JACKSONVILLE – As solid as Georgia’s defense and special teams have been, forcing mistakes has not exactly been a Bulldog forte.

Saturday’s 43-20 win over Florida was a return to the norm, as the Bulldogs used big plays by both units to highlight the victory.

"It was pivotal. We talked about it all during our bye week," defensive lineman Zion Logue said. "We had two great weeks of practice, had a helluva day on Tuesday, a helluva day on Wednesday, and it carried over to today."

After not recovering a forced fumble all year, the Bulldogs forced two in the first half, one each by Jalon Walker and Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins.

Although the Gators recovered the one caused by Walker, Marvin Jones Jr. was there to recover the one forced by Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, which came off a sack by quarterback Graham Mertz.

Ingram-Dawkins was playing his first game in the last six after reinjuring his foot in the opener against UT-Martin.

Three plays later, Daijun Edwards rolled in from 20 yards, and the rout was on.

Georgia came in next-to-last in the SEC with 12 sacks (just ahead of Florida with 11), but harassed Mertz for most of the game, sacking the Gator quarterback four times, all four coming in the first half.

"Well, they gave us an opportunity to. You know, drop-back pass, you get a chance to. We don't get a lot of opportunities for that in earlier games. The more people drop back and pass, the more we'll be able to get to them," head coach Kirby Smart said. "I thought our defensive staff—Schumann, Muschamp, Tray, and Fran—did a great job. They put a couple of new wrinkles in that really helped in terms of getting pressure. We didn't just do the same thing we always do. I think there was one call that we got 2 tackles for loss and maybe a sack all from that call that we had not run all year."

Logue agreed.

"It was fun, man. It took me back to 2021 when we were getting the stops, getting the offense back on the field," Logue said. "Just causing havoc ... watching their offense just sigh, like they can't really get after them because we're getting after them so well."

Meanwhile, freshman Joenel Aguero made the play of the game on special teams.

With the Gators backed up to punt, Aguero led a host of Bulldogs who penetrated to the punter, with the freshman blocking the kick through the back of the end zone for a safety.

It marked the first blocked punt for a safety since last year’s game against Kent State, when Jalon Walker did the honor against the Flashes.

"Huge play in the game. Great scheme. Our special teams staff came up with it. We wanted to be aggressive, and we were. Joenel, they actually gave us a formation we had not seen, and Joenel made a great job, knocked it out," Smart said. "You only get two out of that, because they ended up kicking the punt to us, and we didn't do anything with it. It was really not as significant as you would like a blocked punt to be."

A pair of fourth-down stops did not hurt Georgia's cause, either.

"That was real big for all of that to happen," said linebacker Smael Mondon, who had one of the team's two fourth-down stops. "We definitely had a couple today that was real big."