Junior wide receiver Mecole Hardman scored on a 54-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the fourth quarter.
photo by UGAAA
COLUMBIA, Mo. — There's more than one way to win a game, more than one way to score, more than one way to, in Georgia football coach Kirby Smart's oft-repeated words, attack the day.
The No.
2-ranked Bulldogs got out of Columbia, Mo., with a win Saturday before 58,284 at Faurot Field in large part because of how they attacked the ball. They went after it relentlessly, disrupting the Tigers and their high-powered offense in their 43-29 victory over Missouri.
Big plays by the defense and special teams bailed out the Dawgs until the offense came alive.
Georgia (4-0, 2-0 SEC) outscored opponents 135-24 in its first three games but the offense couldn’t finish off first half drives that led to Rodrigo Blankenship field goals of 44 and 21 yards.
Missouri (3-1, 0-1 SEC) saw its nine-game regular season winning streak come to an end.
Georgia won its ninth straight against an SEC East team and Missouri lost its ninth straight to a ranked opponent.
The Bulldogs are now 4-0 at Missouri since the Tigers joined the league in 2012, but this one required Fromm to see his first fourth quarter snaps of the season. The Bulldogs outgained Missouri 446-393.
Georgia forced turnovers and made things happen in special teams, those two phases of the game producing all the points for a 20-7 halftime lead, and then the Georgia offense got rolling in the second half, making its own explosive plays.
Drew Lock, Mizzou's senior quarterback, with 37 straight starts, may be the most dangerous passer Georgia's defense faces this season. His numbers were off the charts last season.
Georgia's defense didn't shut down the Tiger offense — 393 total yards, 4.6 yards per play — but the Bulldogs were disruptive. And they attacked the ball.
Missouri's first possession ended with cornerback Tyson Campbell stripping the ball from big tight end Albert Okwuegbunam and returning the fumble 64 yards for a touchdown, the first for the true freshman.
Campbell had to leave the game soon after his big play and was replaced by redshirt freshman Eric Stokes, who made his presence felt in multiple ways. Stokes came into the game with four career tackles and one pass break-up.
With star senior cornerback Deandre Baker on the other side, it made sense for Lock to challenge the new rather than throw too many balls toward the preseason All-American. So how did Stokes do? He finished with four tackles (all solo) and broke up three passes.
Lock was held to 221 yards passing (he came in averaging an SEC-high 354.0), completing 23 of 48 passes, and of those 25 incompletions, nine were the result of pass break-ups by the Bulldog defense.
Stokes really showed something in the second quarter when he came around the left side of the Georgia rush and blocked a punt. The ball bounced right up to him and he caught it and ran the ball in eight yards for a touchdown — like Campbell, his first as a Bulldog — and gave Georgia a 20-7 lead.
For outside linebacker D'Andre Walker, it was two other words that start with "s" that defined the day: strip and sack. The senior not only picked up the Bulldog defense's first two sacks of the season, he also was credited with two forced fumbles, most notably swiping at the ball in Lock's hand and forcing it out on third-and-3 at the UGA 42-yard line.
Walker later sacked Lock for a loss of 11 on the final play of the first half, capping a critical attacking second quarter for Georgia. The period began with a Rodrigo Blankenship 44-yard field goal, followed by linebacker Tae Crowder intercepting a Lock pass, which led to another Blankenship field goal (21 yards).
Georgia's defense held Mizzou to a three-and-out on the Tigers' next two possessions, the second ending with Stokes' "scoop and score." Missouri's next drive ended with Walker's strip sack that Georgia wasn't able to turn into any points after starting at its own 45.
The Georgia offense attacked much more effectively in the second half, with quarterback Jake Fromm connecting with Riley Ridley for a 33-yard touchdown early in the third quarter and Jeremiah Holloman for a 61-yard score later in the period. In the fourth quarter, as the teams continued to trade scoring drives, Fromm hit Hardman for the 54-yarder.
Before the end of the third quarter, two starting offensive linemen were out with injuries.
Right guard Ben Cleveland came out of the game in the second half. Smart called it “a lower extremity injury,” and said “I’m not sure on Ben yet completely.”
Tackle Andrew Thomas, already dealing with a sprained left ankle, exited the game in the first quarter, after getting rolled up on.
“We’ve got a team that’s banged up, had guys beat up, banged up,” said Smart, who has at least five key players injured. “Lost some guys in the game but other guys stepped up and played.”
Georgia had a lot of pretty scores Saturday, in all shapes and sizes, but the simple perfection of Hardman's may have been the best. Lined up in the slot on the right side, Hardman faked a hard cut to the right, freezing his defender, and then took off up the right hash with nobody around.
Blankenship, who made his first five field goals of the year, was wide right from 49 and then had a 36-yard field goal blocked with 6:08 to go before hitting from 40 yards with 1:41 left for the final points.
Georgia returns home for back-to-back home games starting Saturday with Tennessee in a 3:30 p.m. CBS game.
-- Sources: UGAAA, OnlineAthens