SEC Championship Game victory a microcosm of Georgia Bulldogs’ football season

Top-ranked Georgia’s 50-30 throttling of then-No. 14 LSU in the SEC title game was a microcosm of the Bulldogs’ football season that has them 13-0 for the first time in school history.

“Our team kind of played this game like they played the whole season,” coach Kirby Smart said. “We were unbelievably well in spurts and unbelievably poor in spurts and answered the bell when they had to.”

With the score tied 7-7 after Jayden Daniels’ 53-yard touchdown pass to Kayshon Boutte with 2:21 left in the first quarter, Georgia just didn’t answer the bell — the Bulldogs delivered a knockout punch.

The Bulldogs scored the game’s next 28 points before an LSU field goal on the final play of the first half made it 35-10.

When LSU (9-4) cut the lead to 42-23 late in the third quarter, Georgia scored on its ensuing possession, with Kenny McIntosh’s 8-yard run capping a seven-play, 75-yard drive with 13:13 left in the game.

“I don’t want one kid to walk out of our program without an SEC championship ring in their careers,” Smart said.

While Georgia’s offense put up video-game stats, the Bulldogs’ defense didn’t look like one of the nation’s best for stretches of the second half.

Stetson Bennett went 23-for-29 passing for 274 yards and four touchdowns, Kendall Milton rushed for 113 yards on just eight carries and McIntosh added 55 yards and two scores on 14 carries. The Bulldogs rushed for 255 yards on 44 carries — a whopping 5.8 yards an attempt.

Brock Bowers had six receptions, including a 3-yard touchdown catch, for 81 yards, while Ladd McConkey had five catches for 69 yards, including a 22-yard touchdown.

Each of Georgia’s five trips inside LSU’s 20-yard line ended in the end zone.

“I’ve got good players around me. I’m not that bad at football, either,” said Bennett, who threw a touchdown pass to four different receivers. “We’ve got a good team.”

But the Bulldogs were shredded by Daniels and backup quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who combined to throw for 502 yards, the second-most ever by a Georgia opponent. Kentucky’s Jared Lorenzen threw for 528 yards in Georgia’s 34-30 win over the Wildcats in 2000.

“We didn’t play real good defense tonight,” Smart said after the game. “But there were some opportunities that they didn’t just make plays, we just didn’t make plays.”

Still, the Bulldogs celebrating their first SEC title since 2017 under bursts of the SEC’s blue and yellow confetti, knowing they secured the top spot in the College Football Playoff rankings.

“Winning the SEC is a big deal,” Bennett said. “This is the best conference in football. National championships are huge and great. That’s our next goal. But SEC is the first goal, our second goal after winning the East. Winning the SEC championship, there’s only one of those. It’s a banner. It’s the same thing as a national championship, just a little bit smaller scale.”

Georgia will have more than three weeks to analyze what went wrong against LSU before returning to Mercedes-Benz Stadium to face fourth-ranked Ohio State (11-1) in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl on New Year’s Eve at 8 p.m.

“We’ve always looked at Clemson, Ohio State, looked across the country to find out how people doing it really well and how they are doing it differently,” Smart said. “Managing the 27 days is just critical. Sometimes your guys think 27 days is a long time, and then it’s right up on you before you know it.”

Second-ranked and Big Ten champion Michigan (13-0) will face No. 4 TCU (11-1), which lost to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game on Saturday, in the Fiesta Bowl in Scottsdale, Ariz., at 4 p.m. on Dec. 31.

Georgia, which has won 15 straight games since losing to Alabama in the SEC title game a year ago, is an overwhelming favorite to win its second straight national title.

But that doesn’t mean anything when Georgia plays Ohio State, which was blown out 45-23 by visiting and then-No. 3 Michigan in their regular-season finale. The Buckeyes backed into the playoff after then-No. 4 Southern California was soundly defeated by then-No. 11 Utah 47-24 in the Pac-12 title game on Friday.

“With Ohio State, there’s a breath of fresh air of opportunity,” Smart said. “We’ve never had the fortune of saying, all right, we were out, and then we got back in.”