Georgia football returns 10 starters from a team that came oh so close from making a trip to the College Football Playoff last year.
Unfortunately, the Dawgs ran into eventual national champ LSU in the SEC Championship and there was never really a question as to how that game was going to go.
But with 10 returning starters, the Dawgs are primed to make another run at the SEC Championship and hopefully the CFP.
With the returning talent that Georgia has, it puts the Bulldogs at 59th in the country according to Bill Connely of ESPN, who ranked the college football teams with the most returning production in 2020.
The offense returns 50% of its production (different than starters), which is 98th overall. The defense returns 80% production, good for 21st in America.
Connely explained how he differentiates returning production from returning starters.
I have for a few years been deriving what I call a team’s returning production percentage as an alternative to returning starters. It looks at the most predictive key personnel stats — percentage of your QB’s passing yards returning, percentage of your secondary’s passes defensed returning, and everything in between — and is weighted based on what correlates most strongly with year-to-year improvement and regression. It is a major factor in my annual SP+ projections, which will be released next week. (The other primary factors: recent recruiting and weighted five-year history.)
With 80% of production returning to a defense that ranked No. 1 in America last year, the Dawgs will be making life difficult for opposing offense next season. The losses of safety J.R. Reed, defensive tackle Michael Barnett, defensive linemen David Marshall and Tyler Clark and linebacker Tae Crowder hurt, but with the way Kirby Smart has been recruiting for the past three years, the defense will be just fine, likely even better, next season.
In terms of returning starters, Dawgs247 searched through players who started seven or more games in 2019 and came up with this list of returning defensive starters:
NG Jordan Davis
DE Malik Herring
OLB Azeez Ojulari
ILB Monty Rice
CB Eric Stokes
DB Mark Webb
DB DJ Daniel
S Richard LeCounte
The offensive guys include center Trey Hill and versatile offensive lineman Ben Cleveland.
There’s also George Pickens coming back, who was not on 247’s list as a result of their criteria, but he may make a bigger impact on offense than any returning player next season.
Back to ESPN’s list of returning production — regarding total production returning to the program, here are some notable rankings throughout college football:
(Out of 130 teams)
2. Georgia Tech
32. South Carolina
50. Tennessee
59. Georgia
61. Florida
78. Auburn
126. LSU
127. Alabama