INGLEWOOD, California – It’s hard to know when it was over. At the national anthem? The coin flip? The opening kickoff? Or maybe even before—the moment when Noah Ruggles’ kick for Ohio State on New Year’s Eve sailed far, far left, giving Georgia a second lease of life and instantly scaring the Bulldogs.
Whenever it was, Georgia, the reigning national champion, wasted little time turning the College Football Playoff title game into a coronation, destroying pesky little Texas Christian with a 65-7 thump that was as decisive as the score could have indicated .
The Georgia defense, led by the sticky hands of defensive back Javon Bullard, was virtually impenetrable, and his offense, led by quarterback Stetson Bennett IV’s peerless performance, was virtually unstoppable. Together, they overpowered the Horned Frogs, whose legendary run — chasing his folk coach, his plucky quarterback, and a cast of unlikely characters, including a quirky Hypnotoad talisman — ended with a thud.
Georgia, who rolled 589 yards, didn’t kick until the second half — long after televisions across the country had surely clicked. And with the way the Bulldogs continued to parade to the end zone and tee off Max Duggan, the TCU quarterback, it was a wonder officials didn’t order a running clock for the final quarter.
The only moment Georgia was baffled was when their coach, Kirby Smart, was asked afterwards how a championship game could be so easy.
“I don’t have an answer to that,” he said.
The largest previous margin of victory in a College Football Playoff final came four years ago when Clemson defeated Alabama by 28 points. Georgia’s margin surpassed that at halftime. The Bulldogs scored the most points ever in a title game, surpassing the 62 Nebraska put up in Florida in the 1995 season.
Georgia’s romp could be a proxy for the gap between the rest of the country and the Bulldogs, who won their second consecutive national championship and their 33rd game in the last 34 attempts. Their back-to-back titles are the first since Alabama a decade ago.
For a program mostly known for falling short until last year, Monday shouldn’t be the end of the line with so many freshmen and sophomores on the depth chart.
Georgia might as well be renamed Blue Chip U. Each recruiting cycle, the best high school football prospects in the country, from California to Pennsylvania and all over the South, funnel into Athens, Ga. And each spring, many of those former prospects – after years spent in a football school – move on to the NFL
Still, the player most essential to the Bulldogs’ two championships was someone not even Georgia wanted.
Bennett, who grew up in spotless Blackshear, Georgia, did not have a scholarship from a Football Bowl Subdivision school, so he left for Athens in 2017 as a walk-on, intent on working his way up to starting quarterback duty.
A year later Justin Fields, the top quarterback prospect in the country, showed up and that loyalty to the school he grew up in didn’t mean much. Bennett wanted to play. So he went to a junior college in Mississippi.
“When I left I thought it was out of UGA forever; I didn’t think I was going to come back,” Bennett, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 190 pounds, said Saturday. “When I pulled the trigger, I kind of knew I’m not here with Georgia to just hang out and be on the team and have some football in 30 years. I want to play with the ball. I want to do what I think I can.”
When Bennett returned a year later, he did so only when Georgia offered him a scholarship on signing day to prevent him from attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Georgia still didn’t know what it had.
The team’s offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who arrived just as the coronavirus pandemic hit, sifted through a crowded quarterbacks room trying to find representatives for Jamie Newman, a transfer from Wake Forest; JT Daniels, a transfer from Southern California; and a pair of esteemed freshmen, D’Wan Mathis and Carson Beck.
Oh, and Bennett.
Daniels won the job in 2020, but was injured early in the 2021 season. The coaches were scheduled to go with Beck for the second game of the season, but Bennett heavily beat him in practice. Bennett has started every game since then.
“We are human beings,” Monken said on Saturday. “We all have preconceptions about what someone looks like, his background. Often we are wrong – whatever it is, personal life, business, football. Sometimes you have to rely on how they play.”
On Monday night, Bennett could do no wrong.
He threw the ball exactly. He completed 18 of 25 passes for 304 yards and four touchdowns. He found Ladd McConkey twice, for scores of 37 and 14 yards, and added a 22-yarder to Brock Bowers’ tight end. His 22-year-old against Adonai Mitchell with 26 seconds left before half time undercut the Bulldogs’ dominant half.
Bennett was also dangerous running the ball. His two touchdown runs were end zone waltzes—untouched off a 21-yard goalie and a 6-yard sprinter around the left end.
And Georgia’s defense was only slightly less flawless.
The gaps exposed by Ohio State and Louisiana State in the last two games were closed Monday night.
The Georgia secondary knocked out TCU receivers. Bullard, a sophomore, had two interceptions and a fumble recovery, and the Bulldogs held star receiver Quentin Johnston three yards on a single catch. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs’ front punished Duggan and fired him five times—three of which were recorded by freshmen.
Georgia held the Horned Frogs, who averaged 474.1 yards in a game, to a season-high 188. .
Several plays later, Duggan ran into the end zone to make it 10-7, Georgia. Finding even more high points for the Horned Frogs would take some foraging.
“For whatever reason, it went downhill from there,” said TCU coach Sonny Dykes. “I don’t know what happened last night. We came across a really good team and it snowballed.”
In the other locker room, Georgia players puffed on cigars—as they figured out how to keep them lit—and talked about what amounts to a college football dynasty.
The Bulldogs had 15 players drafted by the NFL last April and did not bring anyone in through the transfer portal, so some pushback was expected. And yet they were tested only twice: rallying from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win in Missouri and coming back from a 13-point deficit in the fourth quarter in the semifinal victory against Ohio State, which they survived after the missed field goal attempt.
Next year the challenge will be to settle for a new quarterback.
Bennett came off the field for the last time when Smart called a timeout to remove him with 13 minutes and 25 seconds remaining, giving him a curtain call and a hug as he reached the touchline. It was something Smart said he had never done before.
When Smart got to the coach’s office, he found his 10-year-old son, Andrew, in tears.
Smart said he asked him what was wrong.
“Stetson is leaving,” said Smart, imitating his crying son. “I said, ‘He’s 25 years old. He has to go. He has to leave.’”
Indeed he must. But with Bennett finally leaving, his departure on Monday night was no different than the rest of the Bulldogs, ensuring they left an indelible mark.