Tigers<\/a> (Eagles?). The death march looked a little different on Saturday. Georgia put together a 10-play, 66-yard drive that took about four and a half minutes off the clock. Smart faced a tough decision at the end of the drive. Georgia faced 4th down and three from their own 24. Smart had an important decision to make. Josh McCray had already converted an earlier fourth down. Would Smart call #2’s number again? Or, would he trust his kicker, Peyton Woodring, to put Georgia up eight and force Ole Miss to drive the field score a touchdown and get the two-point conversion to tie the game?<\/p>\nBack in Knoxville, Smart rolled the dice and ran a hurry-up pitch to Cash Jones, who was stopped in the backfield, much to the chagrin of Dawg Nation. Smart got on the fans’ good side when he sent out Woodrin, who buried the kick through the uprights. Shout out to holder and QB1 Gunner Stockton, who managed to turn a low and bad snap (our words, not his) to get the ball down and put the laces out for the field goal.<\/p>\n
Smart shared that the decision to kick was meant to influence more than just the scoreboard. “I wanted to show confidence in our defense, which is hard to do right now, but we did it by kicking that field goal.” Smart’s confidence was well-placed. After giving up a rushing first down on the first play, Georgia brought the pressure on Trinidadad Chambliss and forced hurried throws and poor decisions in the turnover on downs.<\/p>\n
Gunner Stockton & a Luckie Dawg<\/h3>\n
Where Chambliss may have faltered in the fourth quarter, Gunner Stockton took his game to another level. Stockton was a big reason why Georgia was able to go on their 17-0 run to close out the game. The Georgia signal caller was a perfect eight for eight, for 135 yards and three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Watching Stockton play on Saturday, fans would not have known that the quarterback from Tiger, Georgia, was less than 100%.<\/p>\n
Stockton didn’t practice on Monday or Tuesday this week because of an oblique injury that he sustained last week against Auburn. Smart and Mike Bobo weren’t sure what they were going to get from their quarterback or if he was going to be able to run the ball. Stockton’s response showed why his teammates love him so much and why he is a welcome change to the quarterback position from the last two years. “Nah, coach. I want to run it. The team needs to see me run it.”<\/p>\n
Stockton finished the game with 10 rushes for 59 yards and a rushing touchdown, and had one of his best days passing in a Georgia uniform. Stockton completed 26 of 31 passes for 289 yards and four touchdowns through the air. One of his favorite targets on the day was tight end Lawson Luckie. Luckie was efficient, finishing with three touchdowns on just five catches. Luckie and Oscar Delp will need to continue to step up. Georgia lost big man receiver Colbie Young with a broken ankle.<\/p>\n
What’s Next After Georgia’s Win?<\/h3>\n
It’s not easy. It’s not pretty. But, Georgia fans will just have to get used to it and accept this is how it’s going to be in 2025. The Dawgs are at their best when it matters most, as Pat Forde tweeted out. “Georgia in the fourth quarter has outscored opponents 49-25 and 117-48 in the second half this year.” Georgia has needed those last runs because the first half has not been pretty. As Peter Burns pointed out on Twitter, “In the last 11 games versus Power 4 opponents, the Georgia Bulldogs have had a halftime lead once.” Georgia is a bye next week, before heading to Jacksonville for Cocktails.<\/p>\n
Main Image: Brett Davis-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are you not entertained? There was plenty of offensive fireworks in Georgia’s win over Ole Miss on Saturday afternoon. Lane Kiffin was in his bag for the Rebels. Ole Miss scored on its first six drives and led by as much as 12 points over the Dawgs in the second half. Three stops in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4424,"featured_media":81417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,35578,17,35582],"tags":[9870,35344,106,495,35701],"class_list":["post-81398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sec","category-featured","category-georgia-bulldogs","category-news","category-ole-miss-rebels","tag-gunner-stockton","tag-josh-mccray","tag-kirby-smart","tag-lane-kiffin","tag-trinidad-chambliss"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81418,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81398\/revisions\/81418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}