Not so long ago, serious folks were calling Georgia the best team in the nation. Today it’s unclear if Georgia is a team at all, as opposed to Todd Gurley and his supporting cast.
Not so long ago, the Bulldogs were believed to have the inside track on winning not just the SEC East but the conference itself. Today those same Bulldogs are lucky not to be 0-2 in SEC play.
Not so long ago, Georgia entered a game against Tennessee favored by 17 points. A half-hour after it ended, coach Mark Richt expressed his gratitude over not having to face the young Volunteers any later in their growth cycle.
All of which is to say: The Bulldogs are one strange crew.
Georgia beat Tennessee 35-32 on a day when Gurley rushed for a career-best 208 yards on 28 carries, but — here’s where the weirdness starts to set in — didn’t get the ball enough. The Vols dared Gurley to beat them, and he not only ran through but leaped over the visitors. Still, the clinching points were scored by the Bulldogs’ defense, which fell on an unforced fumble in the end zone with 4:27 remaining.
Even then, the day wasn’t done. After another blurry-fast Tennessee touchdown, Georgia had to recover an onside kick and hand the ball to Gurley six more times before the victory bell could be sounded. Richt would describe the game as featuring moments both “awesome” and “awful,” an observation met with a silent chorus of “Amen.”
If the Bulldogs do play for the SEC championship, we’ll need to recall the three series on Sept. 27 that saw Tennessee deprived of their starting quarterback. Having been hit on the elbow, Justin Worley was taken for an X-ray, leaving the Vols to work behind Nathan Peterman, who had thrown one pass this season. Clutching its 21-17 lead, Georgia blitzed Peterman with a fury and limited the Vols to three first downs.
Only after Gurley’s 51-yard touchdown burst made the score 28-17 did Worley return, whereupon Tennessee drove to a touchdown. Then Gurley hurdled safety Brian Randolph — a move so breathtaking as to recall Herschel Walker trampling Bill Bates in Knoxville — and moved to the sideline. (“Probably just gassed,” Richt would say later.)
Without Gurley, that drive fizzled. A Georgia punt was downed inside the 1. On second down, Worley and tailback Jalen Hurd botched a handoff. Defensive end Josh Dawson fell on the ball. The Bulldogs had the decisive points.
Missing again was anything approaching definitive. After four games, we still don’t know how good Georgia is. We don’t know if this defense, which yielded 32 points and 401 yards to an offense that mustered 10 and 313 in a loss at Oklahoma, is any good. We don’t know if quarterback Hutson Mason, a fifth-year senior but a first-year starter, can make the throws necessary to complement the great Gurley.
“It’s stupid (for a defense) not to (jam the line) with the running backs and linemen we have,” Gurley said. “We’re going to get the passing game right, though.”
Mason completed 16 of 25 passes for 147 inessential yards. He threw two horrid interceptions. Georgia converted one of 10 third downs. The second half began with five Georgia pass plays (one was a scramble), leading us to wonder if coordinator Mike Bobo, who ordered a run on first-and-goal at South Carolina, is indeed the only man in America who can stop Gurley.
“We still haven’t put it together,” Mason said of Georgia’s passing. Then: “If this (running the ball) is what it takes to win, I don’t know if it matters. But it’s a little frustrating to ‘rep’ something all week and not execute.”
In the end, Georgia won only because Gurley ran so hard against a stacked deck as to unstack it. Will that work for two months more? Can the nation’s greatest tailback overcome a shaky passer and a leaky defense and lift his team to a title?
The temptation is to say, “Herschel did it,” but that’s not true. Buck Belue was a pretty fair quarterback, and that defense was mighty. As much as one might recall the 1980 champion as a one-man team, it wasn’t quite. More and more, these Bulldogs look like The Gurley Show.
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