JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It was a pretty unremarkable day for the Georgia defense. Midway through the fourth quarter, the group had just a single sack and hadn’t forced a turnover.

And then seemingly out of nowhere, CJ Allen appeared, lept and intercepted an Aidan Warner pass. It was the most impressive play in Georgia’s 34-20 win.

“When he did catch that ball, my mouth dropped completely,” linebacker Jalon Walker said. “That’s what we needed. We needed that momentum swing to finish out that game, and it was just great to see coming from the linebacker room, a play made. I mean, it was just great to see him execute and have a good interception.”

Allen’s interception set up another easy Georgia score. The sophomore linebacker led the team in tackles with 8, while Florida was held to just 228 total yards.

It’s hard to take much, if anything, away from this Georgia defensive performance given Florida’s situation at quarterback. The Gators were already without Graham Mertz, as he suffered a season-ending injury against Tennessee.

In the second quarter of this game, Florida starter DJ Lagway went down with a hamstring injury. The freshman quarterback needed a cart to leave the field and spent the second half of the game in street clothes.

Lagway did prove his mettle early in the game when he found Aidan Mizell for a 43-yard touchdown, which put Florida ahead 7-3.

The score came on a short field after a Carson Beck interception, one of three he threw on the afternoon. If you want to credit the defense for keeping Georgia in the game while its senior quarterback rebooted, you could.

“I mean, I think they’re really physical,” Smart said of Florida. “They’ve got SEC offensive line, defensive line. I mean, that’s a good football team. And when you don’t play well or spot them three turnovers, we had three, they had one, I mean, it certainly changed the field position and the momentum in the game, that was huge.”

While Florida was limited at quarterback, Georgia wasn’t playing with a full deck in the secondary. Dan Jackson and Joenel Aguero were both serving suspensions stemming from targeting ejections in the win over Texas.

JaCorey Thomas and KJ Bolden started at star and safety, respectively, in their place. But Thomas went down briefly with an injury in the first half, which thrust Kyron Jones into the game for Georgia.

Fortunately, the Bulldogs were able to keep it together for those nervy early moments. The Gators had 113 passing yards on 30 attempts.

“It’s why you practice the twos and threes. It’s why you develop players. Kyron had to come in and play,” Smart said. “I can’t say how they played. I didn’t think, I thought we had some jitters there. I thought it was really good for KJ Bolden to get to start and play, to get some confidence and play more. He’s rotated a lot. I mean, we could have played better. I’ll say that, but we survived them.”

Georgia will face better offenses moving forward. The Ole Miss team Georgia visits next week hung 63 points on Arkansas on Saturday. It’ll need a defensive showing more in line with what the Bulldogs had against Texas — 4 turnovers, 7.0 sacks — than Florida, where aside from the heroics of Allen and Chaz Chambliss, who had 2.5 sacks, Georgia’s defense rarely imposed its will on the game.

“CJ Allen made a freaky, unbelievable play to jump up and snag it, and that was probably the biggest change in the game,” Smart said.