:<\/strong> Iowa beat Michigan 20-19 when Hank Brown threw a 16-yard touchdown to Reece Vander Zee on fourth down with 2 seconds left. It was the Hawkeyes' first win over Michigan since 2016, and it kept them unbeaten at 4-0.<\/li>\n
  • OUT WEST AND UP NORTH:<\/strong> Oregon beat USC 41-27 after Dante Moore left the Coliseum in an ambulance, and backup Dylan Raiola threw for 289 yards and two touchdowns. Wisconsin came back from 17 points down to beat Penn State 24-20, its first win in State College since 2003.<\/li>\n
  • UNDER THE LIGHTS:<\/strong> Georgia's Oct. 10 trip to Alabama kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. It will be the Bulldogs' first night game of the season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Written in the tradition of Lewis Grizzard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1946\u20131994.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Hear the desk read tonights report on Radio Free Albany, WPFQ 96.7.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Evening Edition \u2014 filed after the afternoon news cycle. GEORGIA MONEYBALL \u2014 Thursday, October 1, 2026 Georgia has yet to play a game within 28 points, and Kirby Smart spent the week insisting Vanderbilt is built to change that. ALBANY, GA \u2014 \u00b7 By the RFA Sports Desk A football town goes quiet in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dawg-sports-report","category-georgia-moneyball","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pretoriafieldsradio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}