ATLANTA – Saturday’s 31-23 win at Georgia Tech certainly did not qualify as pretty. It was anything but.
Mistakes, both of the physical and mental variety, made the Bulldogs’ night at Bobby Dodd Stadium much more stressful than most imagined it would be before the Bulldog ground game enabled Georgia to grind out the win.
“This is not measured by stats and rushing yards and first downs—it's measured by heart, and you've got to have a whole lot of heart to go out there and fight and play like our guys have done week after week after week," head coach Kirby Smart said. "I mean, you see across the country in these rivalry games what happens. I know better than anybody that it can go either way in these tight games.”
Nevertheless, the Bulldogs know a similar effort Saturday in the SEC Championship against the Crimson Tide won’t cut it.
Surrounded by reporters for his post-game interview session, safety Javon Bullard did not wear the smile of someone whose team just finished undefeated for the third straight year.
“Shoot, there’s nothing really to celebrate,” Bullard said. “We really didn’t play to our standard; that’s really what it is.”
Once again, Georgia started the game slowly.
In what’s become an every-game event, Georgia Tech jumped out to a first-quarter lead against the Bulldogs–twice, marking the seventh time in the past eight games this has occurred.
Georgia’s defense started out well, forcing a punt on the Yellow Jackets’ first possession, before Daijun Edwards fumbled the ball on the first offensive play.
Four plays later, quarterback Haynes King ran in untouched for a 7-0 lead.
The Yellow Jackets would regain a 10-7 advantage later in the first before Georgia took a 14-10 lead on a 3-yard touchdown run by Kendall Milton.
Milton has been a stalwart since shaking off a myriad of injuries. He enjoyed his best game as a Bulldog against Georgia Tech.
The California native set a career-high with 18 carries for 156 yards and two touchdowns. He’s now rushed for touchdowns in seven straight games.
Georgia would need every point.
The Bulldogs’ run defense, which has been a strength for much of the year, was nothing of the sort against Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets’ offensive line had its way for seemingly most of the game. Georgia Tech rushed for 205 yards, averaging 5.6 yards per carry.
“We’ve got to fix our mistakes,” Bullard said. “It can be fixed. It’s nothing crazy. It’s things that can be fixed, and we’ve got to fix them to come up with a victory next week.”
Smart agreed.
"It depends on what kind of run it is. We go back to the conversations we've had before: there are different kinds of runs. There are quarterback runs and gap runs which are really hard to defend if you have a good quarterback who can run the ball. I've seen it all over the country. We're pretty good at stopping a lot of runs, but we're still working on stopping some of those runs. We've got to do a better job."
There were plenty of mistakes on offense, too. Edwards’ fumble was one of two turnovers on the night for Georgia, the second on an interception in the end zone by Carson Beck from the 5-yard line, wasting an opportunity to put the game away.
Two other touchdowns were taken off the board due to penalties.
“That was really frustrating, but I think the beauty about what Coach Smart preaches is that when that happened, nobody was looking around all sad,” center Sedrick Van Pran said. “It was unfortunate, but it was more of a mindset of 'Hey, we’ve got to get it done.' The big thing was understanding something bad happened, but we still had to persevere, too.”
Georgia was flagged six times for 60 yards.
"I don't ever talk about officiating," Smart said of the ACC crew, "but it's one of those where we go to a different conference, and they have different standards. We evaluate every crew that we get, and their crew had more penalties than any SEC crew going into the game. We just thought it was going to be a more penalized game. I guess they call it closer, more holdings, more personal fouls. They just have more fouls in their games than we average in the SEC. It just so happened that a lot of them went against us at inopportune times, but I don't question officiating. I think those guys do a great job."
