Georgia photo by Mackenzie Miles / Georgia junior receiver George Pickens comes down with a 37-yard catch against Alabama earlier this month in the Southeastern Conference championship game.Slim Pickens no more?
Georgia’s biggest play from scrimmage during its Southeastern Conference championship game loss to Alabama earlier this month transpired in the final minute of the first quarter, when George Pickens made an acrobatic, 37-yard snag of a Stetson Bennett pass that set up the contest’s first touchdown.
It was the same George Pickens who many expected would never suit up for the Bulldogs this season.
The 6-foot-3, 200-pound junior from Hoover, Alabama, tore his right anterior cruciate ligament during a noncontact drill in late March, and he wasn’t healthy enough to compete for the Bulldogs until the regular-season finale at Georgia Tech. Pickens had a 5-yard catch against the Yellow Jackets, but it was his 37-yarder to the Crimson Tide 8-yard line that has placed him among the more intriguing aspects to Georgia’s Orange Bowl showdown with Michigan on New Year’s Eve.
“He is still not 100%,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said this week. “George is working really hard. Getting to see him every day, he is working back to get that way, but he is not there. Nobody is. There is no person on Earth who comes back from an ACL and is back out there and running the same speed with the same confidence you would usually have.”