Legge's Thoughts: UGA Football is Something Else | Dawgs Push it to the Limit vs. Rebs
ATHENS - It was the eighth time in UGA Football coach Kirby Smart’s tenure at UGA that his Bulldogs beat a top-ten team Between the Hedges.
They have never lost to a top-ten team under Kirby Smart in Athens - a significant accomplishment that shows how good Georgia is right now, and how good it has been over the last ten years. Starting with 2016’s win over No. 8 Auburn, Georgia has pretty much played one huge game a year in Athens and won it.
This time the win came over Lane Kiffin’s No. 5 Ole Miss Rebels - a team that could hardly function a week ago on offense against Washington State. This time the Rebels could only malfunction on defense, as the Bulldogs got the ball eight times and scored five touchdowns and three field goals.
Every time Gunner Stockton, who Kirby said didn’t practice on Monday or Tuesday, got the ball Georgia scored on that drive. Stockton needs a rest. He’s put together a tremendous season so far.
“He's wired for these type moments because he's tough, and his team believes in him,” Kirby said after the 43-35 win. “I didn't get to talk about it, but (Gunner) couldn't practice Monday and Tuesday. He literally couldn't practice. His oblique - the shots he took at Auburn - he’s beat up. And we're like: “Okay, we won't use you in the quarterback run game. We'll get to you.’”
Kirby said Gunner wasn’t willing to back down.
“No, coach, I want to run it. I want to run it. My team needs to see me run it,’ Gunner told Kirby.
59 yards and a 22-yard touchdown later, Gunner’s legs were an invaluable part of keeping Georgia in the game - a game he might not have played in.
“We were concerned he wouldn't be able to go,” Kirby said.
The Bulldogs did not list Gunner on the SEC-mandated Student-Athlete Availability Report this week.
One has to wonder if Kirby should have put Georgia’s once-dominate defense as questionable for this week against Ole Miss as the Rebels relentlessly scored touchdowns on Georgia Saturday on drives on 65, 65, 75, 75 and 75 yards. All of the drives were ten-plus plays except De’Zhaun Stribling’s catch and run after yet another atrocious tackling display from the Dawgs.
It is hard to comprehend how much Georgia’s defense has fallen off at times this year. Granted, Ole Miss and Tennessee are particularly explosive. But there needs to be more disruption from Georgia’s defensive players. That group is not without serious talent.
But the secondary, playing man, is trying to hang in there all it can without a pass rush to speak of. Playin man-to-man is a challenging and difficult thing. When it works there’s pretty much nothing a passing team can do. When it doesn’t, or it works intermittently, you get what you saw Saturday - lots of points.
There was a point in the game where it felt like only a mistake was going to win the game, or that Ole Miss simply couldn’t be stopped. And then the fourth quarter started, and The Rebels couldn’t to a single thing. Their offensive production vanished. After five touchdown drives in a row, which is an outlier for sure, Ole Miss ran 11 plays for 13 yards in the fourth quarter.
Sanford Stadium has lights that flash that Georgia “Owns the 4th quarter”
That’s an understatement.
Georgia went 19 plays for 133 yards, for ten points while burning off nine minuets and 35 seconds of the clock… then they took knees to kill of the final minute and a half of the game. Georgia didn’t own the 4th quarter.
They put it to work for them. Georgia’s investment in the run game shined as a slew of players accounted for 221 yards on the ground on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Athens. Ole Miss was visibly exhausted in the fourth quarter on defense.
Georgia had runs of zero, two, seven, three, 17, eight, four, seven, zero, five, seven, three, two, nine, three, four and zero in the fourth quarter before facing a 4th and 3 from the Ole Miss 24. And then Kirby had to decide what he wanted to do - try to end the game by winning it with a first-down conversion, or roll Peyton Woodring (who is really, really good) out there to give the Dawgs and eight-point lead.
I asked Kirby after the game about the decision - and he had much to say:
“I wanted to (go for it). I believe in winning the game. I believe in winning the game,” he told me. “We believe in winning the game. (Ole Miss) needed a touchdown, and everybody assumes… I guarantee you analytics is just going to say that I should have gone for it, because we win the game on that play. By putting it in their hands - everybody assumes that the field goal is made. See, that’s the assumption that you’ve made the field goal. And we had a tough snap there that Gunner gets low, gets up, and Peyton gets it through. But you can’t assume that. I want my offense, who’s clicking, who’s rolling, who’s six for six, who’s 12 for 12 in the second half throwing, it’s fourth and two - go win the game. I really believe in that. But what got me was the stops the defense had. You know, the stops the defense had gave me faith that whether we made the field goal or not, we could go out and stop it. And, you know, being at home and them having to go out in that environment was really hard in that two-minute. We lived that last year at their place, trying to play two-minute. Guys were jumping the snap count - getting rushed. The only time we got rush all day was in the two-minute.”
The noise of the Sanford Stadium crowd was noticeable in the fourth quarter. A mass of 93-plus thousand people tried their best to color coordinate to their outfits to their seats, and UGA fans did a pretty good job of it considering the tardy nature of getting the official message out to fans. The crowd did all it could do at the end of the game, but but was up to the players to end the game - the defensive players.
“We finally got the crowd into it,” Kirby said.
And how. The place was bonkers.
First down - Kewan Lacy runs for 12 yards - a great play call and execution from the Rebels giving them the ball at the 35-yard line. Then Trinidad Chambliss, who had played really well all day, was off target to Dae’Quan Wright. Then he was off target again. On third down Daylen Everette nearly ended the game with a pick.
And on the final play of the game, former Langston Hughes and Miami defensive lineman Josh Horton got his hands in the way of the final pass. Georgia had won. The place erupted. Fit, tan and trim, Lane Kiffin was headed back to “The Sip” with his first loss of the season.
He was not happy after the game considering the opportunity Ole Miss had lost leaving Athens.
“I told our guys that this is exactly what you could want, you know, you’re in the fourth quarter and you’re up two scores at Georgia with chance to beat them two years in a row,” Lane told reporters. “You just got to keep scoring. And we didn’t do that in the fourth quarter. in the fourth quarter against Georgia at Georgia and undefeated to go to 7-0. I mean that’s kind of one of your lifetime moments, I told them. And it’s right there. Getting up early on them and and finishing off Georgia to go 7-0. And we didn’t.”
Then this from Lane:
“Kirby does a great job. I actually said it this morning on GameDay. Got it from Coach Saban, you know to install belief like ‘hey we’re going to find a way.’ And when you play Alabama before or now Georgia, these two coaches I feel like you have to win the game. They’re not going to lose it at the end in the fourth quarter.”
It feels like magic, but this literally “isn’t” magic. Georgia is working to produce the results they have on the field - good and bad. And this Georgia isn’t the best team in the country right now. They have the capability to beat everyone, but they are not the best team in the nation. That’s probably Ohio State or Alabama - perhaps Indiana.
What Georgia has done, however, is the important part. Step back away from the final play of the Ole Miss game. Georgia has a three-point loss at home to Alabama. They have two top 25 wins over Tennessee (road) and Ole Miss.
We’ve hit the natural if not numerical mid point in the season, and Kirby has to be happy with where the Bulldogs are right now. Georgia is 6-1 with games remaining where they will be favorites the rest of the way.
Although Georgia Tech is undefeated, it does seem like Texas will be the biggest challenge of the rest of the way. Again, Tech is nothing to sneeze at - neither is Texas. And playing at State will have to involve a well-played game from Georgia. But State isn’t like the other teams on the remainder of the slate.
Tech has been sloppy for a few weeks now - including a very important win over Duke Saturday. It is certainly possible we could see 10-1 Georgia take on 11-0 Tech in Atlanta… that is possible. I will believe it when I see it. And, too, all schedules are not at all created equally. Tech and UGA have been put to two very different tests this season.
Surviving at Wake isn’t the same as surviving at Auburn. Having Duke as your best win isn’t at all like having Ole Miss as your best win. These two things are not the same. And yet, of this I am certain, Tech will play as well as it can the day after Thanksgiving.
The Jackets, as it stands right now and probably as it will stand at that point, should be in the CFP. They’ve earned it.
Now, the ACC… it is a entire mess. Tech, SMU and Virginia are undefeated in league play (UVA lost 35-31 to NC State, but that wasn’t an ACC game because French Fries and Waffles? I don’t know, but it wasn’t an ACC game in terms of the standings… I DON’T HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN THESE THINGS TO YOU. WE ARE NEARLY 1,800 WORDS INTO THIS THING… LET IT GO).
So Tech, SMU and Virginia are at the top. Then it is a mess of teams that includes the Calgorithm, Duke, Stanford and other elite academic schools… and then Miami in eighth place - behind 5-2 Louisville, a team that not only beat the Canes Friday night - but totally outplayed them.
It is important to actually watch games before proclamations - not that it stops any of us with a mic in front of our mouths. Miami hasn’t been the second-best team in the country for a while. I would be very curious what a UGA, Alabama or Indiana fight against the Canes could look like. If Florida is making things far too uncomfortable for you in the fourth - maybe that’s one game. But Florida State, which isn’t a good team and lost on a questionable call across the country at Stanford Sunday morning, pushed Miami to the limit as well.
Then Carson with four interceptions Friday night. That was hard to watch, so were the 63 total yards Miami had outside of Carson. He has to be feeling deja vu because Friday night was 2024 at Georgia for him.
When power brands like Miami, FSU and Clemson are a collective 3-8 in conference play it has gotten bad. There is no certainty that Miami recovers. Clemson? Lord, now Dabo is having to defend himself and use phrases like “we hopefully have earned a lot of credibility around here.”
What is going on up there? Like, is this a real discussion? Of course he has credibility. He just has four losses to go along with that credibility. Clemson can’t score, and they were missing their stating QB Saturday. Clemson hosts Duke and Florida State before traveling to Louisville.
Dabo will likely need two wins out of three on that one to avoid a losing season. Again, this isn’t surprising. Everything adds up for or against you. The laissez-faire attitude toward building Clemson in the new world of college football… that has caught up with Dabs.
If and when the Gators make a move I wouldn’t be shocked for Dabo to take a real look at the Florida gig. That’s a job that folks presume Lane will take… I’m not sure why he would leave Mississippi for Florida considering he’s the king in Oxford, and he can get quite tanned without being near a beach.
And then we have Nick Saban lecturing Penn State and the rest of us, saying James Franklin’s firing is “unfair as hell.”
Nick. Please stop. What is fair? Franklin had everything he needed to win at Penn State except the ability to execute. It was time. This isn’t about fair - this is about seeing something for 11-plus years over and over and over and over and over, and saying: I can’t do this anymore.
It was time.
Then James Franklin:
“We're going to win a national championship somewhere else.”
Was everyone on that panel drunk? Where are you going to win a national title James? In the SEC? At Florida? Vanderbilt is doing just fine these days - better than you ever had them. Where? At Arkansas? At Oklahoma State? At UCLA?
Of the programs that “can” win the national title, which of them would hire you to constantly lose over and over and over and over again? Clemson? Auburn? You think they are sniffing titles any time soon?
Just because fans are delirious during games doesn’t mean we should be delusional before them. James Franklin is a good, not great coach. He did all he could at Penn State - a place that hasn’t mattered in 35-plus years BECAUSE OF INACTION IT TOOK FOR YEARS. Franklin did all he could for as long as he could.
He went as far as he could go. Saban’s pity party in context: He made the same statements about UGA firing Mark Richt, who is a genuinely great man and coach, and then played Georgia in the national title a year later with Mark’s replacement coaching the Dawgs.
It was time with Mark. Its been past time with Franklin.
