How 'Bout Them Dogs - III

 

The Georgia Bulldogs won their second consecutive SEC Championship in 2025.  They beat the Alabama Crimson Tide for one of the few times in my lifetime.  It was a very satisfying 28-7 victory. The Dawgs offense was okay but their defense, especially against the rush was an unmovable force.  Great to watch! Georgia was ranked Number 3 nationally and got a first round bye in the College Football Playoffs.

They needed an extra week off.  They were banged up in a couple of positions and even the depth was pretty beat up this late in the season.  So, the rest was welcome.

We played the Ole Miss Rebels (ranked 6th) in the Sugar Bowl yesterday.  Oh how many wonderful Sugar Bowls I can remember for Georgia through the years!  I can still hear Munson saying "Look at the sugar!  There's sugar falling out of the sky!" Saner times.

Georgia has had an incredible season under Kirby Smart, the top college coach in a very elite group of such people.  The 2025 Bulldogs were not the best team Georgia has had since winning back-to-back National Championships.  They had some stars and they were talented in key places.  The main difference was probably their willingness to submit to being "coached hard" as Kirby would put it. 

Kirby loved this team.  He knew they weren't his most talented.  But they did everything he asked them to do.  They did it over and over again.  They were prepared.  I felt they could contend.

They did contend.  A multi-talented Mississippi team let them get out in front with a turnover, but then the Rebels got a roll.  They had momentum when Georgia fought to tie it 34-34 with a little over a minute to play.  

Then it happened.  The Rebel quarterback found an open man and 40 yards were suddenly gobbled up.  It was just a good play.  The Dawgs defense stiffened but Ole Miss was in field goal range.  They won it on a FG with 6 seconds left.  All-in-all, defeat withstanding, it was the most entertaining bowl game played this year - or I guess that's mostly last year now. Haha.

What are you going to do?  You played pretty well against a talented team and lost...with only seconds left in the game.

What impressed me most about it all was Kirby's postgame interview.  He seemed very relaxed and like a man who was satisfied that, though losing this one hurt, everyone had played their best.

Kirby opened with thanking the Sugar Bowl staffing committee, their staff, for a wonderful job of hosting this event.  "Great crowd out there today."  Though he felt the Ole Miss side might have been more numerous.  "It was a back and forth game.  It's an incredible college football game.  It's what the CFP was built for - to have battles like that.  And that was basically every conference game we had this year.  I felt like every game was like that one, back forth, back forth.  Plays being made all over.  A lot of credit goes to Ole Miss.  The defensive improvements they made...They created some problems for us.  And their quarterback is just incredible...They made more plays than we did.  And I got to be honest, that's part of football.  They made more and outexecuted us, outcoached us, outplayed us."

Then Kirby says this: "I enjoyed that game, that atmosphere.  I am proud of our team.  I'm sick that we lost, and there's some things I would love to go back and do differently but I'm so proud of the ways our guys competed when down 10. And, uh, just didn't finish it."

Kirby loves his team.  I think Georgia has a fabulous locker room dynamic and probably the best coaching staff in the country.  There are former Nick Saban and Kirby Smart staff coaches serving as head coaches all over the country. Some even in this play-off's next round.  The NFL is filled with quality Georgia players. All blue collar solid talent. It feels good to be a part of that vibe.  I think Kirby will conjure it up again next year.

Go Dawgs!


Read:

How 'Bout Them Dogs! from 2018

How 'Bout Them Dogs - II from 2021 

How 'Bout Them National Championship Dawgs! from 2022

How 'Bout Them Back-to-Back National Champ... from 2023



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