Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low
Any team that wins a championship, and certainly the SEC championship, has to have two things -- some luck and the ability to overcome and improvise.
Georgia's luck to this point has been terrible. We'll find out how well the Bulldogs overcome.
The loss of starting left offensive tackle Trinton Sturdivant to a season-ending knee injury is a crushing blow. He's Georgia's best offensive lineman, and he also protected quarterback Matthew Stafford's blind side.
On offense, left tackles and quarterbacks are usually the hardest players to replace.
What the Bulldogs do from here remains to be seen. They have a couple of different options. The long-term solution is probably freshman Cordy Glenn. The Georgia coaches really like what he's shown to this point.
They could also move Kiante Tripp from right tackle to left tackle and play Josh Davis at right tackle. Davis, a third-year sophomore, had been working as Sturdivant's backup at left tackle.
One other possibility might be moving guard Clint Boling out to tackle, although Boling is a little light, and play redshirt freshman Justin Anderson at Boling's guard spot. Boling, though, is suspended for the first game.
The Bulldogs have worked hard to build depth in the offensive line, which is one thing they have going for them. The other thing is offensive line coach Stacy Searels, who in his first season on the Georgia staff last year took an offensive line with three freshmen and made it work to the tune of 11 wins and a Sugar Bowl victory. Searels, a member of Nick Saban's staff at LSU when the Tigers won the 2003 national title, has quietly become one of the best offensive line coaches in the business. I say quietly because he doesn't talk to the media.
That's probably a good thing now, because he has his work cut out, as does the entire Georgia team.
All the arrests in the offseason were a distraction, but the dawning of preseason camp sort of fixes that. Losing one of your best players, though, a week or so into camp makes an already difficult road for the preseason No. 1-ranked Bulldogs that much more treacherous.
Sophomore linebacker Rennie Curran probably said it best when I was in Athens last week.
"Everybody's shooting for you when you start out on top. We know that," Curran said. "But it's what we do that matters. This is why we came here. This is what we wanted, and we know nobody's going to give us nothing. It's up to us to take it."
Chris Low joined ESPN.com in 2007 after 10 years with The (Nashville) Tennessean covering the University of Tennessee and SEC. The Rock Hill, S.C., native lives with his wife in Knoxville and has three sons.
