Bitchin’

This sounds kinda personal, Erik Ainge.

“You know who I can’t stand though? Stetson Bennett. It was cute when he first got to play and played pretty good. And now the whole like I’m a walk-on, I’m a JUCO transfer, he’s like 28-3 as a starter at Georgia, or something like that. I’m cheering hard against him. I want Georgia not to just lose the game I don’t want them to lose with Stetson Bennett throwing 4 touchdowns. I want Stetson Bennett to throw 4 picks and cost his team a championship. He’s such a punk.”

What, does he owe you money, or something?

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“You’ve been here before. You know what to do.”

Is there such a thing as a post-game hype video?

🎬 𝗩𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 | Game Fourteen#GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/LIwr2oi6VP

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) January 3, 2023

Apparently so.

This week’s tale of the tape

It’s very simple.

• Georgia net ypp:  7.09 offense – 4.95 defense = 2.14
• TCU net ypp:  6.85 offense – 5.53 defense = 1.32

Some random, early thoughts on the national championship game

Just an assortment of things that popped into my head…

• Is TCU’s A game as good as Ohio State’s?  The Buckeyes, to their credit, left nothing on the table (except maybe for Day’s playcalling on the last series of the game) and came up short, even though I would argue the Dawgs didn’t bring their A game.
• Plenty of talk about how Michigan wasn’t prepared to see what TCU brought on offense and defense.  That won’t be the case for Georgia, as Mississippi State runs the Air Raid and the 3-3-5.
• Max Duggan scares the crap out of me, not because Georgia’s defense had a hard time with Stroud running the ball (nor is he in Stroud’s class as a passer, for that matter), but because he’s proven more than once this season that he’s got the ability to pull his team’s nuts out of the fire.
• That being said, as Ari Wasserman ($$) puts it, “I would be remiss, though, if I didn’t mention TCU’s journey to the national title game was aided by not having to play a single game this year against a roster like Georgia’s.”
• I’m sure we’re going to hear a lot about physicality this week.  TCU definitely brought it, somewhat to Michigan’s surprise.  I expect that’s something Smart will be preaching constantly to his troops over the next few days.
• No, Quentin Johnson doesn’t have Marvin Harrison Jr.’s stats, but he’s definitely no slouch.  Monday would be a good time for Georgia’s secondary to quit leaking like a sieve.
• Kirby’s definitely right about one thing — both Georgia and TCU have made a living out of being resilient this season.  Game recognizes game.  Putting TCU out before the fourth quarter would be a good thing.
• I still have to believe that talent combined with experience counts, and counts more than every Cinderella take we’re about to hear over the next week.

Ringo’d

This is pretty wild.

CJ Stroud against #UGA in the #PeachBowl:

Targeting Kelee Ringo = 6-13 for 69 yds and 1 TD

Targeting anyone else = 17-18 for 279 yds and 3 TDs

(2 throw-aways and 1 batted pass were other incompletions)

— Brent Rollins (@BrentRollinsPhD) January 3, 2023

How often do you see a good passing team target the opponent’s number one cornerback almost as many times as the rest of the defense combined?  Makes you wonder if TCU will test Georgia’s secondary in the same way.

It’s not stealing if you work hard at it.

Credit to Graham for catching this:

… There’s a lot of angles to this game, and it definitely felt like Georgia stole one from the Buckeyes. Yet when you look closer you see that the Bulldogs outperformed Ohio State on a down-to-down basis by a pretty good margin. Georgia outgained the Buckeyes by 1.8 Yards Per Play. Net YPP is a metric we watch closely here at DawgsCentral. The benchmark for elite teams in college football has historically been a +2 Net YPP output over the course of a season. CFP teams often get to that number by putting up a wider margin against lesser opponents and coming out ~1 YPP better than their best opponents. Sometimes you lose the Net YPP battle and win, but that rarely happens repeatedly over the course of a season. Georgia shot itself in the foot all night, but it almost hit that +2 Net YPP mark while playing shorthanded against the 3rd most well-recruited roster in college football. It absolutely MUST clean up the mistakes it made in Atlanta, but it should be made clear that the final result was not the result of random luck and fortunate bounces…

Yes, OSU averaged 7.08 yards per play on offense, but gave up 8.88 yards per play on defense, the worst mark in their history.  The game was close because Georgia lost the turnover margin battle and because Podlesny whiffed on one more field goal than Ruggles did.  Georgia won because (1) Kirby sniffing out the fake punt prevented Ohio State from stealing another possession and (2) Monken called a fabulous game, especially considering his quarterback disappeared on him for the better part of two quarters.

We’re quick to blame coaches when things don’t go the way we want, but this was a game where UGA doesn’t pull it out without them.

Breakout game

I’m sure a lot of you have been waiting for that Arian Smith moment to come.  It finally did.

Smith's 3 receptions for 129 yards and the TD against Ohio State…

First career game with more than 1 reception.

Also career single-game high in snaps (17). https://t.co/Qci3qi4AVh

— Brent Rollins (@BrentRollinsPhD) January 3, 2023

“That [pass to Smith] was just run fast, and he did, and he made the dude fall,” Bennett said. “Dude can do things that people can’t do. He can run like people can’t run, and he can go get the ball. Once I saw him, I think the whole sideline was standing up and saying, ‘He’s open!’ So I just tried to put it on him and let him do the rest.”

Just stay healthy, my dude.

Brock Bowers is a wizard.

OSU writer tries to do a fair and balanced take on the missed calls in the Peach Bowl, one of which he says is this:

On the ensuing drive, the Bulldogs faced fourth-and-six from Ohio State’s 13-yard line. Georgia elected to go for it and Bennett found tight end Brock Bowers for what was initially called short of the first down marker. This play again went to review and it was deemed that Bowers made the line to gain.

However, the rule was applied incorrectly, as the officials looked at where the ball was when Bowers touched out of bounds. The NCAA rulebook states that, in this situation, when the ball carrier is airborne, the ball is marked at the position in which it crosses the sideline, not where the player touches out of bounds. Based on the replays, it appears the ball was short of the mark when leaving the field of play.

The problem with that?  Bowers wasn’t airborne when he crossed the line.  His hand was planted on the turf.

This play by Bowers is why he is him. What a turning point pic.twitter.com/u0CxxP6wZH

— ATL FOREVER (@Ethanwall445) January 1, 2023

To his credit, dude does make a good point about Harrison on the end zone play reviewed for potential targeting, though.

However, Harrison stepped out of the back of the endzone and was the first player to touch the ball. The referee threw his hat, indicating that he saw this and it would lead to a five-yard illegal touchdown penalty of its own.

Smart talk

The GameDay crew interviews Georgia’s coach:

Sharing in the pleasure

Great story from Jeff Schultz ($$) about Mark Richt’s feeling on Georgia’s current level of success.

Richt accomplished remarkable things as Georgia’s coach. He took over a program that had eroded and hadn’t won an SEC championship in 20 years, and he won two conference titles in his first five seasons. His teams finished ranked in the top five three times and top 10 six times. He made the Bulldogs relevant again. He laid the foundation for what followed. In a four-team Playoff era, an argument could be made that his teams would’ve been in or in the debate in at least three postseasons (2002, 2007, 2012), maybe more.

But the Bulldogs never could get over the top in his 15 seasons in Athens. Richt shared in that heartache with fans. It’s why he beamed as big a smile as Smart and every fan in Indianapolis and across the state of Georgia last season when the Dogs defeated Alabama for the title. He knows what it meant to Smart, an alum who was Richt’s running backs coach in 2005. He knows what it meant to several of Smart’s assistants who coached for Richt, and to fans and supporters.

“It was fun to watch the fans’ reactions because it had been so long and Georgia had come so close enough times to break their hearts,” he said.

There aren’t any hard feelings, but it doesn’t sound like Richt kids himself about what changed, either.

“There’s always been a strong commitment to football obviously, but it went to another level when Kirby got there,” Richt said. “It’s kinda like, spare no expense for whatever we need to get the job done. Kirby certainly knew what it took to be at that elite level, and everybody cooperated.

In any event, coaching is a bottom line profession and Richt knows what that means ultimately.

“Things change over time, and I think we did the best we could with what we had. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough to win a national championship.”

Good stuff.  Read the whole thing.