Kirby Smart and his No. 4 Georgia Bulldogs had no problem presenting me with a tiger-sized plate of crow to eat. Or would it be an eagle? I’m still confused. I guess the good news is they gave it to me in the first half, so I got to watch the second half with a full stomach.
In all seriousness, Smart’s defense was on point tonight. Georgia held Auburn to just 216 total yards, with only 39 of those coming on the ground. They also held the Tigers out of the end zone. Stopping the Tigers’ rush defense is always a major key to victory, and it proved true tonight.
“We knew that in the last two games, whoever won the rushing stat would win the game,” said Georgia linebacker Azeez Ojulari. “We had to make sure we held them down, stopped the run, and made them one dimensional.”
Auburn’s offense under new offensive coordinator Chad Morris had a different look than those of regimes past. Smart has faced close to 20 Auburn teams in his time at Alabama and Georgia combined; most of those featured Tigers’ head coach Gus Malzahn at the helm of the offense. Morris provided Smart with a different, albeit still unsuccessful look on Saturday night.
“I got comfortable playing against Auburn,” said Smart. “I say 'comfortable,' but I need to explain that—comfortable that I felt like I knew what they were going to do, because I have a strong, long history. He knows what we’re going to do. You can try to out-execute him. You can see things coming. But that was different tonight. That’s not old Auburn—Chad’s running that offense. They’re lining up all over the place. They’re in 'empty' more. If anything, they probably struggled to run the ball like they have in the past. That was not a traditional Auburn offense to me. It was different.”
Georgia linebacker Monty Rice, who led Georgia with seven total tackles, was thrilled with the way the defense was able to corral Auburn sophomore quarterback Bo Nix, despite his ability to escape from time to time.
“Obviously, Bo Nix is a great athlete,” Rice said. “There were a couple plays we didn’t finish on him in the backfield. But that’s why you’ve got to swarm in bunches, with five or six guys on the ball. That just goes to show how we practice during the week.”
All facets of Georgia’s defense were clicking. Smart was complimentary of his secondary’s performance after the game.
“I thought they did a good job,” he said. “I thought we made some plays on 50/50 balls, and then we lost some. But when you play against a quarterback like Bo, and receivers like Seth (Williams) and (Anthony) Schwartz, eventually you’re going to be one-on-one. That’s what football boils down to. Who can win those one-on-ones? If you win more than you lose, you’re usually going to come out ahead. Bo made some unbelievable throws and some unbelievable scrambles, but I was proud of our secondary and the way they played.”
Prior to Mark Webb’s second half interception, Nix hadn’t thrown a pick in his last six contests, with his most recent coming at LSU last October. His streak of 251 passes without an interception was the second-longest active streak in NCAA play, behind only Trevor Lawrence. The streak was also the fourth-longest in SEC history.
The only setback for Georgia’s secondary was the disqualification of Richard LeCounte following a targeting penalty in the second quarter. LeCounte did not play the second half, but will be available at the start of next week’s game.
“I’m glad it happened in the first half, because we’re going to need him next week for Tennessee,” said Rice.
All told, Georgia’s defense was rock solid in a game that required them to be so. Although much of the plaudits were directed toward quarterback Stetson Bennett, he placed them right back on his teammates.
“It’s so easy to play football when the defense plays the way it did,” said Bennett.
