Georgia wins and again owns the hated Gators

This season hasn’t gone as Georgia hoped, but it has spawned some feel-good moments. These Bulldogs beat South Carolina and LSU in rousing displays, and now they can rest easily in the knowledge that, after two decades of misery, they again own the hated Gators.

Being Georgia, ownership didn’t come easy. The Bulldogs authored dueling tutorials as to why they were considered a bona fide BCS title contender and why they no longer are. They played superb football, albeit against the worst-looking Florida team since Charley Pell’s Gators went 0-10-1 in 1979, for a half. Then Georgia, being Georgia, nearly threw it all back.

The Bulldogs gifted Florida a touchdown when tight end Arthur Lynch was too busy agonizing over a dropped pass that was actually a fumbled lateral, then handed the Gators two more points when tackle Kenarious Gates left the blitzing Loucheiz Purifoy unblocked. “It was slipping away,” coach Mark Richt, and soon a 20-point lead was down to three, and there was a real chance that Georgia might lose to the worst-looking Florida team since 1979.

But the Bulldogs didn’t, not even after the defense of Todd Grantham made the most egregious gaffe of this or many seasons. With Florida aligning itself to go for it on fourth-and-2, Georgia called timeout, then was flagged for an illegal-substitution penalty that gave the Gators their yardage.

If ever there was a moment to go belly-up, that was it. Instead the Bulldogs hunkered down. Safety Corey Moore sacked quarterback Tyler Murphy to blunt Florida’s go-ahead threat, and the Georgia offense, which had managed 335 yards and 23 points in the first half against 24 and zero in the first 22-plus minutes of the second, hogged the ball for the final 8:18. The Bulldogs gutted one out on a day when skill should have been enough.

Said linebacker Garrison Smith: “I was crying. I had tears in my eyes. I’m a grown man; I haven’t cried in a long time, but I did today because I just didn’t want to lose this game. I told the other guys, ‘We’ve got to dig down deep.’ I said, ‘I’m not giving up,’ and Corey Moore said, ‘I’ve got you, big brother — I’m with you till the end.’”

Of Moore’s sack, Richt said: “Somebody needed to make a play. The defensive call to bring Corey Moore on the blitz was big. It was gutsy. I was with (Grantham) and I was about to say, ‘Go sic ’em,’ but coach Grantham called it anyway.”

The Bulldogs rode the return of tailback Todd Gurley to that 23-3 halftime lead, but Gurley, who hadn’t played in five weeks, got “gassed” — this diagnosis from offensive coordinator Mike Bobo — by running so fast past so many Gators. Gurley left for the locker room, and by the time he returned the offense had lost its way.

Even so, 23 points should have been enough to subdue Florida, which entered ranked 109th nationally in total offense and 102nd in scoring and which hadn’t broken 20 in any of its three losses. But the way of these careening Bulldogs is to get way ahead and then try to hang on. Sometimes they don’t. This time they did.

What, Richt was asked, is the deal with his team? “They must like it,” he said. “I don’t like it. It makes you wonder if this is a great way to make a living.”

Still, any victory over Florida resonates if you’re a Bulldog, doubly so if you’re Richt, who has finally found a Florida coach he can beat. Richt is 3-0 against Will Muschamp, who as a Georgia Bulldog under Ray Goff was 0-4 in this game.

For the first time since Vince Dooley retired and Goff took over, the Bulldogs beat Florida a third year running. The teams entered having compiled similar bodies of work, each having fallen from the national rankings after losing much manpower en route. But Saturday’s doings proved there’s far more life in a bruised Bulldog than in a gutted Gator.