How Georgia football achieved ‘greatest win of all time’ (at 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 middle of all that, Mike Cavan, a 76-year-old former Georgia quarterback, assistant coach and now staff member, grabbed the arm of someone close to him.
“The greatest win of all time,” said Cavan.
The best? Cavan won an SEC championship as a player, recruited Herschel Walker, was an assistant on the 1980 national championship team and has been on the sidelines throughout Kirby Smart’s run. The best?
“Best win of all time Technology” said Cavan.
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That’s a clarification that still says a lot: If you told the people of Georgia before Friday that they would need eight overtimes to earn a 44-42 home victory over Georgia Tech in a game they led by nearly three touchdowns were to win, the reaction would probably have been… eh. In the sober light of the morning they may still feel this way.
But the way things went – trailing 17-0 at halftime and 27-13 with five minutes left in regulation time and then eight overtimes, including the last six in a two-point shootout – perspective could wait.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart (left) and Georgia Tech coach Brent Key shared a long embrace after Friday night’s eight-overtime thriller. (Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
Quarterback Carson Beck called it “one of the most emotional games I have 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 walked back to watch from the bridge over the west end zone.
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 into a fumble, which was recovered by Georgia. Jackson is the only connection on defense to the 2021 unit who was on the field for Kelee Ringo’s famous pick six, and then was part of his own moment on Friday night.
“That goal will be one for eternity,” Smart said.
• Beck and Lovett connect again for a 3-yard touchdown with 1:01 to go, tying the score.
The next minute then saw Georgia Tech attempt to get within field goal range, was stopped at the Georgia 45-yard line, and then Beck was sacked on a Hail Mary attempt. That forced a back and forth movement of emotions. No one could have known that it had only just begun.
Georgia had practiced overtime rules before last month’s Texas game — one drive from the 25-yard line in the first two overtimes and then a two-point shootout. But this was the first time I really experienced it.
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“We discuss the situation, but not every day,” Ben Yurosek said. “So a few people were probably asking around, making sure (the third overtime) it was a two-point shooting.”
• In the first overtime, Beck hit London Humphreys for a touchdown. But King answered with a scoring pass for Georgia Tech.
On to the second overtime, and Georgia Tech started 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 they also missed.
• It was time for the two-point shootout, an ironic twist for Smart: If Georgia had lost this game, his decision to go for two after Georgia’s third-quarter touchdown would have been big. There was 9:53 left in the quarter when it happened, and Smart later seemed to acknowledge it was a questionable call.
“Yes, interesting question. I’m not really going to dig deep into it,” Smart said. “It’s analysis and we follow almost to the tee. It’s what our graph says. It looked very interesting in the end, because you (could have scored) an extra point to win the game.
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But that time it was the third overtime and no one had that choice. The only strategy was which plays to call, and even then there were no major surprises: Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner was at Georgia from 2020 to 2022, and Smart said his coaches called many of the Yellow squad’s two-point plays recognized. There were coats walking around. But Faulkner certainly knew what calls were in Georgia’s playbook and told his fellow coaches. Maybe that’s why there are so many failures.
• The fouls both failed in the third and fourth overtimes. Then Georgia converted and Beck hit Dillon Bell. Georgia Tech answered as King completed a pass. Then came the sixth and seventh overtimes, both failures for each team. In total, the second team could have won the match on four of the five substitutions, but that did not happen.
“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 that, then they would fail and have to go again.”
• Finally the eighth overtime. By then, Georgia’s defense was aggressive, going after King on every play, from a different spot each time. Georgia linebacker CJ Allen went straight to King, who threw a pass out of the end zone.
Beck and the Georgia offense took the field. So did freshman tailback Nate Frazier, who may have seemed like a decoy considering both teams were essentially passed in overtime. Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo mentioned a run-pass option, a play the Bulldogs had used before.
“But not like that, if that makes sense,” Beck said. “We perform the same play in many different ways.”
This time, Beck saw the defense’s gaze and when the moment came, he handed the ball to Frazier. The hole was there, it burst through and the game was finally over.
Walker was later asked about his reaction when Frazier scored.
“I don’t know, just tell me,” he said, laughing. “My mind went blank.”
It took a while for everyone to realize the game was over. Smart went for the post-game handshake with Georgia Tech coach Brett Key, and instead they hugged for a while. Smart and Key both coach at their alma mater 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 be on the sidelines and go through that pain and the highs and lows of, ‘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 exhausted, and so was I.”
After a few minutes of elation, 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 year in a row. The team came out still smiling. Maybe that was partly a relief, but it was a genuine celebration.
Still, the question remains open: If Georgia is going up against a team it should easily beat, on its home court — where it hasn’t lost a night game since 2009 — what does that say?
“It shows the resilience of this team,” Yurosek said. “Whatever happens, whatever we face, we are ready to put our heads down and keep working no matter the situation. It shows a lot about this team and its character.”
Whether the College Football Playoff committee feels the same way will become apparent from the penultimate rankings on Tuesday. Either way, Georgia can dispute it all by winning the SEC Championship against Texas or Texas A&M next week. The winner gets a bye for the quarter-finals. And by playing this game against their in-state rivals, the Bulldogs will almost certainly be in the field anyway: a 10-2 regular season with wins at Texas and over Clemson and Tennessee provides some wiggle room to pull off a game like to survive this.
But when asked if this win at least secured an at-large bid, Smart said he wouldn’t answer but then seemed to acknowledge the stakes of those overtime.
“If things went the other way on one of those plays tonight, we’d be playing for our lives next week,” he said.
A spot in the Playoff was indeed on the line, and it essentially came down to a series of overtime coin tosses. It was a bizarre way of making things happen. Over the next few days and two weeks there will be time to dissect and debate what it means and should mean.
But in the immediate aftermath, Walker, Georgia’s defensive leader, could only shake his head.
“I mean,” he said, smiling, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
(Top photo of Carson Beck: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
