Key forced fumble against Auburn was no fluke for Georgia defense
ATHENS — The punch-out performed by CJ Allen and Raylen Wilson in Georgia’s win over Auburn was not a happy accident.
Their fists, both of them, weren’t thrown randomly in an attempt to try to dislodge the football from Jackson Arnold’s hands at the goal line.
It was a planned strike, one that had been practiced over and over and over again.
“Every day in practice, they’re always preaching and talking about takeaways. We work at it, it’s like drills and everything,” Georgia cornerback Ellis Robinson said. “So just seeing that translate from practice to the game, that was good.”
Allen told reporters after the game they knew Arnold would try to extend the ball over the goal line, giving the Bulldogs the needed opportunity to swing the momentum in the game.
Georgia has long emphasized forcing turnovers, as any great defense does. In recent weeks, the Bulldogs have taken time out of practice to further drill down on specifically punching the ball.
It worked against Kentucky, with Allen dislodging the ball on Kentucky’s first possession coming out of halftime. It set up a short scoring drive for the Bulldogs to push their lead to 21.
“I can’t tell you how hard (Glenn) Schumann and the defensive staff have worked,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said after the win over Kentucky. “I mean, we sacrificed 10, 20, 30 — like 30-40 practice minutes, which are like golden nuggets. I mean, to y’all 30-40 minutes is nothing, but 30-40 minutes out of a week to nothing but attempts and strip-outs and targeting balls and punching balls is really big. And I didn’t see it, but it looks like he used one of the tools that we had to punch it.”
Players said they believe the ability to punch the football out is a learned skill, one former Chicago Bears defensive back Charles Tillman perfected. That’s why it’s called the Peanut Punch, with Peanut being Tillman’s nickname.
Tillman forced 44 fumbles during his NFL career, the most by any cornerback.
Allen now has two on the season, with Georgia recovering both. Before his Kentucky punch-out, Georgia hadn’t forced a fumble this season.
“I feel like that’s a skill you can learn and develop every day,” Wilson said. “We try to do that here at Georgia every day in practice.”
Wilson doesn’t do anything special to make his hands any heavier. There’s nothing added other than just some tape to aid in his punch-out of the football. In the event of a missed punch, there’s no extra damage done to the hand.
Safety Kyron Jones, who recovered the fumble, was able to play with a club on his hand earlier this season, so even in the event of a hand injury, Georgia’s defenders still have the chance to jar the ball loose.
Georgia hasn’t stumbled onto something new with this strategy. It knows the Peanut Punch is practiced around the country.
Allen and Wilson just happened to time their efforts perfectly so their practice paid off when an opportunity presented itself.
“How much time do you spend on it? We’ve tried to take cutups of every play in a game that we miss an opportunity to take a shot at the ball and show that,” Smart said. “Then we also flip it around, or our defensive staff flips it around, and shows where we did take the opportunity to. It’s a compilation of clips, so you’re getting all these small clips of shots on ball, hitting the ball, trying to do something different so maybe we get a different result.”
Allen said after the game that he and Wilson will be able to talk about their punch-out until they’re 50 years old, their football careers long behind them.
The Peanut Punch will still be taught when the time comes. And as has been the case for the past two weeks, Georgia hopes to produce more of them.
“We’ve really done moved on to the next week, but I would say just it’s a one-two punch,” Wilson said. “If one of us ain’t hit it, then, shoot, it could go the other way. So, I just feel like we both did a big, played a big part in that.”
About the Author
Connor Riley has been covering the University of Georgia since 2014 before moving to DawgNation full-time before the 2018 season. He helps in all areas of the site such as team coverage, recruiting, video production, social media and podcasting. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2016.
