Georgia 22, Texas 19: Gutsy ‘Dawgs Show The Heart Of A Champion

There’s a very real chance that before this football season is over the 2024 Georgia Bulldogs will actually kill me.

If that happens DavetheDawg can have what remains on my butter-of-the-month club subscription and GlimmerTwinDawg gets my Tesco cracker box signed by Charlie Watts.

Gunner Stockton gets my eternal admiration, and a kidney if he needs or wants one. Carson Beck can also have my elbow if necessary, he doesn’t even have to wait.

The Georgia Bulldogs overcame injury, inexperience, and their own occasional ineptitude to emerge a victorious underdog once again, beating the favored Texas Longhorns 22-19 in overtime.

There are some teams that would have folded when their starting quarterback went down with an injured throwing arm. Some would have thrown their hands up and cursed the heavens when Brett Thorson went down then went to the locker room.

Some teams would have rolled their eyes as Steve Sarkisian whined and spat like a colicky infant as his team was repeatedly called for penalties they were absolutely committing. Actually, everyone did that. 11 penalties for 94 yards will haunt the Horns, and we’ll have to hear Sarkisian bleat about them for the foreseeable future. Whatever. Losers whine about the injustices done to them. Winners find a way to overcome them.

Often in a game like this we say that the stats don’t tell the story. But weirdly, in this one they sort of do. Texas finished the game with 389 yards of total offense, but only had 129 of those after halftime. The Bulldogs ground out 277 yards, 187 of them after the intermission. And for the first time this season Georgia had more yards on the ground (141) than through the air (136).

Trevor Etienne may have made the biggest play of the game not when he charged across the goal line in overtime, but when he gave the thumbs up to trainers pregame to say he wanted to try to go. Etienne finished with 94 yards on 16 carries and 28 yards receiving on 5 catches. He scored on touchdown runs of 10 and 4 yards. Want to hear a weird stat with which you can impress your friends? Try this: Georgia scored 52 points against Texas in two meetings this season, and Trevor Etienne and placekicker Peyton Woodring scored every one of them.

With Beck iced up on the sideline Georgia had to lean on Etienne and Nate Frazier, running behind an offensive line that hadn’t been able to find consistency all season even if they’d been handed a flashlight and a detailed map. They responded beautifully. Georgia wasn’t able to stay on the field in the first half and held the ball for all of 9:48 before the intermission. They held it for 22:11 out of the 30:00 in the second half and ended the game with a solid advantage in time of possession. The veteran offensive line actually looked more like a veteran offensive line that at any point this season, and that’s exciting no matter who’s under center.

Gunner Stockton finished 12 of 16 passing for 71 yards, and added an 8 yard run that will likely go down in Bulldog history. As that tweet quoted above highlights, Kirby Smart and his Bulldogs just performed the kind of witchcraft Nick Saban and Alabama used to do to them. They dug deep down the stretch, and found a way to win with a backup quarterback in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Something about this felt like it exorcised a very particular demon.

Stockton showed grit and poise that we didn’t know he had, in part because we’ve never really seen him in anything approaching a pressure situation. It’s obviously way too early to be thinking about the Dawgs’ 2025 quarterback race. But Stockton very clearly showed something tonight that not every signal caller has.

Defensively, the stat of the night was Georgia’s six sacks of Quinn Ewers. The Bulldogs got home early and often just as they had in round one in Austin, and it kept the ‘Horns behind the sticks, especially in the first half. That kept this one close enough for some magic to happen.

Georgia again stymied a Texas rushing attack that was supposed to be unstoppable. The Burnt Orange ran the ball 28 frustrating times for an anemic 31 yards. 1.1 yards per carry just ain’t SEC, Paul.

Again, Daylen Everette came up big against the Fightin’ Sarkisians. His matchup against Texas’s Matthew Golden was a clinic on both sides. Golden finished with an impressive 8 catches for 162 yards. But Everette won enough battles to keep the Red and Black in the game defensively. Young Daniel Harris was targeted early and often, and he didn’t win them all. But again, he won enough to do the job. As at quarterback there’s a lot left to worry about in 2024. But tonight gave some reason to believe the secondary may not be the same liability next season.

Were there reasons to be frustrated? Absolutely. I hope all of you find someone who’s an honest with you as Mike Bobo telling the whole world he’s running a screen to the motion man. And the Bulldogs continue to fall apart and play poor assignment football on 3rd down. “Third and Schumann” may not be crippling, but it’s certainly becoming dangerous. I continue to believe that the UGA secondary just isn’t assignment sound enough for us to only rush 4 on third down, and if we don’t get home quickly we simply get toasted. Oregon and SMU among others have the talent to make us pay for that if given the chance. And our turnover luck in this one was off the charts. A worse bounce of the ball here or there and this one turns out much worse.

But that’s a worry for another night. Georgia won’t play another football game until at least New Year’s Eve and very likely New Year’s Day. That’s three and a half weeks to get healthy, a luxury this team desperately needed. As Kirby Smart safely noted postgame he has two national championships but only just won his third SEC title. It’s hard to win the SEC, and Georgia has done it despite making it hard on themselves this season. Kirby Smart may have coached his best season in Athens, taking a team that often appears to lack the consistency and sense of urgency we’ve come to expect from Bulldog teams. It’s a young group, but they’ve matured a lot. You can call these Bulldogs a lot of things. But you can’t call them quitters. You can’t call them gutless. You absolutely can however call them champions. Until later…

Go ‘Dawgs!!!