ATHENS – Not since 1982 have the Georgia Bulldogs found themselves in this position, undefeated, already crowned with an SEC title and ranked No. 1 heading into the regular-season finale against Georgia Tech.
The Bulldogs won that day in Athens, 38-18 on Nov. 27. The score would have one think it was a Georgia cakewalk. The final stats would have one know otherwise.
The Yellow Jackets recorded 26 first downs to the Bulldogs’ 12, outgained them 422 yards to 322 and held the ball 14 minutes longer, 37 to 23. The incomparable Herschel Walker was out-gained that afternoon by Tech’s Robert Lavette, 207 yards to 167.
That loss would end Tech’s season at 6-5. Georgia would go on to face Penn State for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
Things have changed dramatically over the years. While the Jackets are an occasional threat to the Bulldogs’ supremacy, it’s a rarity now. And Tech (3-8) is not expected to be much of a threat Saturday. When No. 1 Georgia (11-0, 8-0 SEC) returns to Bobby Dodd Stadium, it will do so as a 35-point favorite.
But the Jackets were a 20-point underdog against the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs that day 39 years ago. Yet, Georgia found itself clinging to a 7-6 lead in the third quarter.
“Most every Tech game we were in was a tight, close battle,” said Vince Dooley, who was Georgia’s coach from the 1960s through the 1980s. “What we didn’t have was a conference championship game waiting out there. That’s even more challenging.”
Hence, the challenge awaiting coach Kirby Smart’s 2021 Bulldogs. They know they have No. 3-ranked Alabama (10-1, 6-1 SEC) awaiting in next week’s SEC Championship game in Mercedes-Benz Stadium (4 p.m. Dec. 4, CBS). They know they have several front-line players that need to both get healthy and get back in the groove before then.
But Georgia also knows it needs to beat Tech to keep all their grander goals intact. Never mind reaching 12-0 for the first time since 1980, victory on Saturday is absolutely necessary to insure that the Bulldogs’ College Football Playoff berth stays intact.
“We have a goal and we’re going to see it through,” junior safety Lewis Cine said.
Cine was among several Georgia players who mentioned that “see-it-through” mind-set this week. He attributed it to offseason workouts.
The Bulldogs were directed to report to the Butts-Mehre complex at 5 a.m. each week for conditioning runs. In addition, they ran the steps at Sanford Stadium 15 times, bottom to top. The 15 repetitions represented the 15 games the Bulldogs expected to play this season.
“We finished strong, and that was what really mattered,” Cine said. “You didn’t see guys quit, and that’s what I liked about the whole thing.”
“The crazy thing is we had to run from our facility to the stadium before that,” redshirt freshman receiver Ladd McConkey said. “So, to do that and then run those 15 bleachers speaks to the kind of players we have and the kind of heart we have.”
Such is the Bulldogs’ mind-set for Saturday’s game. Tech represents their 12th rep, so there are three more to go after Saturday.
The question now is whether Tech has the type of team that can make Georgia strain. We’ve seen it before from the Jackets this season. In September, they had Clemson on the ropes at Memorial Stadium before losing 14-8. They beat Duke on the road in October and lost one-score games to Virginia, Virginia Tech and Miami.
But when we last saw Tech, it fainted against No. 6 Notre Dame in South Bend, falling meekly 55-0.
An aberration, Smart concluded.
“They’ve got more talent to me,” he observed of coach Geoff Collins’ third Tech team. “They’ve stacked some good players.”
COVID-19 took away last year’s scheduled matchup in Athens, and the Jackets enter as losers of the past three games by combined margin of 100 points. Perhaps it will be different for Tech this time. It certainly was in 1976 when the Jackets and Bulldogs meant under remarkably similar circumstances.
Tech was 4-5-1 and had allowed a school-record 244 points when it came to Athens to take on the No. 4-ranked Bulldogs (9-1). Georgia already had accepted an invitation to play Tony Dorsett and No. 1 Pitt in the Sugar Bowl. The Bulldogs were three-touchdown favorites over the Jackets.
“By all rights, it looked like it does now that we were going to win that ballgame without too much trouble,” Dooley recalled this week. “As it turned out, it was quite a bit of trouble.”
It was. On cold, wet and dreary day in Athens, the Tech game was not won until Georgia’s Allan Leavitt kicked a 33-yard goal with nine seconds left. And that came only after the Bulldogs had wrested away a fumble from a driving Tech in Georgia territory.
Dooley, a close observer of the 2021 Bulldogs and all Georgia teams before and since, agrees that the latest edition is among the best ones ever. But the threat of upset always looms in college football, and in this series in particular.
“That’s always out there in a rival game like this; it just is,” Dooley said. “You’ve got to think about this game first.”
Or rep 12 of 15.
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