THE BIG DAWGS

ATLANTA — Jonathan Ledbetter and J.R. Reed threw on their 2017 SEC championship rings for their Tuesday morning roll through interviews at the Omni Hotel and College Football Hall of Fame.

Not that anybody needed to be reminded about the type of season two of Georgia’s top defensive players and the Bulldogs experienced last year under coach Kirby Smart.

They don’t plan to be one-year wonders.

“Kirby’s got this going, man,” said Ledbetter, a senior defensive end. “It’s not going to change, no matter what players are there. He’s a great recruiter. You guys know that. The guys are going to keep coming in. It’s going to be the same way.”

Along with wide receiver Terry Godwin and Smart, they went through the gauntlet at SEC Media Days in the shadow of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

That’s where the Bulldogs celebrated their first league title since 2005 over Auburn and watched confetti fall on Alabama after a walk-off Crimson Tide overtime win for the national championship.

Last year, Georgia’s Roquan Smith, Sony Michel and Nick Chubb came to SEC Media Days after an 8-5 season. They were picked to win the SEC East, which turned out to be down the list of accomplishments during a 13-2 season.

Georgia arrived here this time as a team expected to contend to return to the College Football Playoff and meet the Crimson Tide in the SEC championship game.

“It’s a little different and I will say ... it’s a little dangerous,” Ledbetter said. “That thought of complacency starts to come in there and you kind of have to push it out very quickly. You have people say, oh yeah, they’re going to win it this year. They’ve got it all.”

Smith, Isaiah Wynn, Michel and Chubb, four of the top 35 picks in the NFL draft are gone.

“They were tremendous,” Godwin said. “Those are shoes we have to fill. The guys that are filling those shoes, we feel very good, we feel very confident.”

Georgia’s player contingent arrived Monday night in Atlanta and hung out in Godwin’s room.

“We ordered some room service and chilled and talked it up,” said Reed, a redshirt junior safety.

They all wore bow ties Tuesday. Reed said they decided “they wanted to be the best-dressed team out of anybody.”

Godwin didn’t have on the championship ring because he gave it to his mother. Reed says he also wore his ring back home in Texas.

Of course, Alabama has the national title rings.

Time to rewind

It’s hard for Georgia to avoid being reminded how last season ended.

Smart did an ESPN hit at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday from the College Football Hall of Fame on the new show “Get up,” when he said the 41-yard game-winning touchdown against Georgia was shown.

“I thought they might open with the SEC Championship, but of course not,” Smart said. “That's part of it. I think we embrace that as coaches. I think that's something that you guys think about a lot, but not really us.

"We're on to the next year. We are on to the new recruit. We're on to the next strategy, whether tactical, medical or physical. We're constantly looking for the next edge to get the next edge for next year. It's something we don't have to rehash all of the time.”

It took Smart less than four minutes later in another interview session to get asked about the way the national title game ended.

“Losses don’t haunt me, they motivate me,” Smart said. “If anything it drives me, it motivates me, it keeps me hungry.”

Writers that don’t cover Georgia on a regular basis lobbed questions to players like: “How many times have you watched the film or do you not want to watch the film?” And: “Second-and-26, where does your mind go when you hear those words?”

“Everybody wants to talk about that question,” Smart said. “It’s not like I have nightmares about it, no. I think we grow from it. The entire season was a learning experience, it was a confidence builder for a lot of players on our team. ... I don’t think you look back at is as horror stories. You just take it and you go.”

Magic moments

ESPNU is counting down the top 25 games from the 2017 season this week and next. Georgia was involved in the No. 1 and No. 2 games: the loss to Alabama and the double-overtime win over Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl. They will air back to back on the night of July 26. Another game was No. 19 — the win over Notre Dame (that won’t air because it was an NBC game).

“They got to play in some incredible atmospheres,” Smart said. “You think about the last five games we played, the atmospheres were really incredible.”

Getting picked to win the East is something Georgia is accustomed to considering it was the favorite in four of the last six seasons, including last year.

Now it knows it just went toe-to-toe with Alabama.

All six SEC Network analysts Sunday picked a Georgia-Alabama SEC championship game.

“You should feel privileged to have pressure to win games, to have expectations,” Smart said. “Everybody is talking about the expectations. ... Those are things we embrace at the University of Georgia. We can't run from those things. We know that. If pressure is a privilege, how you manage that and how you embrace that and our coaching staff getting the effectiveness of our players out is what's important to us. And that's really the key ingredient for us going into this season. So it's important for us.”

The Bulldogs are slated to open preseason camp on Aug. 3.

“We'll have a competition at an all-time high,” Smart said. “I think our top 100 guys out there at practice in fall camp, we'll have the greatest competition we've had since my arrival. We may not have the most talent that we've had, but we'll definitely have the most competition.”