AUSTIN, Texas – Kirby Smart played the skeptic card here Saturday night.
He didn’t want to do it. In fact, during his press conference after No. 5 Georgia defeated No. 1 Texas, 30-15, Smart actually said he doesn’t play with skeptics and doesn’t worry about skeptics while actually playing the game. letter from the skeptic.
Did you watch all the shows on ESPN and other networks this week? he asked members of the media. Did you see what they said about their Bulldogs?
He didn’t watch the shows (he was in meetings, he says), but his friends and colleagues did. There were so many people who doubted Georgia would beat Texas that Smart says he received “8,000 text messages” about the skeptics.
“Everyone doubted us,” he said.
But that night, at the burnt orange-covered Darrell K Royal Stadium, there were more than just skeptics. It was the most unusual and perhaps unprecedented penalty overturn in recent college football memory: right here in a top-five matchup on national television.
Follow me closely now. In the third quarter, with Georgia up 23-8, the officials overturned a pass interference call against Texas that had overturned a Longhorns interception, after conferring among themselves, as the game was stopped for team members. stadium to pick up the trash that the students – angry at the original decision – threw onto the field.
Has this happened before? Considering the hundreds of thousands of games played over the course of multiple college divisions, sure, somewhere, probably. In a game of this magnitude? In a scenario like this? In this conference? By no means.
The decision was also important for the game. Instead of Georgia having possession with a first down, Texas was awarded the interception, gained possession inside the 10-yard line and scored two plays later to close a 23-0 to 23-15 deficit.
The reversal caused Smart to become angry and argue with head referee Matt Loeffler on the sideline as the Texas fans roared with excitement.
“That!?” Smart can be seen telling the official. “That’s nonsense!” he barked at her in the last words of the exchange.
Later, at the news conference, Smart pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at a questioner about the reversal, clearly still agitated.
“We’ve now set a precedent that if you throw a bunch of things on the field and endanger athletes, you have the opportunity to reverse the decision,” Smart said. “That’s unfortunate. “That’s dangerous.”
The SEC issued a statement after the game about the penalty, noting that the game referees met to discuss the penalty, which is allowed, and the referee who called the foul acknowledged that he “made a mistake,” so the penalty was overturned.
Would they have reversed the penalty without the five-minute pause due to the stoppage of play for cleanup? It’s a valid question. The statement did not address that question, saying only that it is “unacceptable” for fans to throw debris onto the field and that the law will be reviewed.
Teams face a lot of adversity during the course of a game. Momentum-changing sales volume. An opponent’s game-changing touchdown. A bad referee decision. But this, a reversal of a decision that occurred more than five minutes after the decision was made and announced? This was a new one.
“I was confused,” quarterback Carson Beck said of the call.
“It didn’t discourage us,” said Georgia’s terror of an inside linebacker, Jalon Walker. “We move forward. We fight.”
Oh, they did.
The answer was a five-minute, 11-play, 89-yard touchdown. Beck hit Arian Smith for 21 yards, then tight end Oscar Delp for 43 and then Dillon Bell for 9. On a night when UGA’s receivers dropped what Smart said were at least eight passes, they started catching them .
The defense, criticized at times this year, stomped and stuffed the Longhorns the rest of the way. Led by Walker, Georgia’s defenders finished with seven sacks, 10 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles and one interception, and Texas went 2 for 14 on third downs and had four drives of three plays or less in the first half.
How about this statistic? Georgia became just the second team in the last 20 years to rack up seven sacks in a game against an AP No. 1-ranked team, according to ESPN.
Smart’s group was so dominant in the first half that Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian pulled starting quarterback Quinn Ewers and inserted backup Arch Manning for the final two drives of the first half.
What happened? Manning, enduring heavy pressure, botched a delivery. Georgia recovered, scored a field goal and went into halftime with a 23-0 lead.
Sarkisian later made it clear that “Quinn is our starter.” Smart made it clear that his defense played one of its best games yet. It unfolded a few days after the coach met with the players to “challenge” the team’s central leadership to “do something.”
“Our intention was to be aggressive,” Smart said.
They were. Ewers and Manning were harassed. Texas’ offensive line, one of the most experienced in the country, failed to block the middle, the edge, in all directions.
“We knew what we wanted to do,” said Walker, who had three sacks. “We knew where (Ewers) wanted to escape.”
There is something else too. “We knew the doubters,” Walker says with a smile.
In his live television interview after the game, Smart pointed the finger at ESPN.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” he told ESPN reporter Katie George. “Their own network doubted us and then they tried to rob us with calls!”
Let’s talk more about that robbery, eh?
Georgia led 23-8 with 3:11 left in the third quarter when it happened. Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron intercepted a Beck pass and returned it to the UGA 9-yard line. The flag waved and Loeffler announced to the crowd that Barron had committed a pass interference call.
Furious at the decision, Texas students filled the north end zone with beer and water bottles, prompting a five-minute stoppage of play to clean up the mess.
During the break, the referees chatted as the pass interference replay aired over the stadium’s jumbotron. Loeffler then announced, to a roaring crowd, that there was no pass interference. Instead of Georgia having a first down, Texas gained possession of the ball at the 9.
It was a surprising and very strange change. After all, the referees had already called the pass interference foul and had located the ball for Georgia’s first down.
The exchange between Loeffler and Smart unfolded on the bench, as the furious coach pointed his finger at the referee. Afterward, Smart says Loeffler told him the referee called the “wrong guy,” suggesting it should have been offensive pass interference on the intended receiver, Smith. A replay showed the two shoving each other with no clear indication of whether a foul had been committed.
“It took him a long time to realize that,” Smart joked.
While on the field after the game, Georgia president Jere Morehead and athletic director Josh Brooks, clearly still frustrated, declined to comment on the pass interference reversal. Morehead was seen speaking with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey while on the field.
Meanwhile, in the UGA locker room, music was blaring and voices were singing. The Georgia Bulldogs, underdogs to Alabama and survivors of a game against Kentucky, suddenly find themselves in prime position to earn an at-large bid to the CFP, if not advance to the league championship game.
In fact, here we are, eight weeks into the season and there are no undefeated teams in the SEC.
Despite the skeptics and the “theft,” Smart’s group left this stadium with a victory, just as he thought they would: with or without a penalty.
“They’re not going to back down,” he said. “There wasn’t going to be any flinching.”
