Jack Podlesny’s 53-yard field goal with three seconds remaining completed a comeback and lifted Georgia to a 24-21 victory at the Peach Bowl in front of 15,301 fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Georgia trailed 21-10 entering the fourth quarter, but reeled off 14 unanswered points in the final period to clinch the largest comeback of coach Kirby Smart’s tenure in Athens.

Here’s a collection of some of Smart’s comments to the media after the game:

“I’d like to start by saying the Cincinnati team had an absolute incredible effort, toughness. The way they played us defensively, I have a lot of respect for Luke Fickell and his team. The quarterback they have is a talented man. For people to try to take shots at their conference, their level of play, they got a really, really good quality football team, a lot of seniors on that team.

These seniors, they tied the winningest record of any senior class to come through. They really got slighted. We’re going to remove the asterisk and erase it. Because with the Vanderbilt game, they would have been able to get that done. I just appreciate the guys never quitting and continuing to fight.

We go through that situation probably every week. You can ask our players, we do it all the time. It was a must situation, must get out of bounds, we must get out of bounds, or get a completion for five yards. They had a really good call. They brought pressure. They trapped the flat. They knew we had to throw the ball out of bounds. We told JT it’s either a shot, out of bounds or throw a completion to the flat.

JT made a good decision. I would have loved it if he threw it a little flatter. He might have got Jermaine for a touchdown. But they took a chance and we wanted to take a chance if they were going to max blitz us.

Yeah, I felt comfortable. That’s within Pod’s range. Pod came and told me before the game he felt good around 37. I think we were inside 37 at that time.”

About the decision to punt late in the game. “Yeah, I probably agree with you. It’s one of those looking back, we still got the timeouts, still got an opportunity to stop them. Felt good we could get it. We called for some fourth downs earlier that were probably longer than that even.
I always believe if you have momentum in stopping people, defensively I don’t know how many three-and-outs we had had, felt like we had the momentum back. We have a history here of we call it get the ball back for a minute. We got to stop them to get the ball back. I felt comfortable we could stop them with our timeouts.

Called one to not spend it on the punt. We called two, gave up a first down. Give them credit, they had a good four-minute plan. The play they actually ran was a play we worked on down in the red area. It’s a pick flat. If I had played it flat and let his man go deep, then recovered, actually got the ball out, which probably was the play of the game. If they complete that, we don’t have a chance to win. Did a heck of a job. Looking back, maybe we should have gone for it there.”

Well, I’m certainly proud of our team. I’m proud of the adversity we went through throughout the year with the pandemic. I don’t think we played our best game today. My hat is off to Cincinnati. They did a really good job of defensively controlling our run game, and offensively keeping us off balance enough with their quarterback run game, which we knew he was a good athlete, a good runner. Probably didn’t give him enough credit. We couldn’t finish on him in the first half. They stole a touchdown right there at the end of the half, then stole one back in the start of the second half.

I’m really proud of these guys, how hard they fought. I don’t think anybody really truly understands, not just Georgia, but how hard it was on entire college football to be persistent, to go this long, practice this long. My hat goes off to the guys in the room.”

H/T Dawg Post.