Tony Walsh | The Red & BlackLSU head coach Ed Orgeron during a press conference at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Friday.

ATLANTA — At its surface, the SEC championship game is poised to be determined by the moments when Joe Burrow and J.R. Reed share the field.

LSU, averaging nearly 49 points per game, will meet a Georgia defense that has held its opponents to just over 10 points per game. Both the Tigers’ scoring offense and Bulldogs’ scoring defense are second-best in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Statistically, it’s a matchup for the ages.

LSU head coach Ed Orgeron doesn’t agree.

“I look at it opposite,” Orgeron said. “We’ve got to play great on defense to win. I feel like our offense is going to do well. … But we have to stop their offense in order to win the football game.”

And that viewpoint could bode well for the Tigers, as Georgia enters the SEC championship game with plenty of questions offensively.

First, will top running back D’Andre Swift be healthy? The junior carried Georgia’s offense through the regular season with 1,203 yards on 193 rushes, but he left the game against Georgia Tech on Nov. 30 with a shoulder contusion.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has insisted throughout the week that Swift is able to do whatever he’s needed to do in practice, and the Tigers expect to face the SEC’s fourth-leading rusher.

“I’m assuming that [Swift] is a great competitor, and I’m assuming that he’s going to play. We haven’t even blinked,” Orgeron said. “We’ve prepared for everything, but I’m almost sure he’s going to play, and he’s going to play well.”

Even if Swift is able to play at full capacity on Saturday, Georgia’s offense still deals with missing links.

Quarterback Jake Fromm will be tasked to find chemistry in the pass game without his top two targets for the first half. Lawrence Cager is sidelined after ankle surgery, and George Pickens is suspended until the second half following a third-quarter squabble with Georgia Tech’s Tre Swilling.

With the first-half absences, Georgia seeks to replace 974 yards of production. Tight ends Charlie Woerner and Eli Wolf have stepped up as pass catchers, and senior Tyler Simmons, junior Demetris Robertson and freshman Dominick Blaylock have helped out at various points throughout the regular season.

“Receivers have to step up for Jake and for this Georgia offense,” former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow said on Friday. “Jake has to play well [and] they’ve got to get D’Andre Swift going, but you need receivers.”

It’s Fromm’s third consecutive trip to the SEC championship game, and host of ESPN’s “College GameDay” Rece Davis has full faith in the Georgia quarterback despite the fact that he hasn’t completed over 50% of his passes since Nov. 2 against Florida.

“He’s the type of guy that when you’re underselling him, undervaluing him, he has a way of rising up,” Davis said. “I don’t think there’s any question that he can play well enough to have Georgia pull off an upset tomorrow.”

Smart, a defensive-minded coach, isn’t taking LSU’s defense lightly. The Tigers rank fifth in the SEC in pass defense efficiency and ninth in pass defense, but Smart is impressed by the unit’s performances against Auburn and Florida and “different dynamic” in the pass rush.

“They have an incredible group of guys who have just played better and better and better,” Smart said. “You can tell they’re playing with a chip on their shoulder.”

Although the tendency will be to focus on LSU’s offense against Georgia’s defense, Tebow shares Orgeron’s belief that the true key to the match lies in the inverse scenario.

“[Georgia’s] offense has to support the defense,” Tebow said. “You can’t just [be stopped and] put them right back on the field. You need to get at least two first downs, control the clock [and] keep Joe Burrow off of the field.”

Printed with permission from the Red & Black independent student media organization based in Athens, Georgia; redandblack.com/sports