After fielding dozens of questions in rapid-fire fashion during post-game interviews on Saturday, Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm was dismissed to return to the Bulldogs’ locker room. As he turned down a hallway, his voice echoed off of the cinder-block walls.
“Rocky Top, you’ll always be home sweet home to me,” he bellowed.
It seems the Bulldogs’ quarterback has adopted Tennessee’s theme song as his own. Might as well, seeing how he has owned the Vols during his college career.
Saturday's 43-14 victory was the third in a row over Tennessee for the junior from Warner Robins, and none of them have been close. The combined score is 122-26.
But Fromm had a much bigger hand in this one than those other two. To start with, it’s the first time in which he was asked to throw the ball a lot. He doubled his touchdown pass total versus the Vols Saturday with two and he was in the proverbial zone while doing so. He completed 24-of-29 passes for 288 yards and his throws went to nine different receivers.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
In a word, Fromm said it was “fun.”
“A lot of people challenged me to have fun tonight, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to go out and have fun, whether it was 10 to 14 or whatever the score was, I was going to have fun. The guys around me made that easy for me. They were making plays and we were moving the ball.”
It took the Bulldogs a little while to get going but, when they did, Tennessee could hardly slow them down. Fromm spread the ball around to nine different receivers in the game, and they caught the ball off every conceivable route. Fromm had deep balls to Demetris Robertson of 33 and 28 yards, short throws to D’Andre Swift out of the backfield and Tyler Simmons in the flat, and fades and streaks to Lawrence Cager and George Pickens.
“We see him do this day in and day out,” said Cager, who led the Bulldogs with five receptions. “I feel like every day he’s on fire like that, every game. … We’re just lucky to have such a great quarterback leading our team.”
The Bulldogs improved to 29-5 with Fromm as their quarterback as they rolled up 526 yards Saturday. Fromm was at his best in the last four minutes of the first half. That’s when he led the Bulldogs on back-to-back drives that turned a 14-13 deficit into a 26-14 lead.
“We’ve been in similar moments before,” Fromm said of mounting a comeback. “That’s just part of it. We were just, like, ‘What’s up next? What are we running? Let’s get in the end zone and get seven.’ ”
The Bulldogs also trailed Notre Dame in the first half in their previous game.
