First, a blessing for your Wednesday blogging experience.
It’s nice to relive some of those memories, albeit they weren’t that long ago. But for today’s Wednesday Wondering…
How will you remember the 2025 Georgia Football season? Was it a success or a failure, or about what you expected?
Discuss.
Itās going to be hard to look at it as anything but at least a partial disappointment. Glad we get a banner to hang, but any time you start to describe the season to anyone itās going to be caveated with āthat was that weird Indiana year and we blew it in the playoffs.ā
I would say itās gonna feel a little like 2012, but thatās not exactly right. Our recent titles take away some of the sting of that blown opportunity. Moreover, if there is a long-term legacy for this year it will be that we finally vanquished the Alabama problem. Part of that will be determined by what we do in Tuscaloosa next fall. If we lose that one, it takes some of the shine off of this season.
Also, a weird quirk: we beat every team we played this season. How are you supposed to feel about that in a year that ends in the quarterfinals. The way theyāre changing the sport makes it feel a lot less like college football any more.
In this Hogbody’s humble opinion, we somewhat outperformed preseason expectations. Feel free to disagree.
I agree with you Hogbody. Despite the disappointing end, most people didn’t expect us to be here before the season started. And honestly, I’m going to miss this team. I’m glad we have Gunner and Nate back, but damn, Zach Branch was fun to watch. Going to miss Delp and Thorson too.
I also agree with you, Hogbody. It sucks to lose to Ole Miss in the tournament, but their QB was playing video game football.
My weird take is also this season wasn’t much different from last season. Last season I was more disappointed in that we had an older team and a veteran QB and fell short. This year, with a lot of younger players, but all our hard games at home, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t betting on an SEC championship.
So, overall, I’m happy and think we mildly overperformed. I’m excited about next season and think we are better. Hopefully, that translates into better on-field results.
Agree, Hog. My season started thinking we have a good team with a lot to learn, but not national champion caliber. Halfway through the season I thought “ya know, we might still not win a natty, but if this team can backdoor it’s way into the SEC final, there’s nobody in the league that can beat us.” Then hell, by the end of the season, this might be the best Cinderella story to win the natty.
It was a successful season in my book. We beat every team we played and won the SEC with a first year starter at QB. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel as rewarding as it would have in the past because of the structure of college football with the 12 team playoff.
If it had stayed at 4 teams I think the season feels different because you are less likely to have a rematch against a team you already beat and I think you are less likely to feel like you wasted an opportunity since you start in the semi-finals of the CFP. I feel like the 12 team is so much more of a crap shoot and prefer the 4 team format.
I canāt ever be disappointed with a team that wins the SEC Championship.
I have a real dichotomy of emotions towards this team. After the UT game I thought we had no shot at the playoffs. After the second bama game I believed they could beat anyone.
The team that came back after the playoff layoff was not the same. They were not that red hot on a roll team.
The final game was very disappointing they could have won more. Given how young many of the key players were. Itās easy to make a case the 2025 team over achieved. There it is hang the banner itās going to be a long summer.
Zero expectations, due mainly to the fact “shit happens”, as the season unfolded with highs n lows, that roster management revolving door proved hard to overcome, maintaining continuity vs sec competition was a bitch, week in, week out…as the season ended, it showed the glaring issues for addressing moving forward…”the process” is alive and well at UGA football, that nil doesn’t make the trip fun…GO DAWGS!!
I canāt look at it as a failure. But it does have a what could have been feel. There is just no reason we should have lost that game to Ole Miss. if itās not driving Kirby nuts that he got out coached by freaking Pete Golding then Kirby aint who I thought he was.
This is a fair, balanced comment.
I don’t think you can reasonably attribute the way Chambliss played in that game to Golding’s coaching. Not to say that we didn’t have any questionable coaching calls, but if Chambliss had played like a mere mortal, we would have won that game.
Good QB’s always decide to finally go supernova when playing us in big games. It’s a curse apparently.
Thatās fair. Kirby kind of outcoached himself in a way. Got conservative when he should have been aggressive and aggressive when he should have been conservative. Iām sure it bothers him way worse than itās bothering me.
Maybe you should call up Kirby and tell him when he is being too conservative. Am I doing this right Derek?
Yeah when me and Kirby get together and go turkey hunting this spring Iāll tell him then.
No. I could explain again to you but you wouldnāt understand.
As for the many others here who are capable, an in game decision here or there is something that we all could credibly challenge/criticize. Not you of course, but others.
As an example Iāve said and remain convinced that the fake punt vs bama in 2018 was the dumbest shit ever.
That criticism is a far cry from: i know who our defensive coordinator should be in 2026 and Kirby doesnāt.
Feel free to mangle, misunderstand, mischaracterize, conflate, abuse and misstate the distinction between an isolated play call and our capacity as fans to reasonably and rationally address matters such as staffing decisions.
That those who make these pronouncements also canāt see any light between the two types of decisions tells us all we really need to know.
Mike, you take me turkey hunting and I’ll take you spring Striper fishing at Clark Hill. Fair trade
Stroker Ace, I completely agree with you. 1000% it was a winnable game and as disappointed as I feel about the outcome, I’m sure that CKS feels worse but I also like what he’s done in the aftermath. Rather than panic and go crazy in the portal, he sees this teams youth and retains all the talent for next year and going to keep building and make incremental gains. There is a lot of potential for the ’26 Dawgs.
Yep. The only thing I wish could have gone different as far as the portal is it would have been great to have gotten the Richardson kid. It would have been like Branch never left.
Pre Kirby, a success.
Now, a disappointment.
Losing that cfp game against Ole Miss was a debacle & very un Georgia like to me.
Still & always, a Dawg disciple
Considering some of the struggles we had on either side of the ball throughout the season, I think the team overperformed. After barely escaping Knoxville with a win then losing to Bama at home, I thought we might lose another regular season game or two. But going on to win 12 games including the SEC championship, beating all our traditional rivals along the way, it’s hard for me to see that as a disappointment.
I will ask rhetorical questions.
Those of us who are old enough, was the 1976 SEC championship season disappointing because we lost in the Sugar Bowl or do any of you bought and still have “Georgia Bulldogs 1976 Champions” memorabilia? (I still display mine.) Going further back, in the third week of January 1969 did anyone say the 1968 SEC Champions were a disappointment? Anyone moan and groan about the 2002 SEC Champions being a disappointment because they didn’t get a crystal football in January 2003?
I get that for some of you players getting paid or having the right to transfer affects your enjoyment of the college game. For me what I hate the most is the obsession fans have with ESPN’S “Dancing With the Stars” inspired erzats tournament and how having a great regular season and a conference championship without the ugly throphy is a disappointment.
Giving an actual answer to your rhetorical question:
I was in school for the 2002 season. It was amazing and I celebrated it. I still have a poster up in my garage with the team photo from the Sugar Bowl and the ticket stubs from every game. I have a DVD somewhere of the season highlights and if you look closely during the Auburn game you can find me on it. I have a framed AJC page from the same game where Iām in the middle of the student section celebrating.
But that Florida game also burnsā¦hard. Some of those Alabama games along the way were real gut punches, but Iām not sure any of them hurt as much as that 2002 Florida game because they were every bit the nemesis back then that Alabama has been since Saban arrived. I can only imagine how much more disappointed it would have been if that SECCG was followed up by a flat loss to Washington Texas in the Sugar Bowl after they got the tune-up against a weak FSU squad.
2002 was a great season AND the loss to UF struck a really sour note in the middle of it. Both of these things are true. However, when we pulled the Auburn game out of our collective ass, I figured that was more than a mulligan for the bed shitting in J’ville. I haven’t obsessed over the loss since (though in my nightmares, I still see George Foster humping a Florida defender in plain sight of the officials).
Had Ohio State or Miami lost a game along the way and that Florida game was what kept us out of the BCSCG, it would be a lot more traumatic. The thing that makes it easier is knowing we were going to be shut out of that game even if we went undefeated. The national media was enamored with Ohio State and Tressell squeaking out close games that year and Miamiās brand was just way too strong at this point to drop below us in the rankings.
The cardiac kids? This team likely gave me an ulcer, but it sure was fun getting those close wins at UT, AU and of course in Jacksonville. One of Kirby’s best coaching jobs IMO because this team was so young. As a fan I feel pretty damn content. Not at all disappointed after a great season and SEC title. Hated to lose in the playoffs when we did, but TBH I do not think we could have handled Miami (Gunner would have been killed) or Indy with our young pups. If we can keep them together though…look out.
I agree with everything you said except characterizing the win against Florida as “close”. It was only close on the scoreboard because of Kirby’s weird obsession against scoring late in games and giving the ball back to the other team. I mark the 2025 Cocktail Party as a 31-20 win for the Dawgs.
Before the season, I thought you better get us early because this talented but young team will grow up over the year. I said in a small work pool I participate in that Georgia would go 11-1 and avenge our only regular season loss in Atlanta. The only thing I got wrong about that was I had it as Texas rather than Alabama.
Winning the SEC championship is the mark of a great season. When that no longer matters, it likely tells me Iām done with the sport. We paid a significant cost to get there with losing Drew Bobo and Gabe Harris.
Do I wish we had gone deeper in the playoff? Yep, but Iām not going to let that affect my enjoyment in how we ripped Tennesseeās heart out in Knoxville, how we got off the deck in Auburn, how we played Lucy to Florida as Charlie Brown in Jacksonville, how we roared back against Ole Miss and what how we dominated Texas and the Archduke in Athens, how we crushed Fechās hopes in Atlanta, and how we manhandled Alabama a week later in Atlanta.
Would I like to be heading to Athens on Saturday (although it would probably be the next Saturday given the forecast) for a parade down Lumpkin and a celebration in Sanford? Yes, but if you decide a lack of a national title is going to affect your perspective of what this season was, I canāt help you.
If Kirby can keep this team together and focused, I really like where we are heading.
We lost two games by a total of 8 points. We won the SEC. We entered the post-season tourney at the #3 seed.
We regained our identity of rtdb and stopping the run. We played hard every week.
We werenāt extremely talented/experienced. We were a very young team. We also had lots of injuries to overcome.
Iāll take it. Weāre going to have to accept that the controllable is the regular season/seccg.
Everything after that is going to be a crap shoot. You canāt let success/failure of a season rest on the results of a bullshit post-season tournament.
The team that finished 3rd in the acc was a couple of plays away from winning that thing. They lost to unranked SMU and unranked NC State. I think we had a better season than Miami.
Iām not going to let the results of a bastardized post-season money grab, that I hate, make me question whether we had a good year.
Iām not disappointed in the year. The only thing a head coach can do is build a team that has a legit shot at the title . Kirbyās has done that for 9 straight years. SEC title, some great fun games to watch, knowing weāll be in the thick of things next year. Hell yeah, Iām good.
Extreme highs and lows this year. Have to choose to focus on the highs and not let the playoff ruin my perspective. Itās great to be a Georgia Bulldog.
Didnāt like the end, BUT no matter how high Kirby sets the bar, I will always be happy with a season in which we beat Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Texas, and Tech. Plus the Bama win was a beat down for the SEC crown! Damn good year!
The ass whipping they put on Bama in the SECCG alone made this season a success.
Huge success! Proud of this comeback cardiac team. 2 losses were the preseason assumption and no SECCG game. Instead, made it and got sweet revenge with a complete ass-whipping of Bama. Fine if we had walked off into the sunset then. As my good pen pal Derek notes, we can no longer evaluate a season by the random shenanigans of Disneyās post-season invitational debacle. Didnāt even have the 12 best in it. Who thinks we could have played better with a full on scrimmage against JMU? This was a great season and getting to see us whip Texas at home was all the better.
Them Dawgs was Hell!
Oh andā¦.FIRE BOBO!11!!!1
I will forever remember that if you play well enough to get a Bye, you are screwed 1-7. Please let us have to play them all next year.
I really didn’t know what to expect this year with such a young team. I would say that we overachieved, but winning the SEC meant less to me now that we’re in the land of “CFP National Champions or bust”, which is sad, but it’s the world that we live in now.
I donāt give a damn what the national media like Pretty Boy Herbstreit, Herbstreit Lite Klatt, Stewart Mandel, Dennis Dodd and PAWWWWLLLL (yes, F-bum is part of the national media now) tells me I should think.
This was a fun team to watch, and that’s largely how I will remember the season. They never gave up, there was a lot of growth in the younger players, and through my dawg-tinted glasses, it seemed they all liked one another and enjoyed playing together.
Success – won the SEC (and stomped Alabama while doing it), beat all our rivals, team played hard and (mostly) well throughout, was entertaining, but breaks just didn’t fall our way at the very end….
I will say a success. SEC Champions, back-to-back mind you, and I personally don’t care about the tournament.
I will care when it actually means something to get into it.
Kdawg05
Congregation say Amen!
I have 3 lasting memories of the 2025 Dawgs:
– Stockton to Humphries in Knoxville
– Auburn fumbling at the goal line
– Kicking Alabamaās ass for the SEC
12-2 with a conference championship is a successful season.
A success.
We are the motherfucking SEC champsā¦ and earned that champ banner on the field and not by a circle jerk espn appointed committee in some conference room stocked with cucumber water and carrot sticks.
ā26 is going to be a reckoning for those standing in Kirbyās & his companions way. Pity those fools.
Hard to write off 12-2 and a 2nd straight SEC title as a bad year. Kept winning streaks going against handbags, war tiger plainsmen and the Vowels. Won third time in two years vs. the insufferable team from Austin. Finally got off the schneid and kicked Bama’s ass in championship play. Despite the shitty end to the season, there were many, many moments of satisfaction produced by these guys. A UGA fan transported from 1995 to 2025 would kill for a season like this!
2025 – The year we wasted an easy national title because Kirby refuses to hire an elite OC, and doesn’t hold his coaches to the same standard as his players.
Will he learn from it?
We shall see….
Otherwise, tons of good.
SEC champs.
Possibly a huge, important win over Bama.
Beat our rivals.
Good year, but also a little sad because of the missed opportunity. Who knows how many more will come – especially in this wild NIL portal era.