JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Great win over Florida Saturday. The next game is even bigger.
That’s the way it goes for the top-ranked, undefeated Georgia Bulldogs during this incredible run. Winning a regular-season game for the 35th consecutive time on Saturday with a 43-20 victory over Florida, attention switched almost immediately in the postgame locker room to the next challenge.
No. 1 Georgia (8-0, 5-0 SEC) will play host to 14th-ranked Missouri (7-1, 3-1) in another nationally-televised SEC East showdown on CBS (3:30 p.m.). And once again, national pundits are pointing to the Tigers – who were off this past weekend – as a team that could very well trip up the Bulldogs on their unprecedented run of success.
Coach Kirby Smart doesn’t necessarily disagree.
“It’s going to be a big one next week. That’s a really good team,” Smart said during his postgame press conference at EverBank Stadium Saturday. “I’ve always said (Missouri is) extremely physical, big, tough. (Coach) Eli (Drinkwitz) does an incredible job on offense. Nobody is playing better on offense right now in the country than they are with their quarterback (Brady Cook).”
Smart said he and his staff actually studied Mizzou during the off week before they turned their attention to Florida. “They’re good. They’ll be well-rested coming into our place.”
Missouri gave the Bulldogs their biggest regular-season scare last season. Georgia needed a 14-point rally in the fourth quarter to score a 26-22 victory in Columbia, Missouri.
Missouri’s quarterback has completed 68.9% of his passes for 2,259 yards and 15 touchdowns with just three interceptions. The Bulldogs are very familiar with Cook’s top two targets, Luther Burden III (61receptions, 905 yards, 6 TDs) and Theo Wease (36-440-5) because they recruited them both.
“One of them hard,” Smart said of Burden, a sophomore from East St. Louis, Ill., who at one point was a hard Georgia lean. “I know they’re terrorizing defenses across our conference. They’re extremely talented in a good system.”
Here are five other things we learned after Saturday’s game:
Dominating rivalry
With Saturday’s win, Georgia now holds a 56-44-2 edge in the 102-game rivalry against Florida. The Bulldogs are 6-2 in the game under Smart and have won three straight by at least 20 points for the first time in school history.
Those are sweet numbers for Smart, who beat the Gators only once as a UGA player in the 1990s.
“You can’t win the East without going through Jacksonville most of the time,” Smart said. “It may not play out that way but, in year’s past, we showed them the stat where eight of the last 10 … (the Eastern Division championship) has come through Jacksonville, and maybe more than that. You’ve got to beat the best teams to win your division and Florida has certainly been one of those historically.”
Creating havoc
It’s hard to believe that Georgia, with the top defense in the SEC, reached the eighth game of the season without recording a fumble recovery. Thanks to having recorded nine interceptions, the Bulldogs’ turnover margin entering the game was an unalarming net-zero. But the anxiety over trying to get the season’s first takeaway via a loose ball had ramped up considerably entering Saturday’s game.
Finally, it happened. At the 12:40 mark of the second quarter, defensive end Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins reached out for Graham Mertz as he tried to step up in the pocket under heavy pressure and caught the football. It wasn’t on the grass long before freshman outside linebacker Marvin Jones Jr. dove and curled around it.
Georgia had possession at the Florida 11-yard line and scored four plays later.
“Crazy,” linebacker Smael Mondon said finally recording a recovery. “We were turned up. That it was Ty in his first game back was great. We were all just really happy for him.”
Ingram-Dawkins, a third-year sophomore from Gaffney, S.C., was playing for the first time since suffering a foot sprain in the season opener. He ended up wearing the Bulldogs’ spiked shoulder pads in celebration with the Bulldogs on the sideline.
Georgia desperately wanted to create defensive havoc Saturday and did. Linebacker Jalon Walker forced a fumble earlier by slapping the ball out of Mertz’s hand as he reared back to pass but the Gators. That was the fourth time this season Georgia got the opponents’ ball on the ground but failed to recover it.
The Bulldogs totaled four sacks for a loss of 33 yards, recorded eight tackles for losses of 42 yards, batted down two balls at the line of scrimmage and were credited with one official quarterback pressure.
Block that kick
Saturday’s game was one with a lot of firsts for the Bulldogs. They also recorded their first blocked punt of the season and it resulted in the first safety of the year.
Georgia’s Damon Wilson and Mykel Williams had just combined on the third sack of Mertz in the game in the second quarter when the Gators were forced to punt from their own 19. When they did, freshman defensive back Joenel Aguero broke through clean from the right side of the Florida formation and got a hand on the ball just as it left the foot of punter Jeremy Crenshaw. The ball sailed high in the air and backward toward the end zone. With punt-block called, Jalon Walker and several Bulldogs were in the end zone and tried to gather it in for a touchdown, but the ball quickly careened out the back before any of them could get a hand on it.
Nevertheless, the safety capped a run of 26 unanswered points by the Bulldogs in the first half. It was the first punt block since Walker got one against Kent State last year, which also resulted in a safety. It was the 30th score by either the defense or special teams under Smart, who are now 27-1 when recording a non-offensive score. The Bulldogs have scored 108 points on 16 TDs and six safeties in the Smart era.
Kicker Peyton Woodring was good on his only two field goal tries of 22 and 32 yards. He now has made 10 in a row and is 14-of-17 on the season. Punter Bret Thorson only three “pooch” opportunities but put all three inside the 20.
Beck beaming
Finally getting to play on the field he dreamed about as a Jacksonville kid, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck was beaming in the aftermath of Saturday’s victory. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Beck grew up 18 miles from EverBank Stadium and as a Gators’ fan, no less. He once committed to Florida as a pitcher in baseball before his football career took off after winning a state championship at Mandarin High.
Saturday, Beck was making his third trip to Jacksonville with the Bulldogs. But even with Georgia scoring lopsided wins in 2021 and 2022, it was the first time he’d gotten into the game. He admitted being intensely excited – and nervous – trotting onto the field Saturday.
“Absolutely,” Beck said. “Just to come into a game like this, much-anticipated not only for me but everybody, and execute at a high level, feels good.”
With 315 yards on 19-of-28 passing and two touchdowns, Beck now has 2,462 yards on the season with 14 TDs and four interceptions. He did not throw an interception Saturday and was not sacked. He’ll go into the Missouri game having completed 73% of this throws this season.
Delp delivers
Sophomore Oscar Delp came through in a big way filling in at tight end for injured two-time All-American Brock Bowers. The 6-5, 240-pounder had the catch of the game with a one-handed grab on the sideline for an 18-yard gain that set up the Bulldogs’ first score.
It was one of only two targets that Delp got Saturday, but he caught them both for 31 yards. He shared snaps at tight end with freshman Lawson Luckie, lined up occasionally flexed wide and held up quite well as a blocker
“Oscar’s great,” Smart said. “He didn’t feel any more burden. We told him he wasn’t going to play anymore snaps than he normally does. We knew he was going to go out and compete and work hard. Lawson Luckie gave him a blow, and hey, that’s why you recruit guys. You bring them in to play. … Oscar did a tremendous job. He’s a very physical blocker, and the one handed catch he made over on our sideline kind of got momentum going.”
Bowers accompanied the team to Jacksonville and counted against Georgia’s 70-man travel squad even though there was no chance he’d get in the game. That’s because the Bulldogs wanted him there to support – and coach up – his fellow tight ends.
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