Georgia Cannot Afford to Lose Gurley

I can’t emphasize this enough: Georgia cannot afford to lose Todd Gurley.

Whatever success they were expecting this season is ultimately tied to the best player in college football, whether they realized it or not.

Through its first five games, the strength of the Bulldogs’ offense has been the running game, as they continue to ease longtime backup Hutson Mason into filling SEC all-time passing leader Aaron Murray’s shoes.

And in those five games, Gurley has been nothing short of spectacular. He has been the spark that makes Georgia’s offense go. Without him, it’s hard to see that unit performing well down the stretch.

In their four games against SEC competition and Clemson (we’re excluding Troy because Gurley was out by halftime and Georgia won 66-0), the Bulldogs averaged 437 yards of total offense per game.

In those games, Todd Gurley averaged 201 yards of total offense. That’s good for 46 percent of Georgia’s offense.

Georgia scored 18 offensive touchdowns in those games; Gurley had eight of them. Against Clemson, Georgia had its only kickoff return for touchdown. Guess who ran it back.

From the start of his career, Todd Gurley has been dazzling us with stunning displays of power, speed, quickness, and angry, downhill running. He can do it all: run, catch, and even throw.

All that’s missing from his stat line now is a field goal.

He’s the best running back in the nation, maybe even the best player, and Georgia’s chances of winning the SEC East drop dramatically without him.

If Gurley were to miss significant time this season, Georgia has Nick Chubb and Sony Michel waiting to take over backfield duties. The problem is that they’re both freshmen.

Both young men have run for roughly 230 yards this season, but they’ve only combined to carry the ball 54 times. Gurley has 94 carries on the year by himself.

And that number is skewed by the fact that Gurley only carried the ball six times against Troy, while Michel had 155 yards on ten carries.

These two freshmen are very talented, but they aren’t Todd Gurley.

So Georgia will just lean more on the passing game, right? If they do, I’m not so sure how far that’ll get them.

In his five games as starter, Hutson Mason has been rather underwhelming. He’s completing 68 percent of his passes, and has thrown seven touchdowns against three interceptions, but he’s only throwing for 137 yards a game and has yet to complete a pass longer than 44 yards.

He hasn’t shown a propensity for making plays downfield, and hasn’t shown that he can be trusted to win a game for Georgia.

His best performance of the season was a 191-yard outing with two touchdowns against South Carolina, but the Bulldogs lost that game because they couldn’t come up with a score at the end of the fourth quarter.

Mason got them close, but couldn’t close the deal.

Is Georgia hopeless without Todd Gurley? Of course not. For all we know, one of those freshman running backs in Athens is even better than Gurley, he just hasn’t been let loose yet. I find that extremely unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

But he has proven time and time again to be a difference maker for Georgia, and they’ve come to rely on his big play ability.

It’s time for Hutson Mason to step up and rally this team behind him. If they lose tomorrow against Missouri, their East title chances take a significant dip.

The best case scenario for Georgia now is that Gurley will only miss a couple of games.

Because if they lose Todd Gurley, they lose their game-breaker. They lose their superstar, and they lose the key piece to their championship run.

And that pass Gurley completed? It was Georgia’s longest of the season.