Kirby Smart knew the risk on Georgia onside kick: ‘I was an idiot if it didn’t work’

ATHENS — Not even Georgia’s players knew that Kirby Smart had called an onside kick with the Bulldogs leading 21-10 in the fourth quarter.

“I didn’t even know we were doing it,” wide receiver Noah Thomas said. “I just heard the crowd screaming out loud, we got it. But yeah, I love when we play aggressive all the time. I mean, that’s who we are. We are the aggressive team.”

So you can imagine how Texas felt when Peyton Woodring perfectly executed a surprise onside kick that would be caught by Cash Jones, a Texas native.

It was the first onside kick recovery in Kirby Smart’s tenure as Georgia’s head coach. He understood the risk.

The payoff proved to be worth it.

“It was a big momentum play, and it would have been, every one of y’all would have thought I was an idiot if it didn’t work,” Smart said. “So that’s OK too, that’s part of football.”

Georgia had just scored on a 10-play drive that zapped 6:01 from the clock. After the Jones recovery, Georgia marched down the field to score another touchdown, as Gunner Stockton found Lawson Luckie for a touchdown.

The Luckie catch put Georgia up 28-10. Texas went 11 minutes and 28 seconds of game action without touching the football.

The offensive drives sandwiched around the onside kick made the Smart decision all the more impactful.

“Our offense, it’s like a big strong anaconda just squeezing you,” Smart said. “You get squeezed, and you finally catch a little air, and then they’re back trying to suffocate you.”

Smart coached aggressive on Saturday, going for it twice on fourth down on the touchdown drive prior to the onside kick. The first came when Georgia had the ball on its own 36-yard line. But Stockton found Chauncey Bowens for a 10-yard gain to keep the drive alive.

The Georgia quarterback then got Colin Simmons to jump offside on a fourth and five to get another fourth down conversion.

The drive was punctuated with a 30-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open London Humphreys.

“We’re put in fourth and one every day at practice, and I guess that’s the way Coach Smart wants it. I guess that’s what any player wants. Just being able to convert in that situation, not be overwhelmed, and our guys, we were prepared.”

Georgia was prepared for the onside kick as well, as it is something Georgia practices every day. Smart estimated Jones had repped the play 250 times. Jones wondered if Georgia would ever actually run the kick.

At a critical moment between top-10 teams, Smart made the call, and Georgia pulled it off.

“It just felt like it was there,” Smart said. “They’ve got the best returner in the country, and I’d already seen him enough. One time, about burst through a hole that an 18-wheeler could have gone through. We got a holding call that prevented it, but I wasn’t kicking it to him again. I’d just as soon kick it to one of those front guys.”

By the time Georgia’s defense retook the field, it held a comfortable 28-10 lead. Freshman Zayden Walker stripped Arch Manning on the first play, with Texas able to recover. The Longhorns would end up punting the ball back to Georgia, all but admitting defeat.

The margins between Georgia and Texas are so thin that a handful of plays can swing the game. The onside kick certainly did so, giving Georgia the emotional push it needed to finish off Texas for a third time in three seasons.

“As a team, we are always wishing, ‘Can we run this? When are we gonna run this?’” Georgia linebacker Quintavius Johnson said. “And it finally paid off.”