Georgia rolls: ‘This is what the No. 1 team in the country looks like’

ATHENS, Ga. — You’re Mark Stoops, and you brought your upstart, undefeated, unexpectedly No. 11 Kentucky into Sanford Stadium to play big, bad No. 1 Georgia. Your offense played one of its best games of the year. Kentucky held the ball for nearly 38 minutes without turning the ball over. In front of a loud, intimidating crowd of 92,746, your Wildcats committed only one false start penalty. They may have gained only 243 total yards, but that’s well above the average of 201.2 that the Bulldogs allowed their first six opponents.

At crunch time, in the fourth quarter, your offense executed a methodical, 22-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that took up 11:23, keeping the Dawgs off the field until only 4 seconds remained in the game.

And Kentucky lost 30-13. You’re Mark Stoops, and your team never really had a chance.

“This is what the number one team in the country looks like,” Stoops said of the team that broke the Wildcats’ eight-game winning streak. “We did some good things. A lot of good things to build on. . . . We can’t make mistakes against a great team. I believe this is a great team here. I don’t know if there are many great teams out there.”

Stoops bemoaned mistakes of execution, players not getting lined up right, miscues the untrained eye can’t detect.

“Just didn’t play very clean,” Stoops said.

Listen, if every Kentucky player had graded a perfect score, it wouldn’t have been enough.

It has been a season full of upsets. While teams cycle in and out of the AP Top 25 like it’s an Airbnb, Georgia has signed what looks like a long-term lease for the penthouse. The Bulldogs enter their bye week 7-0 overall and 5-0 in the SEC, the 17-point margin Saturday being the closest of the past six games.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart, trained at the Nick Saban School of Rat-Poison Aversion, will hear none of this. He is willing to compliment his team’s personality. He loves its “composure, resiliency, toughness.” He described how they come into meetings looking for “nuggets,” tips from the coaches on the opposing offense’s tendencies.

“They buy in,” Smart said. “There’s no selfishness.”

And, as Stoops said all week, the Bulldogs have really good players. Nose tackle Jordan Davis, who may be the best defensive player in the country, blocked a 33-yard Kentucky field goal on the last play of the third quarter, he and Devonte Wyatt caving the Wildcats’ offensive front like a flood through a levee. The score remained 24-7.

The Bulldogs, who had allowed only eight trips into the red zone all season, and just one touchdown in those eight trips, couldn’t stop Kentucky (6-1, 4-1) from crossing the 20 three times, scoring two touchdowns.

Of course, by the time Kentucky reached the red zone at all, late in the second quarter, Georgia led 14-0. The Wildcats were within 14-7 at halftime, scoring their first touchdown against the Dawgs since the fourth quarter of their 2018 game. But Georgia scored on its first possession of the second half, and by the time Kentucky made a first down in the third quarter, the Wildcats trailed 24-7.

“That’s a really physical football team we played,” Smart said. “Every single time we play them, it’s tough. They play hard-nosed football. They don’t make many mistakes. You play a team like that, you have to beat them methodically.”

Smart didn’t mean his offense, which scored its touchdowns on drives of five, five, six and seven plays. The Dawgs’ defense played methodically, stopping Kentucky’s best offensive players.

Receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, who had made seven plays of at least 30 yards this season, caught 12 passes but for only 39 yards. Running back Chris Rodriguez, fifth in the nation at 128 yards per game, gained 7 yards on seven carries. Kentucky’s longest gain of the day – 16 yards. That served as faint consolation for Georgia junior linebacker Nakobe Dean.

“I don’t know what the coaches think,” Dean said. “Me personally, letting them in the end zone kind of hurt me a little bit. I don’t want them to score at all.”

Georgia is comprehensive in its dominance. The Dawgs didn’t get on the scoreboard until the first play of the second quarter, a 19-yard touchdown pass from Stetson Bennett to James Cook that completed a 50-yard drive. Georgia had to go only 50 yards for a touchdown thanks to the leg of punter Jake Camarda. His punts of 63 and 50 yards meant that Georgia went from starting its first drive on its 15 to beginning its third drive at midfield.

Add to the special teams’ achievements: Georgia blocked the field goal and an extra point.

And don’t forget that the offense is playing with second-team quarterback Stetson Bennett, and without its top threats at wide receiver. The offense, when it gets healthy, will get stronger as the Georgia schedule gets weaker. The five remaining opponents — Florida, Missouri, at Tennessee, Charleston Southern and at Georgia Tech — don’t appear capable of staging this kind of upset.

If you’re a fan of another playoff contender hoping to find any flaw in this Georgia team, you should know that Dawgs kicker Jack Podlesny missed an extra point, his first in 72 attempts. The miss broke a streak of 363 consecutive PATs dating to 2014. Good luck with that. The Dawgs are going to spend their bye week getting better.