ATHENS -- Georgia's football team is headed to the SEC Championship game, but imagine how different things would be today if punter Drew Butler had not stopped Vanderbilt from scoring a game-winning touchdown on the night of Oct. 15.
"We wouldn't be talking about any kind of Eastern Division championship," coach Mark Richt said.
In fact, South Carolina would be the SEC East's representative in the league title game, and Bulldog Nation would be lamenting another season gone awry.
Winning a championship requires a lot of big plays, and Georgia has had its share during its nine-game winning streak -- two fourth-down touchdown passes in the victory over Florida, for example, and a season full of stellar defensive stops.
But in retrospect, no play looms larger than what happened -- or didn't happen -- in the waning seconds at Vanderbilt.
With 15 seconds to play, leading 33-28 and facing fourth-and-17 from its 45-yard line, Georgia called on Butler, the former Ray Guy Award winner, to punt. The plan was for him to kick the ball out of bounds, which would have virtually sealed the victory.
"I really wasn't worried about whether it went 20 yards or 50 yards," Butler recalled last week. "But it all happened so quick; the guy kind of got in there clean and really just took the ball right off my foot."
Vanderbilt's Udom Umoh broke through untouched to block the punt, and several Commodores converged on the loose ball, all seemingly with a clear path to the end zone. A scoop-and-score touchdown for a Vanderbilt victory momentarily looked inevitable. Vandy's Kenny Ladler, who is from Stone Mountain, recovered the bouncing ball around the Georgia 25.
That's when Butler reentered the play.
"You saw five black shirts and one opposing shirt [Butler's]," Vanderbilt coach James Franklin would say later.
"I kind of turned around and saw [Ladler], and I just chased him down," Butler said. "Luckily, he was kind of stumbling, so I got hands on him and brought him down to the ground. And [Georgia's] Connor Norman came back as well, and a lot of guys were retreating to make that play."
As Butler stopped Ladler, the Vanderbilt defensive back lateraled the ball to teammate Steven Clarke, who was brought down largely by Norman.
Even then, Vanderbilt had the ball at the Georgia 20-yard line with seven seconds to play, enough time to frantically attempt two passes. After a Vanderbilt substitution infraction shoved the ball back to the 25, Georgia's defense prevented a completion on the first pass and limited the second to an inconsequential gain to the 16.
"Luckily for us, our defense was playing lights out, and they had those two huge stops and we were able to get out of Nashville with a victory," Butler said. "Just thinking that a play you were a part of could have cost you a game, and in reality a season, we dodged a huge bullet and moved on from that. We have performed a lot better as a punt team since that debacle.
"Obviously, if they were to score on that blocked punt, we simply wouldn't be talking about the things we are today. Obviously that was a huge part of the season, but there also have been many other plays that have gotten us where we are today."
Such plays would include fourth-down touchdown passes from Aaron Murray to Michael Bennett and Tavarres King that brought Georgia back from a 17-3 deficit against Florida, the power running by Richard Samuel in the fourth quarter against the Gators and a long list of sacks and stops by a defense that ranks No. 4 in the nation (No. 2 against the run).
But when Richt was asked, about 24 hours after clinching the division title, to cite a few plays that turned the season, the first one that came to his mind was Butler's effort after Vanderbilt blocked his punt.
"He got hit, and he kind of pirouetted and spun around, but he didn't lose his feet," Richt said. "He was able to pursue enough to cause them not to score on that play. They could have scooped it and scored easily, and I think his athletic effort and desire to win made all the difference in the world in that ballgame."
Butler summed up the sequence of events this way: "We kept a disaster from turning into a catastrophe."
Since then, the Bulldogs have won four more games to stretch their winning streak to nine -- the program's longest single-season win streak in 29 years -- and earn their first SEC title game berth since 2005.
"It really is amazing," Butler said. "Just looking back at that point, it seemed like a pretty low point for special teams and for the punt team in particular. But we were able to step it up and focus on what we needed to do, focus on the task in front of us.
"That has been a huge part of this team, taking it one day at a time, and now we are here. We're Eastern Division champions."
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