With No. 2 Georgia nearing its showdown with No. 6 Alabama on Saturday, the DawgNation team answered a simple question for this week’s installment of Feature Friday in the newsletter: What’s your favorite moment from the Georgia-Alabama rivalry?
Many of our answers are understandably from games played on the biggest stage, which these two teams often find themselves on.
These responses were included in the Oct. 9 installment of the DawgNation newsletter as a part of Feature Fridays. Each installment, the team will answer a prompt, spanning topics from football to tailgating to their favorite moments covering sports.
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Jeff Sentell: “My moment is from Indianapolis in 2022, but deeper into the woods than the obvious twists and turns of that game. What resonates with me is the viral interaction between Nakobe Dean and Channing Tindall on a back-to-back sequence of plays.
“Tindall missed his assignment on a second-and-goal defensive stand with 7:49 left in the second quarter. The two collided and nearly gave Alabama the room to score. Dean covered his back and helped force an incompletion. Then he gave Tindall an earful. Tindall came back on the next snap with a key sack of Bryce Young.
“Bama had to settle for a 9-3 lead and not a 13-3 edge in the first half. Dean described the play afterward: ‘It’s just knowing our guys. If we didn’t have that connection, if we weren’t so close, I wouldn’t have been able to do that to him. He understood; he knew what he had to do to fix it.’
“That moment was forged through team meetings and offseason skull sessions. It said everything about whether the Dawgs could be champions that night. It showed what a real connection and what a player-led team looks like. Even in the toughest moment.”
Cody Chaffins: “January 8, 2018. Early third quarter. UGA leads 13-0. Alabama punting on their own 28. Tyler Simmons blocks the punt and UGA recovers on the Alabama 30. Set to go up 20-0 (or at least 16-0) in the national championship game. TYLER SIMMONS WAS ONSIDE.”
Connor Riley: “Georgia’s final offensive touchdown in the 2022 national championship game. Clinging to a 1-point lead, Stetson Bennett found Brock Bowers on a run-pass option to put Georgia up by eight. The score was set up by a spectacular blocking effort from Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint. Georgia’s defense still had to get a stop, but it finally felt real that Georgia was going to both beat Alabama and win a national championship.”
Mike Griffith: “Georgia had failed to get into the end zone on its first eight possessions of the 2022 title game and trailed, 9-6, when Jalen Carter blocked Will Reichard’s 48-yard field goal attempt with 3:18 left in the third quarter.
“On the very next play, Bennett handed off to James Cook who broke loose a 67-yard run to the Alabama 13-yard line to set up the Bulldogs’ first touchdown of the night (a 1-yard Zamir White run) and first lead of the night in the 33-18 championship victory.”
Sarah Spencer: I’m cheating because it’s an entire quarter: Georgia outscoring Bama 20-9 in the fourth quarter of the national championship Jeff, Connor and Mike mentioned.
This was a totally different ending than the 2018 SEC championship or 2017 national championship against Bama, when Georgia had the lead and then conceded it late.
It led to this funny exchange after Georgia clinched its first title since 1980: When Alabama coach Nick Saban approached Georgia coach Kirby Smart to shake hands after the game, after the Bulldogs had finally brought down the mighty Crimson Tide to win it all, Saban smiled and admitted: “You guys kicked our a** in the fourth quarter.”
It struck me because Smart, a member of the Saban coaching tree, got a huge win against a mentor who he had learned so much from.
