You might call Georgia’s sixth-year quarterback the “old man” of college football.
It’s not simply that Stetson Bennett will be 25 years old in a couple of weeks, which makes him almost a millennial on a Gen-Z team. No, on Saturday, he even trotted out what Penny on “Big Bang Theory” once called one of those “grandpa words.”
Speaking to CBS after the 42-10 win over Auburn, Bennett said of the Dawgs’ slow start in the first half: “We gotta get our moxie back a little bit.”
Moxie? What next, buying a new pair of dungarees?
Fortunately, after getting off to a modest 14-0 halftime lead over the Tigers, Georgia did indeed get its “moxie” back, with an old-fashioned run-based pounding of the former Alabama Polytechnic.
In fact, all six of the Dawgs’ touchdowns against Auburn came on the ground — quite a change from that new-age Air Georgia pass-first offense that we heard so much about earlier this season.
Some people call what Georgia did Saturday “old-man” football.
But, hey, whatever works. And, for many of us, it was good to see that the toss sweep is alive and well Between the Hedges.
Now, if the Dawgs’ passing and running attacks ever get back in sync for an entire game, look out!
Although a casual observer might see Georgia’s 6-0 record and conclude the first half of the 2022 regular season has been a redux version of last year’s national championship run, it actually has been a lot more of a roller-coaster ride than that.
After looking awesome in all aspects of the game against opening opponent Oregon, Kirby Smart’s Dawgs’ next four outings saw them appear unfocused while easily beating an FCS team, almost as good as the opener in pounding their first SEC opponent on the road, again out of sorts against a Group of 5 team, and having to come from behind to beat one of the SEC’s lesser programs.
That brought us to Saturday at Sanford Stadium, where a packed house watched as the Dawgs gave their longest-standing rival, Auburn, a shellacking. Still, Georgia again got off to a slow start, as Bennett and the passing attack looked out of sorts and, at times, missing in action. Bennett overthrew several receivers, with the worst instance being in the second quarter, when he total missed a wide-open Brock Bowers.
There was speculation that the after-effects of a hit Bennett took to his right shoulder against Missouri might be hampering his throwing. He admitted after the game his shoulder was sore, but he didn’t blame that for his misses.
Of course, it didn’t help that Auburn’s defense seemed to be keying on the short perimeter passes to tailback Kenny McIntosh that normally are so effective for the Dawgs.
Thankfully, Georgia’s rushing attack, which had ranged from adequate to somewhat lacking earlier in the season, picked up the slack and returned to near-Running Back U. form, despite one of the team’s two main tailbacks, Kendall Milton, having to leave the game in the second quarter with a groin injury.
That’s where Smart’s deep recruiting of elite talent showed up again, with junior Daijun Edwards and freshman Branson Robinson (technically the third- and fourth-string backs) both having big days. Smart was pleased. As he told DJ Shockley of the Bulldogs radio network in the locker room: “I love physical runs. I love getting behind your pads.”
For the day, Georgia had 500 yards of total offense (only 143 yards of which came in the first half), and a whopping 292 of that was on the ground.
Bennett finished 22 of 32 passing, for 208 yards. Ladd McConkey was the leading receiver, catching 5 for 47 yards. Bennett completed passes to 10 different Bulldogs, before giving way to backup QB Carson Beck with 3:50 left on the clock.
It helped that the Dawgs’ offensive line, which played a poor game the previous week against Missouri, had its finest performance since the opener.
Using the gap-blocking scheme that helped turn things around for Georgia the previous week, the OL opened big holes in the Auburn defense, and then thrilled the home crowd in Athens when eager linemen helped extend three long runs by pushing the pile for even more yardage.
The coup de grâce came when QB Bennett called his own number on an RPO draw play in the first minute of the fourth quarter, as the middle of the field opened up before him. Bennett showed pretty nifty speed, outrunning the Tigers defense 64 yards for paydirt.
While he seemed to get closer to his early-season form as the second half progressed, Bennett did have a turnover when he was stripped of the ball deep in Georgia territory on the opening drive of the third period. The Dawgs’ defense held, however, and allowed only a field goal out of that miscue.
And, as the second half progressed, and the Auburn defense wore down from spending so much time on the field (more about that in a moment), even the passing game started clicking again, with the Dawgs piling on the points to more than cover the 30 points by which the Las Vegas oddsmakers had them favored.
Overall, the Dawgs held the Tigers to 258 yards offensively, and, aside from QB runs, the Auburn rushing attack was completely held in check, with only 93 net yards running. Auburn has two of the SEC’s better running backs in Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter, but they were limited to 19 and 20 net yards, respectively. QB Robby Ashford was Auburn’s main running threat, but he dropped the ball on one scamper, and Georgia recovered.
For the Dawgs, Robinson had 98 net yards and 1 touchdown on 12 carries, while Edwards netted 83 yards and 3 touchdowns on a dozen carries. Bennett wound up with 73 yards on 3 carries and McIntosh had 8 carries for 37 yards, with 1 TD. He also caught 4 passes for 14 yards.
Getting back to Georgia wearing down another opponent: Much of the credit for that goes to the Dawgs’ defense, which generally played a superb game, despite missing its All-America man up front, Jalen Carter, out with a sprained knee. The leading tackler was linebacker Jamon “Pop” Dumas-Johnson, with 5 stops, giving him a team-leading 29 so far for the season.
The pass rush was awesome, with Auburn’s Ashford running for his life much of the day. The only defensive letdowns for Georgia were an early difficulty handling the keepers run by Ashford (though the Dawgs defenders seemed to adjust to that as the game progressed) and what Smart called some “poor tackling” that turned what should have been a short pass into a 62-yard scoring play on the Tigers’ lone touchdown, with 9:51 remaining in the game.
Overall, the defense had excellent play from its line and linebackers.
Offensively, Georgia’s rushing attack had its best game of season. The passing game improved in the second half, but that aspect of the offense is something they still need to work on. Getting wideouts AD Mitchell and Arian Smith fully healthy and back in top form will help, but Bennett needs to get into his game rhythm quicker.
Talking with the media afterward, the Georgia QB indicated that he thought the team had been paying to too much attention to what everyone else thinks about their performance.
“I think we do let people tell us how we should feel about a 42-to-10 SEC victory against Auburn,” Bennett said. “We need to have joy in everything we do. We have things to clean up, but that’s football, we’re not going to be perfect. We should want to be perfect, but I don’t think we should kill ourselves if we’re not. I’ve got things to get better at, like, a million things, but we just beat Auburn. … I think we should just be happy and keep getting better.”
As Bennett noted to CBS, the Dawgs weren’t “having fun” in the first half, but once they did start having fun, they started scoring.
One giant improvement was in the Red Zone, where Georgia had struggled to get more than field goals the past couple of weeks. Against Auburn, the Dawgs were 5-for-5 in the Red Zone, and all 5 scores were touchdowns. Also, Georgia dominated possession, having the ball 11 minutes longer than Auburn, which was a big factor in the Tigers’ defense wearing down.
A big shoutout goes to Edwards and Robinson, who really stepped up Saturday with some huge plays and helped carry the offense while the passing game caught up. Also, kudos to young guys like Bear Alexander, who played well on defense Saturday.
On special teams, Georgia mostly was very good. Jack Podlesny did miss a field goal attempt, and McConkey had an early drop of a punt reception (which he recovered), but he later returned a punt 38 yards that set up a score. And, when Auburn tried a fake punt (as Georgia opponents are wont to do this season), the Dawgs’ Nolan Smith sniffed it out and shut it down. That set up Georgia’s first touchdown. Finally, Brett Thorson punted 5 times (for a 41.4 yard average) and placed all 5 inside the 20-yard line.
The home crowd also was credited by Smart with playing a big role in the win, especially in causing the Tigers to accrue a bunch of false-start penalties. “When the fans have a good time, it helps us,” the Georgia coach said.
So, again, Saturday’s game was not a perfect performance by the Dawgs, but it still was a big win over an opponent that never really threatened.
Also, let’s not lose sight of this: Auburn is UGA’s oldest and most consistent rival — this was their 127th meeting on the gridiron (to use another grandpa word) — and the Dawgs are dominating this series. They’ve won 15 of the past 18, six in a row (the last three of them blowouts) and now hold a 63-56-8 series lead.
Best of all, Georgia has won every game against Auburn held in Athens since 2005.
That’s my kind of rivalry.
