Preseason Coaches Poll Top 25: Georgia football begins the season ranked No. 3

Georgia will face four of the nine ranked SEC teams with games against Oklahoma (Sept. 26), No. 11 Alabama (Oct. 10), Ole Miss (Nov. 7) and No. 25 Missouri (Nov. 14). No. 13 LSU and No. 18 Tennessee are the other SEC teams in the poll.

The last time Georgia opened the season as the No. 3 team in the Coaches Poll was 2022. Georgia went undefeated that season, winning the national championship.

The Bulldogs have won the SEC each of the previous two seasons but have been unable to sustain that success in the College Football Playoff.

“I like to look back and say, OK, what did with do well in those games and what did we do poorly and how do we improve on it? That’s no differently than I do Week 5, Week 6, Week 7,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said at SEC media days. “So, I would love to see — and I don’t make this an excuse — but I would love to see the flow of the season go like a football, a week to week, maybe a bye week in there, but a continuous thing. No sport that I know of shuts down for 25 to 30 days between performances (during the postseason).

“We have not had our best performances when we needed them most, and I don’t want to blame it on that.”

Georgia was picked as the preseason SEC champion, edging Texas 88-57 in terms of votes. Georgia placed 12 players on the Preseason All-SEC team, tied with Texas and Oklahoma for the most in the league.

The Bulldogs open the season at home Sept. 5 against Tennessee State. The first AP Poll of the season will be released Aug. 17.

Preseason Coaches Poll Top 25

(Parentheses indicate first-place votes)