UGA may have won by 38 points Saturday, but Kirby Smart justifiably wasn’t happy.
Sure, he was pleased that Georgia had racked up 550 yards of offense on 72 plays in its 59-21 win over the University of Massachusetts at Sanford Stadium in Athens, marking a season high in points.
Along the way, freshman tailback Nate Frazier ran for 136 yards on 21 carries and scored 3 touchdowns, all career highs for him. And although quarterback Carson Beck cooled off later in the game from the blistering pace he set in the first half, he finished with 20 completions in 31 passes for 297 yards and 4 TDs.
But as good as the Georgia offense looked for most of the game, the defense stunk up the place in the first three quarters, allowing a 2-8 opponent that had fired its head coach a few days earlier to be within hailing distance of their hosts — trailing just 31-21 — with 12:53 left in the third quarter.
For the day, the Dawgs’ defense allowed the Minutemen to accrue 351 yards of offense, including 226 on the ground (166 of them in the first half), most of it right up the middle, including a number of explosive plays. That was the most rushing yards allowed by the Dawgs since 2018 at LSU, when the Tigers ran for 275.
Meanwhile, the Georgia pass defense was only marginally better, as typified by a 75-yard UMass touchdown pass on which a receiver in double coverage went up between the two Georgia defenders to catch the ball and then outran both of them to the end zone.
Let’s not beat around the bush: The Georgia defense’s performance Saturday was unacceptable at times, even if the Dawgs winning the game never was in question. What we saw was a total failure of defensive coaching, preparation and execution. It was embarrassing.
In the sort of game where the first string generally puts in a token first-half appearance and then makes way for the bench players, Georgia had to keep many of its starters on the field well into the fourth quarter because of the lousy play of the defense, where there were too many missed tackles to count and the starters, in particular, showed little to no effort, as Smart made clear in his post-game chat with DJ Shockley of the Bulldogs radio network.
Besides complaining about what he called “extremely poor tackling,” the UGA head coach said that, too often, his team’s defenders simply weren’t doing their jobs.
“I thought their kids played harder, tougher and with more passion,” he said of the Minutemen. “They wanted it more.”
The Dawgs’ defense should have been as dominant over UMass as the offense was, Smart said, “but we weren’t.”
And it didn’t help when defensive lineman Christen Miller suffered a shoulder dislocation with 1:32 remaining in the first quarter. Chances are he won’t be available for the in-state rivalry game against Georgia Tech coming up Friday night.
As the Dawgs prepare for the Jackets with a short week of preparation, Smart said Georgia has to “look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘What are we willing to do to get what we want?’”
To be successful defensively, Smart said, you have to play with passion. And when he looked at his defensive players Saturday against UMass, “I just didn’t see it.”
Things got off to a rough start Saturday for the Bulldogs on the opening drive by UMass, as a 3rd-and-8 play at the Minutemen’s 30-yard line saw one of their two rotating quarterbacks, Ahmad Haston, run for 38 yards. That drive, mostly on the ground, saw the visitors take a 7-0 lead.
Georgia answered with a drive that saw a nice mix of run and pass — including a 15-yard completion to tight end Lawson Luckie, an 8-yard pass to freshman wideout Sacovie White and tight end Oscar Delp scoring on a 17-yard screen pass to tie it up.
But the UMass strategy to eat up as much clock as possible and keep the ball away from Georgia was pretty successful early on, as the Minutemen held the ball for nearly 11 minutes of the first quarter.
As the second quarter began, UMass was threatening to retake the lead, sitting at the UGA 16-yard line, but an offensive pass interference penalty and a sack by Georgia defensive lineman Warren Brinson forced a punt.
The ensuing Georgia drive saw Beck complete a 50-yard pass to Arian Smith, and Cash Jones took a 4th-and-4 pass from Beck 8 yards into the end zone to put the Dawgs up 14-7.
KJ Bolden then forced a UMass fumble on the first play after the kickoff and Georgia’s Raylen Wilson recovered. There followed a great catch by Dom Lovett, hauling in a well-thrown ball from Beck over his shoulder, to tack on another score for the Dawgs, who now led 21-7.
On their next drive, the Minutemen converted a pair of fourth-down plays and finished off a 14-play drive with a 3-yard touchdown run, cutting Georgia’s lead to 21-14 with 1:55 to go in the first half.
But the Dawgs managed to score yet again, with Beck running for 10 on one play, completing a 20-yard pass to wideout Cole Speer and then hitting Smith on a 34-yard touchdown pass, to go up 28-14 at the half.
The Dawgs started out well on their opening drive of the second half, including a 27-yard completion to Smith, but then they bogged down and had to settle for a
53-yard Peyton Woodring field goal, extending the lead to 31-14.
But just two plays later, the Minutemen narrowed the gap again as wide receiver Jakobie James-Keeney pulled off that previously mentioned catch of a pass from QB AJ Hairston in double coverage, to make it 31-21.
With the Dawgs’ offensive line doing a good job of opening up holes, tailback Frazier, who again started in the absence of injured Trevor Etienne, did the heavy lifting on Georgia’s next drive, carrying the ball on 5 of the 9 plays, including a 9-yard scoring run to make it 38-21 with 8:44 to go in the third.
The Georgia defense finally forced its first three-and-out of the game on the next Minutemen drive, with defensive end Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins batting down a third-down pass. After a Umass punt covered just 33 yards, the Dawgs started at their own 40 and, despite fumbling twice on the drive, were able to go ahead 45-21, with 1:26 left in the third quarter, after Beck ran for a 1st down on 4th-and-1 at the Massachusetts 16, and then Frazier took it in the remaining 15 yards.
The Minutemen’s next drive was a topsy-turvy affair in which the still iffy Georgia run defense gave up a 68-yard scamper to the Bulldogs’ 7-yard line, but then UMass lost 23 yards on a strip-sack by Mykel Williams and a field goal attempt was off target.
The next Georgia drive was hampered by Lovett dropping a pass and Beck getting hit as he tried to throw on a 4th-down play.
But as more substitutes came into the game, the Georgia defense seemed to play a bit better, and UMass went three-and-out on its next drive, with Malaki Starks then shrugging off a defender and returning a punt 18 yards.
Gunner Stockton finally relieved Beck at QB for Georgia and Frazier continued to run hard, notching his third TD of the day, making it 52-21 with 6:33 to play in the game.
Said Smart of Frazier’s performance: “It’s been huge. He’s very confident. He’s hitting the hole really hard, sometimes too fast, but he’s a good running back and he’s growing up fast. He’s a kid that usually would be getting a few carries, and now he’s our veteran back at this point.”
And then, on UMass’ next drive, freshman Dawgs linebacker Chris Cole returned a Minutemen fumble 28 yards for the first defensive touchdown of the season, providing the final score of 59-21.
So, despite the faulty play by the defense, Georgia extended its school-record home winning streak to 30 games and the team’s seniors, who were feted in a pre-game ceremony on Dooley Field, became the most successful class in program history with their 51st victory.
While Georgia fans and athletic administrators were busy thinking about the possibility of playing host to a first-round playoff game in Athens Dec. 20 or 21 — season ticket holders already had been offered a chance to buy tickets — a weekend of upsets in the SEC, with Ole Miss, Alabama and Texas A&M all suffering losses, unexpectedly put the Dawgs into the Dec. 7 conference championship game in Atlanta, where they’ll meet the winner of A&M’s game with Texas.
And the Dawgs still will play for the conference title even if they fail to beat Tech, since nonconference games don’t count in the SEC standings.
Playing in the SEC Championship Game is a high-risk situation for Georgia, which is why most fans I heard from this past week were hoping the Dawgs wouldn’t qualify. The reason: While winning the SEC title means a first-round bye in the playoff, a loss in that game would be the Dawgs’ third (assuming they beat Tech, another dual-quarterback team) in the regular season finale.
And there’s no guarantee an SEC runner-up with three losses will make the playoff.
In fact, most observers consider a three-loss playoff team highly unlikely, although predicting what the current committee will decide is a very dicey proposition, considering that capricious panel previously has appeared more impressed by large-margin wins over cupcakes than hard-fought victories over ranked teams.
It would be bad enough dealing with a playoff committee that already has been skeptical about the Dawgs, having justified their steep fall after the loss to Ole Miss by criticizing Georgia’s “inconsistent” play this season.
But it’s even tougher, because the committee itself is guilty of being inconsistent. As I alluded to earlier, they rewarded Alabama’s 52-7 beatdown of FCS team Mercer by moving the Tide up three spots, while Georgia’s win over Tennessee, then ranked in the playoff committee’s Top 10, saw the Dawgs move up only two spots.
And then there’s the fact that this incarnation of the committee, overseeing the first 12-team playoff, seems to focus more on number of losses than on quality wins or strength of schedule. That has hurt SEC teams, particularly Georgia, which has played arguably the nation’s toughest schedule and entered Saturday’s game with the most wins over currently ranked opponents.
As the AJC’s Mark Bradley put it this past week: “I don’t know why Texas — with no victories over a team in the latest top 25 — is No. 3 and Georgia — three victories over teams, Texas among them, in the top 11 — is No. 10. I’m not sure the committee does, either.”
Stewart Mandel of the Athletic voiced a similar complaint in a tweet: “Georgia is now 3-2 against teams the committee ranks 17th or higher and yet is behind three teams with no Top 25 wins, including one it beat by 15. Miami, two spots above Georgia, hasn’t even played a Top 25 opponent.”
All of that has proved extremely frustrating for Smart.
“I’ve repeatedly said I don’t know what they’re looking for,” the Georgia head coach said this week of the selection committee. “They can’t define it. It’s not simple. … Everybody debates it and I don’t have time to waste energy on it.”
As he said of the playoff committee earlier in the week: “They really need to decide what they want. That’s the frustrating thing. Whether it’s record-based or quality opponents. It’s hard to say that you shouldn’t have a strength of schedule factor.”
(UGA, in fact, had based its future schedules on the now seemingly quaint idea that boosting your strength of schedule would be beneficial in the world of an expanded playoff.)
Let me make one thing clear: I would hate for UGA to have to start loading up on more cupcakes in the face of the playoff committee’s apparent lack of interest in teams playing tougher schedules. I long ago lost interest in cupcake games and I love the Dawgs playing major nonconference opponents (though I wish those games were in Athens instead of at neutral sites).
But if the current mindset of the CFP committee continues to rule the postseason, it probably would behoove programs that want to compete for a national title to dumb-down their schedules accordingly.
However many cupcakes Georgia ends up playing, even if the players on both sides of the ball can’t summon up any passion for such a game, let’s hope they’ll at least have enough pride in their program not to play down to the opponents’ level, as Georgia’s defense did against UMass.
Ultimately, I’m hoping that, as the new playoff contract takes effect in 2026 — with the possibility of the number of teams being expanded to 14 or 16 — the SEC will insist that, going forward, the strength of a team’s schedule and the opponents it beats must be major considerations in future playoff rankings.
Otherwise, the playoff will become as big a joke as the committee that’s currently running it.
