Florida thumps mistake-prone Georgia

Jacksonville — It was Georgia’s largest loss under coach Mark Richt. It was Georgia’s second largest loss ever to Florida. And surely it constituted the last word on what happened a year ago.

Having bristled for 12 months about Georgia’s controversial end-zone celebration in last season’s game, Florida made sure the Bulldogs had nothing to celebrate Saturday.

Enlarge this image

Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow put his name back in the Heisman race with three touchdowns.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

BY THE NUMBERS

• How They Scored • UGA Stats
• SEC Scores • SEC Standings

• UGA-Florida Game story
• Photos: Georgia-Florida
• Column: Reality check
• Blog: Gators' 7-TD party
• Grade the Bulldogs VOTE!
• More on UGA • Past games

The Gators pummeled the turnover-prone Dogs 49-10, taking sole possession of the SEC East lead and effectively dismissing Georgia’s goal of playing for the conference championship — let alone a national championship — this season.

Florida let the score pretty much stand as its rebuttal to Georgia’s dancing and stomping in last year’s 42-30 victory. But in case anyone didn’t get the message, the two timeouts Florida coach Urban Meyer called with a 39-point lead in the final minute allowed it to sink in.

“Everybody talked about last year, last year, last year,” Meyer said later. “What happened last year is we got beat… [Saturday’s performance] is a sign of grown men [taking] a challenge to heart. And instead of opening their mouths about it, they went to work.”

Meyer said the two timeouts were not designed to rub in the victory. And Richt let the matter pass, saying only that it was “perfectly legal” for Meyer to use his timeouts as he chose.

“All I know is they did a great job and deserved to win the game,” Richt said. “And other than that, I’m still very proud to be a Bulldog, I can tell you that.”

As to whether Georgia’s 2007 celebration provided emotional fuel for a Florida victory a year later, Richt said: “I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever it takes to figure that out.”

It takes no special training, though, to figure out one factor that fueled Florida’s victory: Georgia turnovers.

After trailing 14-3 at the half — the score would have been closer if not for two missed field goals by Blair Walsh — the Bulldogs turned the ball over on four of their first five possessions in the second half.

“Turnovers — that’s what killed us,” said tailback Knowshon Moreno, who lost a fumble.

“We shot ourselves in the foot,” said quarterback Matthew Stafford, who threw three interceptions. Stafford threw no touchdown passes, while Florida quarterback Tim Tebow — the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner — threw for two TDs and ran for three more.

The costliest of Georgia’s second-half turnovers:

• A Stafford pass was intercepted by Gators cornerback Joe Haden at the Florida 11 and returned 88 yards to the Georgia 1, from where Tebow scored on the next play.

• A Moreno fumble was recovered at the Georgia 30 and returned to the 10, leading to another Tebow TD run two plays later.

• Stafford’s third interception was returned 64 yards by Florida safety Ahmad Black to the Georgia 25, from where Tebow threw a touchdown pass on the next play.

“It seemed like everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Georgia linebacker Rennie Curran said. “We made crucial mistakes, and they capitalized on them every time.”

By early in the fourth quarter, the Gators led 42-3.

“When you make as many mistakes as we did against a team as good as they are,” Richt said, “you saw the results.”

The 39-point defeat was Georgia’s largest in 87 games against the Gators except for a 40-point loss (47-7) in 1996. It was by far Georgia’s largest loss to any opponent under Richt, the previous largest being a pair of 21-point defeats. And it kept alive the Dogs’ dubious streak of having not beaten the Gators in two consecutive seasons since 1988-89.

“We came out with a great amount of focus and energy,” Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes said. “We really wanted to get this game.”

The teams entered the game tied for the SEC East lead. Now, Florida (7-1 overall, 5-1 SEC) comfortably leads Georgia (7-2, 4-2). The Bulldogs have no shot at the SEC championship game unless Florida loses its next two games to Vanderbilt and South Carolina.

“That’s not likely to happen, the way they are playing,” Richt conceded.