GEORGIA WILL BEAT TROY AND HERE IS WHY...

Georgia enters the game against Troy after the most emotional game played in the Mark Richt era. This is the classic sandwich game with Auburn coming to Athens next Saturday. So, it is easy to speculate that Georgia will play a little flat today and will let Troy hang around and keep it too interesting for our comfort. This is especially a concern if Troy QB Omar Haugabook is able to start and play to his ability despite his hamstring problem. If this scenario comes to pass, look for Georgia to win without covering the spread by a score in the neighborhood of 34-24.

But, I believe that the Troy QB will be limited in production if he is able to play at all. Accordingly, I think the Dawgs defense will not have so much trouble getting the Troy offense off the field and allowing our offense to grind it out with Knowshon Moreno, Jason Johnson and Brannan Southerland running for 300+ yards on the Troy defense. IN the passing game, Georgia will attack the middle of the field with tight ends in the seam and Mohamed Massaquoi on crossing routes. It will be difficult to beat the Troy corners consistently, if at all, but we should be able to work around that when we need to. I expect Tripp Chandler to have a big day. If we end up running the ball 40 times and throwing 20 times, we will win comfortably.

I really hope that our defense continues its aggressive, hard-nosed play that we saw last Saturday. Rennie Curran and Danell Ellerbe should have lots of tackles if they scheme the Troy spread well and the front four do what they did against the Gators spread.

The X-factor in this game is Troy punt returner, Leodis McKelvin, who leads the nation in punt returns with a 21 yard average. We do not need to allow him to break one on us. Instead, we need a healthy Mikey Henderson to break his first punt return for a TD of the season this week.

I want to see the Dawgs take the opening kickoff and drive the length of the field with all running plays like last week. I want to see the Dawgs get enough of a lead that Knowshon can get a lot of rest and Jason Johnson can get 100 yards rushing.

DAWGS 38 - TROY 17.