How will Georgia run an SEC gauntlet without Brock Bowers?

The thing about cocktail parties is, you never quite know when one’s going to go sideways. Maybe all the guests behave, maybe everyone handles their libations just fine … but maybe, just maybe, someone has a few too many and starts spouting uncomfortable truths, revealing secrets, upending the entire affair and causing rifts that can take years to repair.

They don’t call Georgia-Florida (or Florida-Georgia, depending on what side of the state line you’re on) “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” anymore, but the vibe remains: Whichever program is riding high looks forward to grinding the other one into the Jacksonville mud, whichever one is on the downswing relishes the chance to wreck the other team’s season.

“Every year for both teams, this is one of the games that is circled on each one of our schedules,” Georgia defensive back Kamari Lassiter said earlier this week. “It means a lot to both teams.”

Or dynasty. The Bulldogs haven’t lost a game in nearly two full years. Despite losing Heisman finalist and 12th-year senior Stetson Bennett, they’re still a pristine 7-0. Offensive Yoda Todd Monken departed Athens for the Baltimore Ravens, and Georgia’s per-game scoring has dropped from 41.1 last year to … 40.1.

In the series, Georgia leads Florida 54-44-2. The Bulldogs have won five of the last six against the Gators. Every metric favors Georgia … which is exactly what worries Kirby Smart, who’s spent the last year and a half warning Georgia and its fans against complacency. Teams begin to think that victories are foregone conclusions rather than earned every week. Fan bases begin to gripe that the ballclub doesn’t have that same fire. And all the while, the enemy gains strength and lies in wait.

Georgia will be without Brock Bowers (19) for this year’s Florida game. (James Gilbert/Getty Images)

This year, Georgia-Florida isn’t just important in itself, but because of what it represents — the sternest in-season test the Bulldogs have yet faced during their two-plus-year championship run. A Georgia schedule once derided as whipped cream atop a cupcake has suddenly toughened up.

After this week, the Bulldogs will play Missouri (No. 16) and Ole Miss (No. 12) at home, followed by a trip to Knoxville to face No. 21 Tennessee. The regular season wraps up with a road game against Georgia Tech, which jumps up and bites Georgia every five years or so. The Bulldogs will be favored in every one of those games — they’re 14.5-point favorites against Florida, per BetMGM — but as the Auburn game a few weeks back showed, pregame lines don’t matter much once the hitting starts.

That Auburn game, back on the last day of September, remains the hinge point in this Georgia season. Down 10-0 to the unranked, 3-2 Tigers in the first quarter, and tied at 20 with less than three minutes remaining, the Bulldogs needed a level-up performance from quarterback Carson Beck to avoid a disastrous loss.

More importantly, though, Georgia needed tight end Brock Bowers, whose 157 yards receiving accounted for literally half of Beck’s entire 313 yards passing. Bowers was a cheat code in the waning minutes of the Auburn game, completely tilting the field in Georgia’s favor. His 40-yard touchdown reception-and-stomp with 2:52 remaining proved the decisive margin of victory. It’s safe to say Georgia needed Bowers in the lineup to win that game.

You — and the rest of the SEC — know where we’re going with this.

Bowers is out for at least the next few games, rehabbing from surgery on his sprained ankle. He’s Georgia’s leading receiver with 567 yards — more than 200 ahead of the pack — and second-leading scorer with five touchdowns. He’s unstoppable, a juggernaut who gives Beck a security blanket and Georgia a huge advantage, every time he lines up. With him, Georgia is all but unbeatable; without him, they slip from galactic dominance to merely elite.

“One of our big DNA traits is resiliency,” Smart said earlier this week. “This team has been extremely resilient. I have one-hundred percent confidence that they’ll be resilient, and if they think that one guy’s going to replace Brock Bowers, they’re wrong, and if anybody thinks they’ve got to be Superman, they don’t need to be on our team because they’ll be disappointed … As a collective effort, every player’s going to do more.”

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The Dawgs have survived stretches like this before. Back in 2021, they faced Arkansas (No. 8), Auburn (No. 18) and Kentucky (No. 11) in a three-week stretch, and won by a combined score of 101-23. They’re a combined 5-1 over the final three superheated games of the last two seasons, the SEC championship and the College Football Playoff, avenging that one loss, to Alabama in the 2021 SEC championship, a few weeks later in the national championship.

Smart has looked to other dynasties, like the ‘90s Chicago Bulls, for examples of how to maintain dominance. During the offseason, he pointed to the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, which has spent more time at No. 1 over the last 20 years than all other countries combined, as the epitome of sustained excellence.

“One of their big mantras is, ‘Better never rests,’” Smart said in July. “We believe that. Those are strong words now when you think about it. Think deep on it. ‘Better never rests.’ Our kids understand it. Our kids have learned it.”

“Better” better have rested during Georgia’s bye week, because “better” is about to face its toughest in-season challenge yet. If they lose this weekend — or any of the next few games — they’ll be looking at trying to clean up what was a pristine season. And there’s nothing that kills the good vibes of a cocktail party more than an unexpected, messy cleanup.

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