AUSTIN, Texas — Everything really was bigger in Texas for the Georgia football team on Saturday night, most notably, the Bulldogs’ efforts.

Kirby Smart scored his 100th win in grand fashion with the 30-15 victory over Texas in front of the crowd of 105,215 at Darrel K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

It was the Georgia football program’s first-ever road game against a No. 1-ranked team, while Smart raised his record to 3-1 against No. 1-ranked teams just when it seemed the ninth-year head coach couldn’t make any more history..

Smart’s Georgia program had already set the SEC record for most consecutive conference regular-season wins (28), and consecutive unbeaten (8-game) conference season (3, 2021-2023) marks. This, in addition to etching a place in history as the only back-to-back CFP Champion in the four-team playoff era (2014-2023).

Playing it forward

Smart, interviewed by ABC after the game, immediately deflected the attention from himself to his team.

“What was our intent when we walked on the field? Our intent was not to take pictures, not to do all of the superstar stuff,” Smart said.

“Our intent was to eat. Our intent was to come eat and be hungry. I’m not interested in all the bells and whistles. What I want is a team that fights their ass off, and that’s what they did tonight.”

The head coach had surely noticed -- like most Georgia fans and SEC followers -- that the Bulldogs’ hunker down mentality hadn’t been quite the same this season and the team did not play with the same hunger.

Fact is, NIL dollars have taken away the appetite of collegiate players -- endorsement deals, fast cars and expensive lifestyles are a distraction from the film room and extra time on practice fields.

New rules allowing for unlimited transfers certainly robbed Georgia of more veteran players growing within the program, awaiting hard-earned opportunities to propagate a championship team culture.

Despite all the time Smart allots for players to learn one another’s “Why,” this team had seemingly lost its collective direction.

Until Saturday night, when “Playing for the G” was back on display.

Underdogs

Texas was a 5-point favorite, making Georgia an underdog for the first time since the opening game of 2021, when it beat Clemson in Charlotte, N.C., 10-3, in a battle of CFP royalty.

Smart and his players taken note this week of doubters who were ready to write-off the program and proclaim the Longhorns as the newer and more improved version of SEC football greatness.

ESPN College GameDay provided a verbal turbocharge of sorts on Saturday, the panelists esteemed all picking Texas to beat Georgia in what boiled down to a battle for SEC superiority.

“There’s only one team in the SEC with an unblemished record,” GameDay analyst Desmond Howard said, “so that only means one thing, there’s a new sheriff in the SEC.”

Ah, but not so fast my friend, as fellow GameDay analyst Lee Corso used to say — and could have said on Saturday, but didn’t.

“There was a different level of intensity with this Georgia defense tonight, they were playing at another speed,” former SEC All-Time leading passer and long-time Georgia Radio Network Eric Zeier noted during the broadcast.

“That was a championship caliber of defense Georgia put out there with relentless pressure that was creating turnovers.”

Lucky number 13

The Bulldogs’ defensive success against the Longhorns was staggering, but in hindsight, not so surprising.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian noted how the healthy return of Georgia’s No. 13 — first-round edge talent Mykel Williams — impacted the Longhorns’ offensive plans.

“I think number 13 (Williams) being healthy helped them; he hadn’t played there in a while,” Sarkisian said of Williams return from the ankle injured that had sidelined and then slowed him since a 34-3 season-opening win over Clemson, which was not-so-coincidentally the only other time this season the Georgia defense wreaked havoc for four quarters.

“I think (Williams) played nine snaps last week, and then came back tonight ready to go, and he’s a problem.”

So much so that Georgia’s other first-round defensive talent, hybrid linebacker Jalon Walker, was able to generate three of the team’s seven quarterback sacks.

Accounting for one defensive train wrecker is doable, but put two of them out there— with what Smart said was an unconventional coverage package on the back end — and even the most veteran of offensive lines will struggle in protection.

It was too much for Heisman Trophy candidate Quinn Ewers to handle, to the extent Sarkisian replaced the rattled veteran Texas quarterback in the second quarter with the more-mobile Arch Manning.

The Georgia defense had finally found its edge, just one week after Mississippi State’s freshman quarterback, making his second start for a 1-5 team, was able to throw for more than 300 yards along with three touchdowns in rowdy Sanford Stadium.

“Our defense was embarrassed the week before … " Smart confessed. “We were able to get their attention in practice and I thought they woke up and played really hard today.”

Special teams, special poise

Georgia’s elite special teams have never gone to sleep, and that proved an important constant Saturday night when steady Peyton Woodring booted three first-half field goals of 33, 48 and 44 yards in routine fashion.

Punter Brett “Thor” Thorson was also on his game, providing hidden yardage with his field-flipping boots averaging 54 yards, leading to an eye-popping minus-9 in the return yardage category.

Offensively, the Bulldogs remained a work in progress, albeit, one able to overcome themselves.

Carson Beck’s stat line — 23-of-41 passing for 175 yards and three interceptions — was not impressive, but his poise was.

Beck had to shake off no less than five dropped passes that would have surely changed the complexion of the game, and on other occasion lower his valuable throwing shoulder to fight to the 1-yard line to set up the final touchdown.

Later, Beck showed off the athleticism that once made him an SEC baseball recruit an AAU basketball star, reversing field on a 5-yard first-down scramble that led Texas to exhaust its timeouts down the stretch.

Tailback transfer Trevor Etienne was yet another hero, fighting for 87 yards and 3 touchdowns on 19 carries into the teeth of a Texas front that entered the night No. 1 in total defense and scoring defense.

Etienne was stopped on his final carry of the night, a fourth-and-1 bid from UGA’s 40, a bold but worthy gamble considering the Florida transfer had gained 8 yards on the previous carry.

Complimentary football

Even after Texas had made the rare stop on Etienne, UGA’s rediscovered version of complimentary football surfaced once again.

Just as the Georgia offense had picked up the defense in the third quarter with an 11-play, 89-yard TD drive -- featuring a flea-flicker for the ages -- the Bulldogs’ D was ready to answer the call with its third fourth-down stop of the final quarter after Texas drove to the UGA 11.

The win wasn’t the sort of masterpiece Georgia crafted in other marquee games: the 63-3 “Opt-in” Orange Bowl win over Florida State last year, the 65-7 massacre of TCU in the 2023 CFP Championship, or the 27-13 orange crush of then-CFP No. 1 Tennessee in 2022.

In some ways, it made the Lone Star State Showdown win all the better.

Controversial calls, ejections, turnovers and busts were overcome on a most advantageous home field, leaving no doubt Georgia is capable of playing much better football.

These Bulldogs, despite all their imperfections of this 2024 season, have maintained a clear path to what would be Smart’s third national championship in four years.

There’s a lot of football left to be played, but as Smart said, this is a team that has proven it “won’t flinch.”

Georgia football has forged -- perhaps, rediscovered -- what it takes to handle the pressure that comes with being the SEC’s most elite and well-respected program.