(In a time of national sorrow, when we pray for healing, coping and calm, maybe this space will bring a bit of a smile, and a chortle at best.)

Whew. Was really wondering if we, Georgia Bulldog football that is, would be able to hang with the Tennessee Volunteers the way UMass did the week before.

So many factors usually work against UGA when this matchup comes along. This year, it’s the bottom of the barrel passing yards average in the Southeastern Conference. Butch Jones can always look to this as an uplifting win for his career amid vile criticism. And when you make reference to ‘fake news,’ that can only lead to unparalleled success.

But the Bulldogs squeaked by this time … O.K. it was more like a full-fledged holler. It was the start of another theme for the 2017 Georgia football season stemming from some of the results of Kirby Smart’s rookie year as head coach: Make them pay!

And now, we can move on to Vanderbilt. Don’t know about you, but Georgia-Vandy week always gets the juices going. Such great memories. So, as is the obligation of those in my profession, a looking-ahead analysis.

The 2017 Vanderbilt Commodores already, in essence, played its bowl game. No, it wasn’t the Music City Bowl, but in their home stadium in Nashville the Dores knocked off top 20 ranked Kansas State of the Big 12 14-7. In the jubilation of the victorious moment, one Vandy player boldly proclaimed into the first available video camera, “Alabama. You’re next!”

You must feel good about yourself if you can steal a line from a former Georgia Bulldog (that would be Bill Goldberg).

And so the following week the Commodores face Alabama … and realized they were not in Kansas anymore … where, they never really were in the first place, for that was a home game … and this was a home game as well … if there’s no place like home to lose 59-0, let’s go to Florida, the land of miracles.

Alas, Vandy was able to score some points on the Gators, but UF didn’t need a third straight last-second miracle to go 3-0 in the SEC, which looks like a miracle in itself. Too bad, a few more miracles and they’d be able to back up Smokey Robinson at Wild Adventures.

Well, actually the second miracle Florida win after the home game with Tennessee was at Kentucky, which is a good place for miracle wins if you are the visiting team (flashback to LSU finale). But the Commodores don’t face the Wildcats until November, and, bad news, it’s a home game.

Who else does Vandy have at home: No. 5 Georgia bent on payback. Smart became the first Bulldog head coach to lose his first game against Vanderbilt since Johnny Griffith in 1961. The name Wallace Butts might also ring a bell to UGA historians. He holds the distinction of dropping three straight games to the Commodores (1956-58). That happens to be the last time Georgia’s fell in consecutive seasons to Vanderbilt.

I’m not saying it won’t happen in 2017. I’m saying it can’t happen in 2017. This is a time when Georgia cannot afford an upset. This is, remember, one of those six must-win games if one expects to take that Eastern Division championship.

Eastern Division championship … right, that’s the first goal. Can’t salivate too much about playing No. 1 Alabama until we take care of all Eastern Division business.

That includes Vanderbilt. Can’t disrespect this program too much, for they do have the players capable of winning any game at any time. They just don’t do it enough in any given season to challenge for the division crown.

Sorry, don’t think we’ll see the Commodores at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in early December, not in my lifetime, your lifetime or that of the grandchild being born as you sit in the hospital waiting room reading this op-ed.

Congratulations, by the way, he/she has your forehead and fingernails.

Before getting anymore into specifics (if I do at all), I do want to share some of those glorious UGA-Vandy moments of the past.

Remember 2007? It wasn’t a miracle finish, but it was a last-second field goal that broke a tie and sent the Bulldogs into celebration mode, 20-17 was the final in Nashville. Never did we see such an emotional display out of then head coach Mark Richt. Only, there wasn’t anything joyous about it; this was anger.

See, a bunch of the players thought it would be great to hop up and down – stomp may be the better descriptive term – on the V logo at midfield. Not the kind of actions Richt approved of, and that was all on his mind when it was time for the TV interview.

My reaction? Something like, ‘Really, by the skin of your collective teeth you beat Vanderbilt, and that makes you overly excited?’

This was the same team that opened the SEC schedule 0-2 (in the Eastern Division) but then had such a finish (with only one statement win, that over Tim Tebow and Florida) people somehow thought this team was invincible. Not only would we have wiped out LSU in the SEC title game (which we couldn’t get to because of that loss to Tennessee to go 0-2), but also that season’s 16-0 New England Patriots, the 1985 Chicago Bears and the Justice League of America.

That Bowl Championship Series simply would not recognize this!

No, I did not share in those sentiments. Yes, nice win over the Gators by 12, followed by an impressive 10-point margin over Troy, 11 over Kentucky and 14 over Georgia Tech. That’s what I call steamrolling.

That brings us to last season. All you have to do is pick up the block on an All-American linebacker while running the end-around, and you’ve got yourself a first down.

But no. Zach Cunningham trips up Isaiah McKenzie short of the sticks, and Vandy is a one-point winner in Athens.

We were coming off a 326-yard rushing game at South Carolina, so running the ball on that 4th-and-short was the right thing to do. But we only had less than 80 yards on the ground at that point. Good news No. 1 about this year’s game is that Cunningham – and Mackenzie – left early for the NFL.

So 300 yards out of the running game should be the goal for Jim Chaney’s offense. Who would have thought, though, that Georgia would be last in the conference in throwing the football and boast an unbeaten record and No. 5 ranking in the polls.

Through our personal acquaintanceship, I am a big fan of the true freshman Jake Fromm and beam when he throws his first touchdown pass in college and, in the Tennessee game, gets his first and second career rushing touchdowns.

Fromm was put in a great position to succeed as a true freshman at this level. It’s not only having the senior running backs, but also that defense.

In the last two games (Vols and Mississippi State), Fromm’s thrown the football 27 times for 285 yards. I repeat, that’s two games worth of stats, and I failed to initially mention that it’s just 16 completions and three touchdowns.

There are high school quarterbacks at places like, say, Colquitt County High, who would get those numbers in one game … maybe even one half.

And I would fully approve of Smart and Chaney working in last year’s true freshman, Jacob Eason, a lot in this Saturday’s game and the following weekend when we play a hapless looking Missouri club. Why not have two guys the other team’s defense has to think about? It was the vogue thing to do during the David Greene-D.J. Shockley days early in Richt’s tenure.

Final note: Shouldn’t mock the Vols too much over their performance against UMass. The Minutemen are coming to Athens Nov. 17, 2018, and is sure to be brimming with confidence. Make them a 30-point underdog and we might be in trouble.