Georgia playmakers step up in opening victory

Kirby Smart wasn’t surprised receivers Ladd McConkey and AD Mitchell combined for three touchdowns in Georgia’s 49-3 win over Oregon last week.

“They’re both much more confident and confident in the system a second year,” the Georgia head football coach said. “So, you know, there’s — every play you run, there’s a reaction to what the defense does. They’ve seen what the defense does at a higher level. So the number of times they’ve run a play and had to react to something, it’s almost infinite. And they now are starting to get where they can react faster.”

McConkey had five catches for 73 yards and a score and two carries for 16 yards and a touchdown, while Mitchell added had four catches for 65 yards and a touchdown in the Bulldogs’ destruction of Oregon.

Now. the duo will be counted to be even better when No. 2 Georgia (1-0) hosts Football Championship Subdivision member Samford (1-0) on Saturday in Athens.

“I’d say from here we’ve just got to keep finding ways to get better. We can’t get complacent,” Georgia cornerback Kamari Lassiter said. “It was really a confidence booster because, you know, we’ve been putting in a lot of hard work all offseason and all summer, so to see it come from fruition, it’s a good feeling. But we can’t just sit on that — we’ve got to keep getting better.”

Stetson Bennett went 25-for-31 passing for a career-high 368 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions in just 2 1/2 quarters before Carson Beck was called in for mop-up duty.

Bennett got his entire group of receivers involved in the demolition. Ten Bulldogs caught at least one pass, led by Kenny McIntosh’s nine catches for 117 yards as posted its largest margin of victory over an AP-ranked team in school history.

“It’s probably the best game I’ve played,” Bennett, who also ran for a touchdown, said.

Kendall Milton also had eight carries for 50 yards and a score and McIntosh added a one-yard touchdown run, as the Bulldogs ran for 132 yards and four touchdowns on 25 carries.

Still, Smart refused to overly praise his team’s performance against the Ducks, who committed two turnovers deep in Georgia territory.

“Looking back at the tape, I think it’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems. And that’s kind of the mantra coaches use,” Smart said. “To be honest, it’s true. So it’s never — you know, you go to the tape to watch it and you think you played really good, and you see glaring mistakes and errors that you made that you got away with.”

Still, Georgia (1-0) isn’t taking Samford (1-0), which scored 13 points in the final quarter to pull out a 27-17 win over visiting Kennesaw State last week, lightly.

Samford was trailing 17-14 before quarterback Michael Hiers threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Chandler Smith for a 20-17 lead with 12:40 left after Zach Williams missed the extra point. Samford extended the lead when Hiers hit Smith for a 31-yard score with just over five minutes remaining.

“They do a good job in the passing game. They have a lot of confidence in the passing game. Quarterback came in, played really well against Kennesaw State. They believe in throwing the ball,” Smart said. “They did a good job at the end of the game to be able to run the clock out and handle that. I think if you look and see what they did last year against Florida and throwing the ball all over the field and scoring points, they did an incredible job.”

Hiers completed 18 of 24 passes for 289 yards and four touchdowns, with his favorite target being Kendall Watson, who had nine receptions for a career-high 187 yards and two touchdowns, Smith had three catches for 67 yards and two scores.

Jay Stanton ran for 90 yards on 16 carries.

“All around, we just kept playing and never panicked,” Samford coach Chris Hatcher said. “All in all, our guys just believed. It was just a complete team win over a really good football team and we are excited to get this one under our belts.”

Craig Cappy