Category: UGA Football

COLUMBIA, Mo. –  With a second-half offensive surge, the ninth-ranked Georgia Bulldogs (7-2, 7-2 SEC) pulled away from the 25^th-ranked Missouri Tigers (5-4, 5-4 SEC), 49-14, Saturday afternoon in front of 10,830 fans at Faurot Field and an SEC Network television audience.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback JT Daniels finished 16-for-27 passing for 299 yards and three touchdowns. Sophomore wide receiver George Pickens hauled in five receptions for 126 yards and two touchdowns, while redshirt sophomore tailback Zamir White also tallied 126 yards rushing on 12 carries with a touchdown. Freshman tailback Daijun Edwards also amassed a career-high 103 yards rushing and a touchdown. For the afternoon, the Bulldogs posted 615 yards on offense, the most for the team since 656 last season against Arkansas State.

After scoring 91 points in its last two outings, the Missouri offense was held to just 200 total yards by the Georgia defense, with sophomore safety Lewis Cine leading in tackles for the second-consecutive game with four stops.

Read more

Daniels Directs Offense To Season High 49 Points: In a little more than three quarters of action, redshirt sophomore QB JT Daniels finished 16-for-27 for 299 yards and 3 TDs in a 49-14 victory. Georgia finished with 615 yards of total offense (299-passing, 316 rushing), the most since going for 656 against Arkansas State last year. This is the second straight game with 40+ points by the offense after a 45-16 road win over South Carolina.

In the first half, Daniels went 10-for-17 for 167 yards with 2 TDs as the Bulldogs carried a 21-14 halftime advantage. He directed touchdown drives on the first two possessions and then with the game tied at 14, he led a 75-yard TD drive in 43 seconds in the final minute of the first half. Also of note today, on a 3rd-and-8, he completed a 37-yard touchdown pass to James Cook for the second score of the contest.

On 3rd downs this year, Daniels improved to 16-for-19 for 270 yards and six TDs. Today, he finished 5-for-7 for 120 yards with all five resulting in a first down and two scores. In the second half on a 3rd-and-10 at MU 31, Daniels connected with Pickens for a TD to close out a 75-yard drive and a 28-14 edge. In the 3rdquarter alone, Georgia outscored the Tigers 21-0 with 284 yards of offense to MU’s 48. With 12:36 left in the contest and owning a 49-14 lead, Stetson Bennett came in at QB.

Read more

The Georgia Bulldogs conducted a two-hour practice Wednesday, Dec. 9, in preparation for a top-25 matchup against Missouri, on Faurot Field in Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Mo.

The Bulldogs and Tigers’ kickoff is set for 12:00 p.m., ET on the SEC Network. Before practice, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart participated in the SEC Football Weekly Media Teleconference. Following practice, Warren Ericson and Jake Camarda offered these comments on the matchup with Vanderbilt.

Selected comments from Smart and the student-athletes follow:

Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement…
“Our team is excited to get back on the field and go play. We missed last week and have a really hot Missouri team we have a lot of respect for. Eliah [Drinkwitz] has done an unbelievable job with those guys and have them playing really well, really hard. You can see that they’re well coached. They have a lot of talented guys on defense and offense. I think their quarterback [Connor Bazelak] is playing very well.”

On how the cold weather will impact the game this week and if it makes him alter a game plan…
“Not really. We don’t control the weather. We practice in it all the time here. It’s been cold this week. We’ve been practicing outside, inside. We have to go inside a little bit, not by choice but because our fields base is under construction. We alternate who gets to go outside. We’ve told our team all along, that’s not something we can control. We worry about things we can control, and we control how we play and the guys playing in the game won’t be thinking about the weather—they’ll be thinking about the game.”

On whether he played in any cold weather games while at Georgia…
“Oh yeah. We had several. There was one at home against Auburn. I remember we played and it was really cold. What qualifies as cold to me is when you can see your breath. So, if you see that then it’s pretty chilly.”

Read more

Following practice Tuesday, Dec. 8, head coach Kirby Smart and players Nakobe Dean and Jermaine Johnson offered the following comments. A word document of tonight’s transcript is also attached.

Head coach Kirby Smart (Full transcript)
On whether there is any good news on the injury front in terms of getting some guys back…
“Kendall [Milton] has practiced in a black jersey and done really well. I wouldn’t say he’s full speed, but I’d say he’s pretty close. Hopefully he’ll be able to play. Richard [LeCounte] has taken about 25 percent of his reps that he would normally take. He’s probably not ready. I’d say he’s the furthest from those guys. Jordan [Davis] looks good. Jordan has done a really good job of being in conditioning shape. He’s been practicing really hard and looks good.”

On whether the NCAA has given him or the other coaches guidance as far as the 85-man roster and how to approach it going into the 2021 season…
“Yes and no. I mean, the feedback is that the seniors who choose to come back for an extra year of eligibility don’t count on the 85. So, that’s a bonus. You know you’re working off your 85. You assume those guys are going to be gone, but they’ve got the flexibility to come back. That’s great. That’s the right thing to do. I think that’s super, but now try to make decisions for your organization mid-year is a different circumstance. Everything doesn’t mesh…let’s say we have five mid-years, which isn’t the case at all, but let’s say we have five mid-years that want to come. We have to have a spot for every one of them to come, so every senior who elects to stay, we don’t have a mid-year spot. So, even though [seniors] won’t count towards the 85, we don’t have a spot for [mid-years] to come. We don’t really control what seniors stay, and we’ll certainly give them the flexibility, but if we have more mid-years that want to come than seniors who want to leave, we have a problem. I don’t think that all the things mesh real well, especially if you’re a program that has a shot at a lot of mid-years. What’s different about this year? Kids aren’t in high school, so why should [they] stay for [their] second semester? We’re looking at—and I don’t know about other schools, maybe they’re the same way—[but] we’re looking at the possibility of anywhere from 14 to 20 mid-year enrollees. Let’s say we have 20 mid-year enrollees who want to come—we don’t have 20 spots. Yet, the seniors won’t count next year, but they’re eating spots right now. It just doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make perfect sense, so it’s a dilemma that we have to deal with. You also have programs that have juniors, so you don’t know juniors who haven’t declared yet, but yet we’re having a signing date before the juniors declare. We’ve been saying for a while that the timing just isn’t accurate, and it really causes some mismanagement, and the people who suffer are the high school kids who may be told one thing and then someone say, ‘Well, I thought you could be here, but maybe you can’t be here.’ It just depends on the number of spots you have.”

Read more

Game & Broadcast Info

The Georgia-Missouri game in Columbia, Mo., was originally scheduled to be played on Nov. 14. However, the contest was postponed on Nov. 11 due to a combination of positive COVID-19 tests, contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals within the Tiger football program, consistent with Southeastern Conference virus management requirements. This past weekend, Missouri rallied to top Arkansas 50-48 giving the Tigers five wins in their last six contests and three in a row.

The Bulldogs experienced their second postponement of the year last Saturday. Vanderbilt was scheduled to come to Athens but the game was postponed until Dec. 19 because the Commodores’ squad size and position availability fell below the league’s roster minimum requirements.

Before this season, the last Georgia game to be postponed before this season came in 2001. The Bulldogs were scheduled to host Houston on Sept. 15 that season. But the game was postponed and then played on Dec. 1 following the Sept. 11 attack. That year, Georgia already had an open date on Sept. 22 so the team went three weeks between its second and third games. This is the latest regular season game for the Bulldogs (coincidentally also on Dec. 12) since 1931. That year USC topped Georgia in L.A.

The Bulldogs hold a 8-1 edge in the series history with Missouri. The first meeting came in the 1960 Orange Bowl in Miami, and the Bulldogs posted a 14-0 victory to cap a 10-1 season under coach Wallace Butts. The Bulldogs have faced the Tigers just nine times because they did not play again until Missouri joined the SEC in 2012. That year, the Tigers played host to Georgia in their first-ever SEC contest.

1960: W, 14-0 (Miami, Fla.) 2015: W, 9-6 (Athens)
2012: W, 41-20 (Columbia, Mo.) 2016: W, 28-27 (Columbia)
2013: L, 41-26 (Athens) 2017: W, 53-28 (Athens)
2014: W, 34-0 (Columbia) 2018: W, 43-29 (Columbia)
2019: W, 27-0 (Athens)

Read more

Game & Broadcast Info

On Saturday, Georgia will make its fifth appearance of the season on the SEC Network, including its third straight. The Bulldogs topped Arkansas and Kentucky on the road earlier this season and have beaten Mississippi State and South Carolina in back-toback weekends on the network.

Ninth-ranked Georgia plays host to Vanderbilt on Saturday, marking the 81st matchup in a series that started in 1893. Georgia leads the all-time series 58-20-2, including a 30-7 mark in Athens. The Bulldogs are on a three-game winning streak over the Commodores. Georgia’s last loss to Vanderbilt came in Kirby Smart‘s first year as head coach in 2016 as the Commodores edged the Bulldogs 17-16. Dating back to 1995, Georgia is 22-3, including winning five out of the last six.

Last year, Vanderbilt was Georgia’s season-opening opponent for the first time since 1956. This year, the Commodores were scheduled to be the Bulldogs’ regular season finale. However, the Georgia-Missouri matchup that was postponed on Nov. 14 could now be made up on either Dec. 12 or 19.

Read more

45

 Georgia 6-2

16

South Carolina 2-7

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The ninth-ranked Georgia Bulldogs (6-2, 6-2 SEC) rode their stout run game to a decisive 45-16 win over the South Carolina Gamecocks (2-7, 2-7 SEC) Saturday evening in front of 16,444 fans at Williams-Brice Stadium and an SEC Network primetime television audience.

The Georgia offense posted a season-high 471 yards, including a season-high 332 rushing yards for an average of 7.2 yards per rush. Junior tailback James Cook led the Bulldogs’ runners with a career-high 104 yards on six carries and two touchdowns, while redshirt sophomore Zamir White tallied 84 yards on 13 rushes with a pair of touchdowns.

Read more

Piling Up The Points: Georgia posted a 45-16 victory, and that was the most the Bulldogs have ever scored in Columbia, eclipsing the 41 in a win in 2018. The Bulldogs finished with 471 yards of total offense including 332 on the ground. The leading rusher was junior James Cook with a career-high 104 yards and 2 TDs.

Georgia utilized their ground game to build a 28-10 halftime lead. Georgia scored 21 points in the first quarter, tallying 225 yards of total offense including 151 on the ground. The 28 points in the first half was the most in a first half since scoring 34 against Arkansas State last year. The Bulldogs finished the first half with 295 total yards. Redshirt sophomore QB JT Daniels finished the game 10-for-16 for 139 yards with 2 TDs and 1 INT. He led Georgia to touchdowns on its first three possession and four of the first five in the contest.

Read more