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Georgia’s season came to a close in the Sugar Bowl on Thursday with a 23-10 loss to Notre Dame.
After winning the SEC championship over Texas, Georgia went one-and-done in the College Football Playoff. With 3 losses on the ledger to end the year, it’s officially the worst season for Kirby Smart since 2018 — a year that also ended in defeat at the Sugar Bowl.
Notre Dame will advance to meet Penn State in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 9. You can read about the Irish here.
Here are 3 takeaways from the game.
Georgia loses the Middle 8 in an insane way
Coaches talk all the time about the importance of the “Middle 8” — the last 4 minutes of the second quarter and the first 4 minutes of the third quarter. Games can swing during that time. Thursday’s game certainly did.
But the thing that’ll stick in Kirby Smart’s craw all offseason is the fact it wasn’t even 8 minutes of poor play. It was, in all actuality, 50-some seconds. When Notre Dame took control of the football at its own 38 with 3:07 to play, the Irish flipped the field before a first-down sack had them facing a second-and-21 from the Georgia 40. The drive was halted. It wasn’t going to find the endzone. Notre Dame kicked a field goal with 39 seconds remaining to go up 6-3 on the Bulldogs.
When Notre Dame kicker Mitch Jeter kicked off with 14:40 on the clock in the third quarter, Notre Dame was up 20-3.
With 39 seconds remaining in the first half and 75 yards standing between it and the endzone, Georgia opted to throw on possession-and-10 with a backup quarterback making his first career start. That was against an elite pass defense and against a defensive front that had already smoked Georgia’s left tackle on several occasions in the game’s first 30 minutes.
Georgia’s left tackle got smoked, Gunner Stockton got stripped, Notre Dame recovered the fumble, and Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard threw a 13-yard touchdown on the very next play.
The Bulldogs played the final 25 seconds safe and went to halftime with a 10-point deficit.
Notre Dame’s Jayden Harrison took the opening kickoff of the third quarter 98 yards for a touchdown.
The second-quarter sack on Leonard came with 56 seconds on the clock.
Seventy-one seconds later, Georgia went from tied to trailing by 17.
And that was the ballgame.
Offensive line fails Georgia
Gunner Stockton did an admirable job. The youngster had a huge play to Dillon Bell that was inexplicably dropped. He had a 32-yard touchdown throw to Cash Jones in the third that gave Georgia life. He had a handful of passes that were absolutely rifled into windows. For a debut, it was actually pretty encouraging. Stockton ended the day 20-for-32 for 234 yards with a touchdown.
The pieces around Stockton doomed the Dawgs. The blocking was remarkably poor. Stockton was sacked 4 times and Georgia plays were stopped in the backfield for a loss 9 times. Left tackle Monroe Freeling had a game he’ll want to immediately forget. And the ground game was nonexistent, both as a result of the deficit and the line’s inability to win. Trevor Etienne averaged 3.5 yards per carry. Nate Frazier only got 4 totes. Three different receivers received a handoff and they netted 10 yards.
Georgia finished with 62 rushing yards on 29 carries. Remove the sacks and the Dawgs still only averaged 4 yards per carry. Consider, too, that Notre Dame was playing its first game without star interior defensive lineman Rylie Mills, who was injured in the first-round win over Indiana.
The Bulldogs might have been able to overcome the stretch in the middle of the game — Notre Dame did only score 23 points after all — had they at least won half their battles up front. Instead, Notre Dame dominated in the trenches.
Uncharacteristic Georgia, ’til the death
All year, this Georgia team was like a weird duplicate. It sometimes looked like Georgia. It sometimes sounded like Georgia. It sometimes even felt like Georgia. But something always seemed off. The Bulldogs were uncharacteristically poor in new ways at the wrong times. Thursday’s result was a fitting end in that regard.
In a 0-0 game early in the second quarter, Stockton connected with Arian Smith for a 67-yard pass that pushed the Bulldogs down to the Notre Dame 11-yard-line. But a personal foul penalty called against a player on Georgia’s sideline cost the Bulldogs 20 yards. An inactive player made contact with a side judge while Smith was racing down the sideline and the official was trying to keep pace. Instead of scoring the game’s first touchdown, Georgia settled for a 41-yard field goal.
(The player who was involved did not cost Georgia the football game, to be clear.)
Bell dropped a pass in the third quarter that would have been a touchdown. He was wide open and the ball bounced off his hands like a cartoon, but from a receiving corps that dropped balls at dizzying rates all year, it was hardly a surprise.
Scroll back up and watch that kickoff return from Notre Dame. Find No. 6 in red and watch him on the play.
With the clock ticking under 8 minutes to play, Notre Dame ran a fire drill line switch, swapping its punt team off for the first-team offense in an attempt to get Georgia to jump offsides on a fourth down. The Irish were never going to snap the football. Leonard was standing inside his own 15 with plenty of time remaining in a 13-point game. Notre Dame just wanted Georgia to lose its wits. This was transparently nothing but a stress test.
And when the official stood over the ball to let Georgia substitute, the play clock was taken down inside 5 seconds. All Georgia had to do was hold its ground for 1 single hard count. And it couldn’t do that.
Notre Dame would eventually punt the ball to Georgia, but not until it had milked the clock down under 2 minutes. And then Arian Smith was flagged for a false start on the first play of the Dawgs’ final possession.
The Bulldogs were sloppy right until the bitter end. Put the season to bed and come back more clinical. Come back looking like the surgical Georgia team we came to expect.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
