As Butch Jones and Jim McElwain face hot seats, Georgia’s towering over the SEC East

With the Georgia Bulldogs’ 42-7 win over the Florida Gators, the Bulldogs added even more distance between themselves and the rest of the SEC East on Saturday. Kirby Smart’s team is first in the SEC East by a mile, and the only conference games left for the Dawgs include South Carolina, Auburn, and Kentucky, most of which look easily winnable for this team.

The Dawgs have absolutely pummeled the teams in the division. Take a gander at these scores:

This division has been a punchline for years, but these scores look like what an elite team should do against lesser teams.

These are two teams expected to compete for the division each year, and both are moving in the opposite direction of Georgia.

After Florida’s loss to the Dawgs, it was reported that Florida was considering firing head coach Jim McElwain with cause, after he alleged death threats against him and his players earlier in the week:

After failing to find any evidence to substantiate claims made by McElwain this week that family and players received death threats, Florida administrators have worked to see if McElwain’s allegations were enough to relieve the university from paying McElwain’s full buyout of $12.9 million if he were to be fired.

Sources told ESPN that they believe the university has enough cause to fire McElwain without having to pay his buyout. Sources also said that if McElwain were to be relieved of his duties, defensive coordinator Randy Shannon would be asked to be the team’s interim coach.

When McElwain was asked about his job security after the Georgia loss, he didn’t sound too confident he was going to stick around.

“Well, I mean, at the end of the day, we all — were brought here to win, Gene, and we haven’t done it,” McElwain told reporters via The Independent Florida Alligator’s Matt Brannan. “My concern isn’t about my job, my concern is about these players, our staff. We’ve got a fantastic staff — coaches, support staff, their families. That’s the concern, you know, it isn’t about me.”

Tennessee is expected to part ways with Butch Jones, whose team lost on the road to Kentucky 29-26. Saturday night’s game was a “must-win” game for Jones to keep his job, as Steven Godfrey reported two weeks ago:

If a change is coming in Knoxville, no one seems to think it makes sense to appoint an interim seven days before UT and its 10-year losing streak take on the No. 1 Crimson Tide.

Which coach on Tennessee’s staff would you consider likely to be competitive against Alabama? Defensive line coach Brady Hoke? Offensive coordinator Larry Scott? Defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, who might not even want to be a head coach?

Sources indicated that if a move occurs, it would likelier be at the end of the regular season.

However, the trip to Kentucky right after Alabama now looms as a must-win. Essentially, Butch would have to win out after losing to Bama in order to have a chance.

Both teams look to be making a coaching change, which gives Smart an even bigger step ahead of the two programs. In his first two years in Athens, he signed top-10 recruiting classes, and is on the brink of leading Georgia to its first SEC East title since 2012. Wanna start imagining how well that Year Three’s gonna go?

He’s going to be able to keep building his program toward the top while Florida and Tennessee will be going through transitional seasons with new head coaches, if both firings do come.

One of the biggest knocks on former Georgia head coach Mark Richt was not recruiting the state of Georgia well enough. In the last recruiting cycle, Smart hauled in 19 blue-chip recruits, including 14 from the state of Georgia.

His 2018 class, which already has 18 commits, is ranked fifth in the nation per 247Sports, and it includes No. 1 QB Justin Fields and a pair of blue-chip running backs in Zamir White and James Cook.

Ahead of the Florida game, Smart asked the members of his team who have beaten the Gators to stand up — no one did:

Kirby Smart stood before his Georgia football team, as he usually does at team meetings, and took a poll: Everyone in here who has beaten Florida, Smart asked them, please stand up.

There were a few awkward moments.

Nobody stood.

“It was sobering,” senior tight end Jeb Blazevich said. “With so much praise going on, on the outside, it’s like, ‘Guys this is where we’re at. Nobody has beaten these guys.’”

Technically, a few Georgia players were on their last team to beat Florida, but that was back in 2013, and the only holdovers were redshirting and didn’t take the field. Since then it’s been all Florida.

While Florida players were trash talking ahead of the game, Georgia players stayed quiet and didn’t retaliate.

All that talk, and Georgia still beat Florida by 35 points.

Georgia pretty much already has the division title in the bag, which means the Dawgs will likely be representing the East in Atlanta come Championship Saturday.

That’ll be the first time since 2012, which brings me to UGA’s next hurdle — the Alabama Crimson Tide. That’s who Georgia’s likely gonna get, and Bama’s a team Georgia hasn’t beaten since 2007, during Nick Saban’s first year.

That last time these two met in Atlanta was in 2012, and the Dawgs were one tipped pass away from defeating Alabama and getting a berth in the BCS Championship.

Smart worked with Bama head coach Nick Saban from 2006 to 2015, both at Miami and Tuscaloosa. Saban is 11-0 against former assistants — we’ll have to wait and see if that record gets blemished come December.