ATHENS, Ga. — A defining moment. For this game and more: Stetson Bennett, in the midst of his worst game of the season, standing on the sideline, holding a football, the critics again chirping on the outside. Kirby Smart went up to him, and the pair spoke for about a minute. A very long minute, before Smart walked away.
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The god of Good Stories decreed what happened next: Bennett came out firing, the offense got going, and Bennett uncorked the play of the game, a 64-yard dash for the end zone that punctuated what would be a 42-10 win over Auburn. And it can all be traced to that conversation on the sideline between the quarterback and the head coach.
A deep, important conversation that Bennett, when asked to recount, clearly had no memory of at all.
“What was the situation?” Bennett asked.
OK, deep breath: Third quarter, you’re struggling, then you go out firing, etc.
Nope, still drawing a blank.
“I’m not saying it didn’t. I just don’t …,” Bennett said. “People come up to me a lot and tell me a lot of stuff. And sometimes you’ve just gotta go play football.”
Bennett and Georgia are both graded on a curve: Merely average is not good enough; in fact, it’s poor. And that’s fine. That comes with winning a national championship and then beginning defense of it by mauling Oregon by 46 points.
But it’s hazardous to do the grading while the game is still, to use a technical phrase they use in coaching, going on. Bennett was not good in the first half Saturday. But he also has earned the benefit of the doubt to have Georgia fans not calling for him to be benched or have TV hot-takers say they’d rather have Anthony Richardson or all the other ridiculousness that should have stopped after winning a national championship and playing the way Bennett did to start this season.
And yet, well, it comes with the territory now. It’s better to be graded on a curve because you’re the reigning champs, better to have “created this monster” as Smart put it by the Oregon game being the first impression of this year’s Georgia team. And to be fair to the critics, this was the third straight game that Georgia was not dominant and Bennett was not perfect.
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When Georgia puttered around with Kent State — mainly because of turnovers, but puttered nonetheless — it was assumed the Bulldogs would take out frustration on Missouri. Not so much. So then it was assumed the Bulldogs would take out two weeks of frustration on Auburn. Not so much, again: a scoreless first quarter, a mere 14-3 lead midway through the third quarter.
But Georgia still ended up covering the 29-point spread. The pessimist would say the Bulldogs are having too many listless performances and are destined to be burned at some point during that tough November stretch, especially the way Tennessee looks. Maybe so. The optimist would counter that excellent teams don’t just have to race out of the gates the way Georgia did against Oregon and South Carolina; it also can explode the way last year’s Georgia team did against Florida (it went from 3-0 to 24-0 in the final minutes of the first half). And the way this one did in the second half, going from 14-3 to 35-3 in the span of 11 game minutes.
“A lot more things obviously clicked for us,” Georgia center Sedrick Van Pran said. “Coach Smart challenged us to come out and execute, and we were able to get it done.”
How did Smart challenge them?
“I’d rather not say,” Van Pran said, laughing.
He did provide the safe-for-work version.
“He honestly told us, ‘Who are we?’ Basically, ‘Who are we, who are we going to be?’” Van Pran said. “A lot of guys took that personally.”
The offensive line was part of that, especially after its struggles at Missouri. This time, that group imposed itself enough that Georgia spent the first half looking like the 2017 offense: 111 rushing yards on 14 carries, all by the tailbacks. No gimmicks, no quarterback keepers or tight end end-arounds. Just old-school runs.
Some of that could have had to do with Bennett’s right shoulder, which took a hit at Missouri and had him come out early in pregame warmups to test it. Bennett downplayed it, and whatever it was appeared more to be a minor hindrance.
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“I practiced every day,” he said. “I was sore during the week, but that’s just when you get hit that many times in an SEC game that’s going to happen.”
Bennett played through it during the second half at Missouri when he was excellent, but his first half Saturday saw him not trying much downfield, racking up a mere 25 yards on 13 attempts, six of them incomplete.
The second half didn’t begin too great, either, with Bennett losing fumble. But after that conversation with Smart — the one that left very little impression — Bennett got going, hitting Darnell Washington for 16 yards, Ladd McConkey for 21 and 14, then rushing for 9 yards.
Bennett is a rhythm quarterback, playing better when he’s going fast and when he’s going, period. If he starts fast, a la Oregon and South Carolina, then look out. Otherwise, it may take him a while.
“It was weird the first half. I do feel like we never really got started. The first one or two drives didn’t and then we ran the ball a lot,” Bennett said. “But yeah, it was like I never really got started, at least passing game. But then you’re right, once you ran the ball, once you get hit, it starts getting a little bit better. I don’t know. The first half was weird, and I hated it. But the second half was better.”
The 64-yard touchdown run was a called keeper by Todd Monken, Georgia’s offensive coordinator. Bennett hesitated a second to keep the defense spread out, then raced through the open middle and kept going. It was Georgia’s second-longest run of the season and a reminder why Bennett became and will remain this team’s starting quarterback.
“It wouldn’t be explosive if it wasn’t for a really good athlete,” Smart said. “It proves again that he’s multidimensional, is hard to defend because of things he can do.”
Bennett’s passing numbers were pedestrian (208 passing yards), and he lost the fumble. But he’s also responsible for managing an offense that finished with 500 yards, with Bennett accounting for most of those. He also has proved himself in the clutch, whether it was the fourth quarter of the national championship, the fourth quarter at Missouri or the second half of this game, which was not the dire situation as the two aforementioned games.
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Georgia is not a perfect team. But nobody is this season. Bennett is not a perfect quarterback. But he doesn’t have to be, with a defense that continues to be stout and special teams that are a plus. (Jack Podlesny missed only his second field goal of the season, but Nolan Smith snuffed out a fake punt and McConkey had a long punt return.)
The concern on offense is that it’s trending down, the past two games, in particular, seemingly far removed from the pass-heavy moster of the first three weeks. But those first three weeks did happen, as did the second half at Missouri and the second half Saturday. The offense needs to get back to being explosive throughout the game, rather than just turning it on when it has to.
But it can still turn it on.
“I got things to get better at. A million things,” Bennett said. “But we just beat Auburn. They’ve got a good football team, and we beat them pretty good. So I think we can be happy.”
(Top photo: Dale Zanine / USA Today)