Mark Stoops hopes D'Andre Swift leaves early for NFL

Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops walked up to Georgia running back D’Andre Swift and congratulated him on another strong performance against his Wildcats. He spoke a hopeful goodbye following the Bulldogs’ 21-0 win on Saturday night in Athens.

Swift has torn through the Wildcats’ defense three years in a row.

In 2017, Swift ran for 66 yards on nine carries. Last season, Swift exploded for 156 yards and two touchdowns. Both games were victories by the Bulldogs.

“D’Andre Swift is an impressive player,” Stoops said. “I just gave him congratulations after the game, and I wished him goodbye. He needs to go to the NFL. He's an elite player.”

The Wildcats defense held the Georgia offense to zero points in the first half, but Swift had already picked up 81 yards on the ground.

Swift opened the scoring for the Bulldogs in the third quarter on the Bulldogs’ second possession with a 39-yard touchdown. Swift went on to help the Bulldogs pull away, running for an additional 98 yards in the second half.

Wildcat defenders have a healthy respect for Swift’s game-breaking ability, and came in hoping to stop him as a group. Swift’s dead-leg move that he used to break a long run in last season’s match-up made its rounds in the Wildcats film room, as well as Swift’s ability to leap over defenders.

“Once he gets in the open field, you’ve got to be on your P’s and Q’s, because he can jump over you, and he has a mean dead leg,” sophomore safety Yusef Corker said. “He can go left or right or he can just go through you. He can just do so many things, and you’ve just got to make an open field tackle. We practiced all through this week, just making sure we gang-tackled the whole game. I thought we did a good job of that in the first half. In the second half, we just need to clean it up a little bit.”

The last time the 10th ranked Bulldogs were on the field, they suffered a loss to unranked South Carolina. Stoops fully expected an angry Georgia team to await them at Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium. The expectation was that the Bulldogs were going to respond after the disappointing defeat on their home field a week prior.

“You know coming in here, it's a different beast,” Stoops said. “That’s a tough group. They’re very talented. We knew we’d have their full attention after last week. This team will be a Top Five team by the end of the year.”