On the final touchdown play of Saturday’s SEC Championship Game, Georgia freshman quarterback Jake Fromm took the shotgun snap and handed the ball off to freshman running back D’Andre Swift. Swift ran to his left, made a lightning quick cut back inside, and streaked 64 yards to the end zone to put the bow on top of the Bulldogs win.
These two freshman lead the SEC’s All-Freshman team for the 2017 season, announced by the conference on Thursday afternoon.
Fromm and Swift are joined on the team by offensive linemen Andrew Thomas and Solomon Kindley, who started and played side-by-side on the right side of the Bulldogs line for most of the season.
Fromm, also named the SEC Freshman of the Year on Wednesday, stepped in for injured sophomore quarterback Jacob Eason during the first quarter of the Bulldogs’ first game of the season. All he did was win his first ever start on the road at Notre Dame and be the steady hand guiding the Georgia offense all year and getting the ball to the team’s talented playmakers. He is among the national leaders in pass efficiency and totaled more than 2,000 yards through the air and 21 touchdown passes.
Swift, easily good enough to start on a number of SEC and Power-5 teams, played his role as Georgia’s third-string running back behind seniors Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, who are now Nos. 2 and 3 on the Georgia all-time rushing list. The Bulldogs didn’t miss a beat when he came on the field, and Swift became a valuable and dynamic option running the ball and a very dangerous pass catcher whose reception total ranks fourth on the team behind the three starting wide receivers. His long touchdown run to seal the SEC title provided an excellent snapshot of the first season in Athens for the kid from Philly.
Kindley and Thomas anchored the right side of the Georgia line for nearly the entire season. Kindley, a redshirt freshman, battled through occasional ankle injuries to become an important piece to a completely revamped offensive line for the Bulldogs, which was a major concern among many at the beginning of the season. Following the Auburn loss, fellow redshirt freshman Ben Cleveland began to start at right guard for Kindley, although Kindley remained in the rotation.
Thomas, maybe not the most heralded of all the freshman offensive linemen in Georgia’s 2017 recruiting class, earned the starting spot at right tackle relatively early in the preseason and has continued to improve and impress. After really struggling for the first time against All-SEC defensive end Jeff Holland in the first meeting with Auburn, Thomas bounced back with an outstanding performance — as did the entire offensive line — in the SEC title game in Atlanta.
