Kirby Smart takes blame for fourth-down miscue late in Georgia loss
By Luke Greco
Published:
The Bulldogs were down 3 with just under 10 minutes left in Thursday’s Sugar Bowl when a crucial fourth-down miscue cost Georgia and set up Ole Miss in scoring position to extend its lead to 10.
It was fourth-and-2 on Georgia’s own 33-yard line. The clock was ticking closer to 9:30, and Georgia was down 27-24. Kirby Smart initially sent his punt team onto the field, but after an injury timeout, decided to run the offense back out instead. Quarterback Gunnar Stockton snapped the ball and was immediately hit, as his left tackle was not ready on the play.
After the game Smart took blame for the miscue.
“We screwed that up a little bit. We had a misfire there. It was a change-up from a look we had done twice. We knew teams were going to sit back and not honor us, because we had not snapped it on those plays in different times,” Smart said. “The ball was not supposed to be snapped in that situation. That was on us as coaches. That was on me and our guys. It was not on the players. Gunner and those guys did a nice job executing it.”
Smart then said that the book does tell them to go for it there but highlighted that there was probably another way he would have liked to go for it.
“We did feel like we had lost momentum at that point, and the book says we needed to go for it. There’s probably another way I would have liked to have gone for it. But we did not execute the situation really well there,” Smart said.
Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, this miscue is one that they will be thinking about all off-season. It cost them huge field position and allowed Ole Miss to extend its lead to 10 in just two plays.
