ATLANTA — Kirby Smart has taken Georgia football to the top by maintaining championship standards, even when if means raining on his own parade.
Stetson Bennett appeared at his best on Georgia’s final scoring drive, but Smart wasn’t about to pile on to the quick and lazy narrative casual onlookers often take of the quarterback carrying the team.
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“He showed great competitive character,” Smart said after Georgia advanced to the CFP Championship Game by holding on for a 42-41 win over Ohio State Saturday night.
“But he’s got to play within our system, (and) he’s got to do what he’s coached to do or you can’t win games.”
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Bennett was 23-of-34 passing for 398 yards with 3 touchdowns and an interception in a game the Bulldogs trailed 38-24 entering the fourth quarter.
Georgia was struggling to keep up offensively and match up defensively until Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. was knocked out of the game with 31 seconds left in the third quarter.
Buckeyes quarterback C.J. Stroud had appeared unstoppable at times before Harrison’s injury.
Smart was quick to point out how the Bulldogs’ defensive stops in the fourth quarter opened the door for Bennett to redeem himself after what had been a shaky third quarter, completing just 1 of 4 passes for 17 yards.
“He didn’t get those (game-winning) opportunities until the defense stopped them, and we got fortunate to stop them a couple of times,” Smart said. “He must play better if we expect to win the next one.”
Smart sets a high standard for Georgia football and makes no apologies for demanding and going after the best, to the point the Bulldogs pursued Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams in the transfer portal after Bennett helped UGA win the 2021 championship.
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Williams chose to follow his Oklahoma coach to USC, and the resilient Bennett has returned to lead a reloaded Georgia team that lost 15 NFL draft picks to an SEC championship and the first 14-0 record in school history.
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Next up, Georgia is a historically large favorite to beat TCU in the CFP Championship Game at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 9 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. The 14-point spread is the largest since college football went to a unified championship system with the BCS in 1998.
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Bennett, when asked about his clutch performance on the final drive, chose to reflect more on the inconsistent play Smart referred to.
A Bennett interception in the second quarter led directly to an Ohio State touchdown, and the Buckeyes dropped what would have been another interception in Georgia territory later in the game.
Fact is, the Bulldogs’ offense has been trending the wrong way the majority of the second half of the season in the costly turnover department, giving up points off turnovers in 6 of the last 7 games.
It seemed the only way Ohio State would or could beat Georgia would be if the Bulldogs’ beat themselves with turnovers.
Georgia has had two turnovers or more in each of its last six losses dating back to the Sugar Bowl defeat to Texas after the 2018 season.
“Go to go back and look at the tape and see what we could clean up,” Bennett said, declining to comment on his heroics. “It felt like there was a 30-minute period there where I just played bad football.”
To Bennett’s point, the Bulldogs managed only 15 yards on the first 11 plays of the third quarter as the Buckeyes began to pull away, outscoring UGA 10-0 in the third quarter.
Georgia had sent Ohio State starting tight end Cade Stover to the hospital (back injury) earlier in the game, and once Harrison Jr. was concussion by a hit from Javon Bullard, Smart’s defense applied the pressure.
Stroud looked every bit the part of future NFL franchise quarterback in going 23-of-34 passing for 348 yards and 4 touchdowns with no interceptions, also gaining 71 yards on 8 scrambles.
But without Harrison, Stroud was only 4-of-8 passing for 29 yards in the fourth quarter, and Bennett upped his game, 10-of-12 passing for 190 yards over the final 15 minutes.
The 25-year-old Bennett, of course, has been a part of Smart’s program long enough to understand that his head coach sets the standard for 60 minutes of execution at every position.
ESPN reporter Marty Smith said Bennett was even harder on himself in his postgame conversation.
“He must have said to me 10 times, ‘Holy s—, how did we win that football game,” Smith said on his Twitter account.
“He also told me he ‘played like ass,’ and that he was ‘scared to death (UGA) scored too fast,’ and that ‘C.J. Stroud is an amazing football player.”
In summation, the head coach said much of the same things throughout his postgame.
Georgia didn’t spend much time celebrating after the win over Ohio State, with the players and the head coach all on the same page that there’s more work to be done, and another game to win.
