TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There was a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback on Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium. He just didn’t play for Georgia.
Jalen Milroe threw for 374 yards, ran for 117 yards and accounted for 4 total touchdowns — two rushing and two passing. He’s the first player to ever do that against a top 5 opponent.
Georgia quarterback Carson Beck had 4 turnovers. That’s been done plenty of times, almost always in a losing effort.
Beck threw three interceptions while adding a critical fumble in Georgia’s 41-34 loss. That Georgia fell behind 28-0 in the game does not all fall on the shoulders of Beck. But the Georgia quarterback, who has said he wanted to win the Heisman Trophy, didn’t do Georgia any favors with his play.
“Obviously, I’m upset,” Beck said after the game. “I’m not big on moral victories. I believe in winning and losing, and we lost. But we fought hard, and that’s something to be proud of.”
The first interception of the night was not Beck’s fault. Georgia had a screen called into a max blitz by Alabama. Kirby Smart said it was a perfect play call. But wide receiver Arian Smith didn’t catch the audible and instead ran upfield.
Alabama cornerback Domani Jackson instead caught Beck’s pass. Alabama scored three plays later to go up 21-0.
Beck added another interception in the second quarter, with Alabama tricking him into throwing to a receiver he thought was open. Beck then took a safety on an intentional grounding penalty. That made it 30-7 going into halftime.
“Carson was just, he didn’t protect the ball, he had one hand on the the ball,” Smart said. “You can point to anything in turnovers, they had them too. So it’s really important that you don’t turn the ball over, but we had to take risks too. So every time we had a fourth down, it was a potential turnover. They had a fourth down, that we stopped it.
“That was a turnover. So there’s a lot of big plays in that game, a lot of big plays to be had.”
Georgia began to finally hit on some of those big plays in the second half. He found Smith and Cash Jones for large gains. But Beck’s third-quarter fumble gave back some of that earned momentum.
“The fumble was probably the one that he’ll look back on and say, it’s 1st and 10, just throw it away,” Smart said. “Just throw it away, we don’t have to make a play there because we got four downs. We got second, third and fourth. To fumble that one and give it back to them really makes it tough.”
But Beck kept chucking, as he had to with Georgia losing for almost the entire night. The deficit changed the way Georgia played, with the Bulldogs knowing they couldn’t afford to punt. Georgia went 5-for-5 on fourth down in the game. It attempted three two-point conversions as well in an effort to grab some extra points.
And all that chasing led to a lead. For as sloppy as Beck was, he did fire Georgia back into the lead connecting on a 67-yard touchdown to Dillon Bell with 2:31 remaining.
“It was a great play design by Mike (Bobo), and we thought that it was there all week,” Smart said. “It had to be the right look, and I thought it was a great call. I didn’t even know at the time he called it, but it was one of those that we thought we could take advantage of their aggressiveness. They’ve got some really aggressive safeties, and he bit on it. And it was a great throw by Carson, great play.”
But Milroe responded immediately with a 75-yard touchdown to Ryan Williams. Anything Beck could do, Milroe did better.
Beck got the ball back with one last chance to tie or win the game. It’s an opportunity every quarterback dreams of.
But as it so often has against the Alabama Crimson Tide, it was another nightmare ending.
With 43 seconds remaining, Beck tried to find Colbie Young on a back-shoulder pass. His 50th pass in the night ended in an interception. His third.
After not turning the ball over at all in the first three games of the season, Beck did it four times in one night.
“I think we just made mistakes,” Beck said. “That was all it was. We had some busts and certain concepts, and we didn’t run the right things And, you know, just it is what it is. It’s part of the game, and then they stopped us whenever we needed to convert, and that’s football.”
Beck did finish with three touchdowns and a career-best 439 yards. It’s the most yards a quarterback has ever thrown for under Smart.
But those throws and yards won’t be remembered. There’s nothing to celebrate in a performance like this.
All Beck and Georgia can do is move on and be better. They will have to be if they’re to get another shot at an Alabama team that has their number.
“Yeah, it’s super easy to do that,” Beck said. “I mean, you can sit there and say shoulda, woulda, coulda, and, I mean, it is what it is. You know, I can sit here and say if this would have happened we would have won or this would have happened, we would have won, but it really doesn’t matter. I mean, what happened happened, and we got to move on and, you know, continue the season.”
