Rapid Reaction: JT Daniels shines as Georgia holds off upset-minded Mississippi State
Whether this one would be played was in question as MSU had 49 scholarship players available, but the game would indeed go on. And it would end up being a far-from-easy task for heavily-favored Georgia as this game would remain close heading into the latter stages of the night.
After a lengthy 15-play Mississippi State opening possession ended with a 22-yard Brandon Ruiz field goal with just over 8 minutes played, Georgia failed to make it past midfield as it was forced to punt on its first drive with JT Daniels behind center. Aided by a pass interference, though, the Dawgs found the end zone on their next possession as Daniels connected with George Pickens from 4 yards out as they took a 7-3 lead.
But MSU responded with another lengthy drive, this one for 13 plays, capped by a 4-yard Dillon Johnson touchdown as it jumped back in front 10-7. All but 3 of the plays were runs as the gameplan for Mike Leach and his team against Georgia’s defense was clear.
The game started to open up a little from there.
After a Georgia field goal tied it at 10, the 2 teams traded quick touchdown drives to make it 17-17 at the halftime break as Will Rogers hooked up with Jaden Walley from 51 yards out and Daniels found Jermaine Burton for an 18-yard score.
All eyes were Daniels to see how he would fare in his first start of the season, and the Southern Cal transfer was solid as he threw for 204 yards and 2 touchdowns on 13-of-17 passing in the 1st half. His favorite target was Burton, who he would find for a 48-yard score to open the 2nd half to put Georgia up 24-17.
However, Rogers continued to pick the Georgia pass defense apart as he led MSU to a touchdown of its own, knotting the score at 24 with less than 6 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter as the shorthanded Bulldogs looked to pull off a road upset and hand Georgia—enjoying a terrific passing evening from Daniels but struggling to run the ball—its 2nd loss in a row.
Georgia’s defense, though, began to stiffen as it forced Mississippi State into back-to-back 3-and-outs. And it regained the lead with under 10 minutes remaining in regulation as Daniels hit a wide-open Kearis Jackson with his 4th touchdown pass of the evening as the Dawgs pulled ahead 31-24.
We finally have a competent qb. Urban Liar go smoke crack and keep quiet.
Smoking crack and keeping quiet are probably mutually exclusive fwiw.
That made me laugh.
/furiously scratches neck
Georgia made me laugh
Go gators loser
smoking crack and keeping quiet – cojones disproved that ages ago
Go gators loser
haha good one.
Is Georgia incapable of a complete offensive performance? 23 rushing attempts for 8!!!!!! yards. JT looked great he!l he through for 400 yards and 4 tds to win by 7 at home over a team you were a 26.5 point favorite lol
They got the win and didn’t suffer any injuries so it was a good game. They can work on their issues and hopefully get them sorted out. The rest of the schedule shouldn’t be to difficult based on who’s left to play.
Plus State at least has a good D this year.
threw*
JT found a home. But we went from all run and no pass to all pass and no run in a matter of one game. A W is a W but I wonder what happened to the run game?
Yeah that’s really strange.
Go gators loser
Very proud the effort from State tonight. Best game of the season.
of the effort* really wish there was an edit button
I liked so much about this game: effort, true and (R) freshmen, play calling, poise. It will come together after the growing pains. Two weeks of practice really helped.
I gotta give so much credit to the MSU. Being down so many players and you made it very close. That QB had a great game. Kudos.
Go gators loser
They gave us all we could handle, that’s for sure!
Go gators loser
UrbanLiar…you are the true loser…please get help you Fu***** child…
Great game Miss State!
Go gators loser
The kid looked great, but where was the defense?
or the run game
Run game was bad
Go gators loser
If someone had predicted we would win with 8 yards rushing on the game, they would have been mocked mercilessly.
State played with incredible heart — hats off to them.
Go gators loser
Don’t you have anything better to do
UGAly finally had a great QB performance, and and all it cost was the rest of the team playing terribly
1. JT shocked me with his outing. I expected a low-attempt, awkward, mediocre stat line with flashes of talent. He was consistent, but I heard he did seem to be limping some for those ready to crucify Kirby for not playing him earlier. Just gotta keep him healthy and make sure that level can translate to higher level opponents than the 3rd worst team in the league.
2. Most pathetic o-line effort I’ve seen all year and it’s not even close. Justin Shaffer put up one of the worst performances I’ve seen from a single player this season.
3. Defensive playcalling just refused to adjust one bit for the incessant 6 yard hitches over the middle. Excruciating to watch, and unacceptable given the multitude of mediocre squads that had completely shut down MSU all year. I will give credit to Will Rogers’ decision making. Very calm for a true freshman.
In conclusion, JT was pleasantly surprising, but it’s too early to judge, and I’m simply baffled this team wasn’t blown out Bryant-Denny by 40 points instead of 20. Goes to show how crucial Richie is to the defense I guess? I have no idea.
Schaffer should be benched after tonight. Move on with one of the younger guys (Ericson, Webb, Ratledge etc) and build for next year.
It shows you that at the end of the day Kirby is right for harping on offensive balance and defense, because even when your QB puts on the best performance at the position your school has had since the 2018 SECCG, you still nearly lose to a pathetic team.
Also shows just how good Leconte is, we are really missing him.
Yep. Lanning’s playcalling looks lost out there without Richie captaining the back end.
LeCounte, Davis, and Rochester. To sit there and rush three all the time and still not be able to cover those little short hitches and crossing routes was painful to watch.
Good halftime adjustments.
I feel like Leconte would have come up with one of those dropped interceptions
Go gators loser
It helped that apparently Miss St safeties didn’t make the trip.
State only had like 49 players available so yeah, they probably didn’t.
If their Safeties didn’t make the trip then who played Safety?
It’s getting to the point where we might have to get a water boy to suit up
Go gators loser
400 yds/4 TDs makes no difference whatsoever if the Defense keeps playing the way they have. UGA has more 5*’s on their roster than the entire PAC-12…and can barely beat the bottom feeders in the SEC. I think JT’s game overshadowed the issues with this team this year.
Hey go f*** yourself, jax…somebody has to.
Miss State has nothing to be ashamed of. They played with real heart.
Great game!
Well, Georgia sucks. Yeah, they finally found a quarterback who’s pretty decent. But there wasn’t much else. A team that only scored a combined 5 points against Kentucky and Arkansas combined, scored 24 on “the best defense in the country”. Georgia is looking very average just like 80% of the SEC.
That same team that sucks beat your team. Or did you forget?
Yeah they did. Did I say we didn’t suck?
Go gators loser
Go gators Ho
Kentucky also gave up 63 to Bama which is tied for Bama’s highest score this season. This is a weird season and the transitive property is even less true than usual for evaluating teams.
Props to Mississippi State for playing incredibly hard. They played incredibly well for how few players they had.
Totally surprised about JT Daniels and the passing game. Even more surprised about UGA’s defense. After seeing Daniels executed the offense, I realize I was very wrong this off-season about Monken’s impact this year.
Monken’s play calling has been great, we finally have a QB that read defenses, make check downs, and, literally see down the field.
I completely agree, I think Monken called a great game
Can someone explain to me why Kirby waits until the season is over and we’ve lost to our rival to play the QB that gives us the best chance to win?
Because the Florida game was two weeks ago, and JT was still walking tepidly some tonight?
Go gators loser
Sure thing, Dexter.
J.T. was not medically cleared at the beginning of the season.
Then, after UGA medical staff cleared J.T. he personal Dr did not.
Kirby did the right thing by not playing J.T. when he wasn’t ready.
… his personal Dr did not.
J.T. also has a personal Dr advising him as well as the UGA staff.
It seems like you are just making stuff up. You should stop that.
JT having a personal Dr was reported more than once. I heard it 680am Atl sports radio.
Maybe you should quit trying be something you aren’t – bright.
JT having a personal Dr was reported more than once. I heard it 680am Atl sports radio
The stuff of talk radio. Beautiful. It’s right up there with the internet. If it’s there, it must be true.
The stuff of ananomous people on 2nd rate sports blogs, spectacularly beautiful.
Hey aren’t you on the internet, and, aren’t you making statements as to the validity of statements made by others???????
Project much?
You simply aren’t bright. Good luck with that.
Let’s see… Believe JTs comments about being cleared or comments by the dumba$& of war…
That’s simple..
lsustolenvalor
I’m “simply not brigh” but yet you are chasing me on SDS blogs
Thanks for illustrating the concept of stupidity is its own reward,and, letting me know I hit a nerve.
But hey, you’ve got bamatime covering your rear, figurally and literally
You’re talking stupidity while quoting sports talk radio as your only source of news. Neither the coach nor player have said anything close to the nonsense you continue to spew.
LSU-StolenValor
I never pegged you to be the emotional bytch type like bamatime, cojones etc. Oh well win some lose some.
It’s real simple if you think I’m “not bright” then STFU and quit chasing me.
And once again, thanks for letting me know I hit a nerve.
Nobody is chasing you. You just post so much ridiculous stuff that I can’t help but notice. The talk radio stuff is the best.
According to folklore JT’s parents and his personal Doc would not let him play even tho UGA cleared him.
According to JT UGA fans are full of $hit and he was cleared after Arky..
Go gators loser
I usually dont have alot of positive things to say about Georgia but I will definitely say JT looked like he could the answer at qb. Still dont understand what’s up with the defense and not being able to adjust. I would assume JT hasn’t been healthy enough to start because there really isn’t much of a comparison between him and the previous 2 .
Embarrassing effort from coaches.
Good for JT , but everything else sucked. No defense no running. We suck as team. All on coaches.
Go gators
I wasn’t especially impressed with Daniels at the half, but I thought he knocked the rust off and played better as the game went on. Clearly, he hasn’t been ready for full contact until this week. I would guess he’ll have another great game next week with Horn opted out and Muschamp fired. But he’s not going to complete that many go routs now that they’re on film.
On the other hand, the offensive line and the defense? My goodness. Mississippi State is 2-4, traveled with less than the 53 minimum required scholarship players, and started a true freshman quarterback who has thrown 116 passes this season… and 52 of those were tonight. And you can’t attribute all of the fall-off to LeCounte being out.
* routes
Holding off miss state hahahahahahahahahahahah
What a wannabe loser never won crap team
Love it – true losers
Lmao dude you are so pathetic. You’ve seriously spent so much time devoted to this. What an absolute loser. Everyone just ignores you and you just keep going. By all means keep going, I wanna see how much time you can dedicate to typing “Go gators” while you do nothing but serve as a buffer between comments from people with a brain. I mean I’ve seen some real dum dums on here but please, do your best to top them all. I’d love to see you become king loser. Rooting for ya, bud.
We all owe Sydney an apology, called 350 pass yds for JT and we all (me included laughed).
Sydney is one of the ever-decreasing numbers of bloggers that I will click on – no virtue signaling, no vapid posts about what some morons say on the cesspool known as twitter, just solid news-related posts along with well thought out opinions.
Unfortunately Sydney is the exception, not the rule here.
I totally scoffed at the thought of JT throwing for 350 yards. I was very wrong apparently.
A good game to watch…Mississippi state came to play and their defense was much better than I’d anticipated. It looks like Georgia has “found” a Quarterback now…he can make the throws. Must have been a really slow-healing injury to have kept him off the field (or) a real hard-headed coach that played his favs. .
Anyone think Coach Pittman’s KNOWLEDGE of the GA offensive line might have a little bit to do with their non existent run game? MS State has shown all year they are a decent team that only needs a few more Jimmy’s and Joe’s!
@bill…..I thought Sam coached for Arkansa.