NEW ORLEANS — Last Saturday, while the Georgia football team was in New Orleans getting ready to play in the Sugar Bowl, players weren’t exactly shy in showing their reactions to the College Football Playoff semifinal games. 

Clemson blew out Notre Dame, and Alabama handily beat Oklahoma. Georgia players were upset that they weren’t included. 

Fast-forward to the Sugar Bowl itself, Georgia came out flat, losing 28-21 to Texas in a game that was not as close as the final score indicated. 

The players stand by what they said, however. 

“(It’s) out there, so,” senior receiver Terry Godwin said of the reactions on social media to the playoff. “We said what we said and we meant what we said, we just didn’t come out here and prove it tonight.”

Head coach Kirby Smart acknowledged his awareness of what was said on social media and how his team felt. But he’s not willing to make missing the playoff a reason to why his team didn’t perform well. 

“I think that would be easy to say … that would be an easy excuse to use,” Smart said. “But I’m not touching that. Just because they tweet something emotional during that time, it doesn’t matter.”

The reason why Georgia missed the playoff obviously had a lot to do with losing to Alabama in the SEC championship game on Dec. 1. The loss had to sting for players a little bit, especially because it resembled the similar fashion in which Georgia lost the national championship game back in January. 

But according to quarterback Jake Fromm, that didn’t play a part in the poor performance either.

“I don’t think it bothered us, we flushed it. We went back to work,” Fromm said. “We realized what had had gotten us to this point. I thought leading up to this game, we practiced really well and had a lot of good things in. Just didn’t play well today.”

Junior receiver Tyler Simmons used the mantra of his head coach in explaining his stance on the perception that Georgia is one of the best four teams.  

He said Smart always tells them: the best teams don’t win the game, it’s who plays the best that day. 

“I still have confidence in the team … we (just) got outplayed today,” Simmons said.