Best passing plays in Georgia football history: Fromm to Godwin
DawgsHQ wants to take a look at the best passing plays in Georgia football history.
We all have our favorites, or at the very least, we all have a play that immediately comes to mind.
(Previous entry into this series: David Greene to Michael Johnson at Auburn in 2002)
Today, we’ll revisit a play that made Georgia football’s 2017 SEC Championship season possible.
Kirby Smart’s Georgia football team still needed an identity
Jacob Eason went down with a knee injury in the 2017 season opener against Appalachian State.
After an up-and-down freshman season in Kirby Smart’s first year, this was supposed to be the year that Eason and Georgia football put it all together.
Instead, true freshman Jake Fromm stepped up with three first-half touchdown drives against the Mountaineers to relieve some of the worry surrounding Eason’s injury.
The grave reality, though, was that Georgia didn’t have time to break Fromm in before the SEC football grind began.
Georgia had a road trip to Notre Dame the following week.
Could Fromm lead Georgia’s offense into the belly of a college football titan and emerge a winner?
Jake Fromm didn’t have the best start
Through Georgia’s first five drives, the Dawgs punted three times, kicked a field goal, and Fromm turned the football over on a fumble.
Georgia’s defense kept the Bulldogs in the football game, but the offense’s performance looked dicey at best.
The first play of Georgia’s sixth drive was a Fromm pass to fellow freshman D’Andre Swift. It lost four yards.
A combination of Nick Chubb, Sony Michel and Christian Payne (remember fullbacks?) ran six straight times to Notre Dame’s 25 yard line, before an eventual third-and-goal situation.
An earlier Jake Fromm attempt to Terry Godwin on third and goal fell incomplete.
Georgia needed to get the football into the end zone this time.
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Maybe it’s one of the best catches in Georgia football history, and not necessarily one of the best pass plays
Whatever you want to call it, Jake Fromm put the ball in the only place that Terry Godwin needed him to: right at the limit of his catch radius.
I was filming right in that corner of Notre Dame’s end zone.
Irish players signaled incomplete, but Terry Godwin’s animated conviction that he had, indeed, hauled the pass in made me believe my eyes.
I saw it through my camera’s viewfinder. He caught the ball.
The lasting impact of Fromm-to-Godwin
I thought about that Jake Fromm-to-Terry Godwin snag often during Georgia’s run to the SEC Championship, a Rose Bowl Championship in the CFP, and eventual runner-up effort in the National Championship.
Had Godwin not pulled that pass in during Georgia’s 20-19 victory – largely thanks to the Dawgs’ defense – Kirby Smart’s second season doesn’t go nearly as beautifully as it played out.
Georgia probably goes to a NY6 bowl game, and Smart’s immediate impact in Athens isn’t nearly as strong.
I might even argue that the Dawgs’ more recent win in Indianapolis is that much more difficult.
Maybe Georgia is still waiting for that National Championship, if the Dawgs don’t leverage Godwin’s catch into a win at Notre Dame, that then made everyone – recruits included – start paying attention to Kirby Smart’s plan in Athens.
Who knows.
All I know is that it happened.
And I’ll never forget watching it play out just a few feet away from my lens.
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