How Georgia football pulled off ‘best win ever’ (via Georgia Tech)

ATHENS, Ga. – The wildest game many had ever seen had just ended. Players and coaches from both Georgia and Georgia Tech lingered, shook hands, compared notes, celebrated and consoled. In the midst of it all, Mike Cavan, a 76-year-old former Georgia quarterback, assistant coach and now employee, took someone close to him by the arm.

“Best win ever,” said Cavan.

The best? Cavan won an SEC championship as a player, recruited Herschel Walker, was an assistant on the 1980 national championship and has been on the sidelines throughout Kirby Smart’s run. The best?

“Best win ever TechCavan said.

It’s a clarification that still says a lot: If you told the Georgia crowd before Friday that they would need eight overtimes to get a 44-42 home win over Georgia Tech in a game they were favored to winning by nearly three touchdowns, the reaction probably would have been … ugh. In the more sober morning light, they may still end up feeling that way.

But after the way it went — trailing 17-0 at halftime and 27-13 with five minutes left in regulation and then going eight overtimes, including the last six in a two-point shootout — perspective could wait.

Quarterback Carson Beck called it “one of the most emotional games I’ve been a part of.” Linebacker Jalon Walker said he was nervous for his grandmother, who was coming to the game for the first time. Many Georgia fans left after Georgia Tech went up 14 with 5:37 left in the game. But many stopped or circled back to watch from the bridge over the west end.

What they witnessed:

• Beck hits Dominic Lovett for a 17-yard touchdown with 3:39 left to make it 27-20.

• Georgia safety Dan Jackson forced Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King to fumble, which was recovered by Georgia. Jackson is the one connection on defense with the 2021 unit that was on the field for Kelee Ringo’s famous pick six, then was part of his own moment Friday night.

“That hit fumble will be one for the ages,” Smart said.

• Beck and Lovett connect again for a 3-yard touchdown with 1:01 left to tie the game.

The next minute saw Georgia Tech try to get within field goal range, be stopped at the Georgia 45-yard line, then Beck sacked on a Hail-Mary attempt. It forced one back and forth with emotions. No one could know that it had just begun.

Georgia had practiced the overtime rules — one drive each from the 25-yard line in the first two overtimes, then a two-point shootout after that — before the Texas game last month. But it was the first time I really went through it.

“We review the situation, but not every single day,” tight end Ben Yurosek said. “So a couple of people probably asked around and made sure (the third overtime) was a two-point shootout.”

• In the first overtime, Beck hit London Humphreys for a touchdown. But King answered with a score for Georgia Tech.

On to the second overtime, Georgia Tech opened with King scoring on a 1-yard run, but the rules called for a two-point attempt. It failed. Georgia got the ball and Beck immediately connected with Cash Jones on a touchdown pass. The Bulldogs could have won the game with a two-point conversion, but also missed.

• It was time for the two-point shootout, an ironic twist for Smart: If Georgia lost this game, his decision to go for two after Georgia’s third-quarter touchdown would have been huge. There was still 9:53 left in the quarter when it happened, and Smart seemed to acknowledge later that it was a questionable decision.

“Yeah, interesting question. I’m not going to dig deep,” Smart said. “It’s analytics and we’re following almost to a tee. That’s what our chart says. It ended up looking really interesting, because you (could have kicked) an extra point to win the game.”

But that time it was the third overtime and nobody had that choice. The only strategy was which plays to call, and even then there were no big surprises: Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner was at Georgia from 2020-22, and Smart said his coaches recognized many of the two-point plays, the yellow ones. Jackets drove. But Faulkner certainly knew what calls were in Georgia’s playbook and told his fellow coaches. Maybe that’s why there were so many failures.

• The offenses both misfired in the third and fourth overtimes. Then Georgia converted with Beck beating Dillon Bell. Georgia Tech answered with King completing a pass. Then the sixth and seventh overtimes, both of which were failures for each team. In total, the second team could have won the match on four out of five exchanges, but did not.

“It was just weird that it seemed like every time someone failed, they had to go again,” Smart said. “So you have to get over it, then they’d fail and they’d have to go again.”

• Finally the eighth overtime. At this point, Georgia’s defense was aggressive, going after King on every play, just from a different spot each time. Georgia linebacker CJ Allen went right at King, who lofted a pass out of the end zone.

Beck and the Georgia offense took the field. So did Nate Frazier, a freshman tailback who might have acted as a decoy when both teams had largely passed in overtime. Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo called a run-pass option, a play the Bulldogs had used in the past.

“But not in that way, if that makes sense,” Beck said. “We run the same stretch in many different ways.”

This time, Beck saw the look of the defense and when the moment came, he passed the ball to Frazier. The hole was there, he blasted through it and the game was finally over.

Walker was later asked about his reaction when Frazier scored.

“I don’t know, tell me,” he said, laughing. “My mind went blank.”

It took a few moments for everyone to realize that the game was over. Smart went for the postgame handshake with Georgia Tech coach Brett Key, and instead they embraced for a while. Smart and Key both coach at their alma maters and played against each other in the 1990s, and they have a healthy respect for each other, especially after this game.

“Nobody knows what it’s like to sit on that sideline and go through that pain and the highlights that they’re doing, ‘We’re going to win, we’re going to lose, we’re going to win, we’re going to lose,'” Smart said. “I mean, he was emotionally spent and so was I.”

After a few minutes of cheering, nearly the entire Georgia team had to be called back from the locker room for a ceremony at midfield, where Georgia Governor Brian Kemp presented the state trophy to Smart and his team for the seventh straight year. The team came back still smiling. Perhaps that was part of the relief, but there was real celebration.

Still, that leaves the question: For Georgia to struggle against a team it should beat easily at home — where it hasn’t lost a night game since 2009 — what does that say?

“It shows the resilience of this team,” Yurosek said. “No matter what happens, what we face, we are ready to put our heads down, keep working, no matter the situation. It shows a lot about this team and its character.”

Whether the College Football Playoff committee sees it the same way will be reflected in the penultimate rankings on Tuesday. Either way, Georgia can put it all on the line by winning the SEC championship next week against Texas or Texas A&M. The winner gets a bye to the quarterfinals. And by drawing this game out against their in-state rivals, the Bulldogs will almost certainly be in the field either way: A 10-2 regular season with wins at Texas and over Clemson and Tennessee earns some leeway to survive a game like this.

Still, when asked if this win secured at least an at-large bid, Smart said he didn’t want to answer, but then appeared to acknowledge the effort of those overtime games.

“If things went the other way on one of those plays tonight, we’d be playing next week for our lives,” he said.

In fact, a spot in the playoffs was on the line, and it essentially came down to a series of coin-flip overtimes. It was a bizarre way to go down. There will be time to dissect and argue about what it means and should mean in the coming days and two weeks.

But immediately afterward, Walker, Georgia’s defensive leader, could only shake his head.

“I mean,” he said with a smile, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

(Top photo by Carson Beck: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)