By John Frierson
Staff Writer

Apply enough pressure, as the old saying goes, and you can turn coal into diamonds. On Saturday night at Sanford Stadium, the fifth-ranked Georgia football team piled on the aggression and the pressure in the final 20 minutes of action against No. 10 Texas and produced a jewel of a win.

“I love when we play aggressive all the time,” wide receiver Noah Thomas said following the Bulldogs’ 35-10 blowout victory. “That’s who we are; we are the aggressor.”

“You always want to stay a step ahead,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said.

Georgia sure was down the stretch. After Texas cut the Bulldog lead to 14-10 with 5:27 to play in the third quarter, Georgia and Smart ramped up the aggressiveness. Facing a fourth-and-1 at the UGA 36-yard line, Smart elected to go for the first down. He said he was hesitant to go for it at first, but John and Alice Sands Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo “had a play I liked.”

It was a pivotal decision and the Bulldogs executed to perfection, with quarterback Gunner Stockton throwing a play-action pass to the right side to running back Chauncey Bowens for 10 yards. A few plays later, facing a fourth-and-5 at the Texas 49, Smart again opted to go for it, and this time Georgia got the Longhorns to jump offside, giving the Bulldogs another first down.

Later in the drive, on first down at the Texas 30, Stockton faked a short pass and fired over the top to an open receiver, London Humphreys, who hauled in the touchdown for a 21-10 lead with 14:20 to play in the game.

The aggression continued on the ensuing kickoff, with Georgia trying an onside kick by Peyton Woodring that running back Cash Jones recovered at the Bulldog 47. It was the Bulldogs’ first successful onside kick since 2013.

Smart said the team works on that onside kick often.

“Little walk-on kid from Texas, Cash Jones, I bet you he’s taken 250 reps of that in his time being here, and he kept asking, ‘When are we going to call it, Coach? I’d love to do it.’ Just felt like it was there,” Smart said.

It was. But not everyone was aware it was happening.

“That onside, I didn’t even know we were doing it,” Thomas said. “I just heard the crowd screaming and I was like, ‘Ooh, we got it?'”

They did get it, and the Bulldogs marched down the field for another touchdown. This time, Stockton, who tied a career-high with four touchdown passes and rushed for a 4-yarder later in the fourth, hit tight end Lawson Luckie on the right side of the end zone for a 6-yard score and a 28-10 lead with 8:53 to go.

Woodring did a normal kickoff after that score, and the coverage team stopped returner DeAndre Moore Jr. at the Texas 11. On first down, linebacker Zayden Walker strip-sacked quarterback Arch Manning for a 4-yard loss (Texas recovered the fumble). Manning’s next two passes were incomplete, and then Georgia’s Zachariah Branch returned the UT punt 15 yards to the Longhorn 33.

All of the momentum was on Georgia’s side, and it didn’t stop. Running back Nate Frazier broke free for a 21-yard gain on second-and-8, and three plays later, Stockton ran the ball in from the 4 to put the game away. Powered by aggression, pressure and excellent execution, the Bulldogs scored 21 unanswered in the fourth quarter to turn a tight game into a runaway.

Thomas, who caught two touchdown passes in the first half to help the Bulldogs get out to a 14-3 lead, said playing aggressively “means everything, man.”

“It lets us have the confidence to make the plays we always make in practice, and do it in the game,” he said after catching four passes for 32 yards.

In a second top-10 matchup in Georgia’s past four games — the Bulldogs also beat then-No. 5 Ole Miss, 43-35, on Dooley Field on Oct. 18 — Stockton was rock-solid. He completed 24 of 29 passes for 229 yards, threw four touchdown passes, and ran for a score. Stockton did throw just his third interception of the season midway through the third quarter, but it was about his only mistake in the game.

Stockton was maybe even more impressive in the win over Ole Miss, when the Bulldogs needed every point to take down the Rebels. He completed 26 of 31 passes for 289 yards and also had four touchdown passes and ran for another.

Unlike the Ole Miss game, which evolved into a shootout starting in the second quarter, Georgia’s defense clamped down on the Longhorns for most of the game Saturday. The Bulldogs got pressure on Manning often, sacked him three times, and he finished 27 of 43 for 251 yards, with a touchdown and an interception, picked off by Bolden in the second quarter.

Offensively and defensively, plus the aggressive decision-making from the coaches, this was maybe Georgia’s strongest performance of the season. But there is still work to be done, Bolden said.

“This team hasn’t reached its ceiling yet. We still got a lot more to go,” he said. “If we can get the defense and offense to play together like we did tonight, every game, it’s going to be disgusting. I still feel like we haven’t played a complete game yet.”

 

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.