Mark WiedmerATLANTA – Kirby Smart probably would have preferred his Georgia Bulldogs not find themselves down 10 points to North Carolina in the third quarter of his first game as head coach. Climb into that hole too many times and you’ll wind up with the same reputation for failing to win the big ones as the great man and good coach you replaced – Mark Richt.
But from that point forward Saturday evening inside the Georgia Dome against the Tar Heels, the Dawgs looked nothing like their recent predecessors. They didn’t just growl. They bit. Hard. And often.
And when they were done, Smart – with a mountain of help from running back Nick Chubb – had won the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game with resounding resolve, turning that 24-14 third-quarter deficit into a 33-24 win.
That’s right. With disaster staring them in the face, the Dawgs scored the game’s last 19 points via two touchdowns, a safety and a field goal.
“I know there were a lot of ‘Here we go agains’ (from the crowd) when we got down,” said Smart, who left his defensive coordinator post at Alabama at the close of the Crimson Tide’s national championship season last year to return to the school where he played and where he graduated in 1998. “But I was really proud of how they responded.”
No one responded better than Chubb, who piled up a stunning 222 yards on 32 carries, scored two touchdowns and broke the game open late in the final quarter with a 55-yard touchdown run a mere 3:34 from the finish.
It would have been a heroic performance if Chubb hadn’t missed a beat since last season. But he missed much of last season with a horrific knee injury. No one would have been shocked if he’d been nervous, even scared.
Instead, he roared from the first snap to the last, clearly the best player on the field.
“It felt amazing,” Chubb said afterward. “I took my mind off everything else. Just playing with my boys.”
It was amazing, of course. Especially for anyone who had seen Chubb’s season end in grotesque fashion last season in Knoxville against Tennessee, his left knee blown up at the very start of the game.
Both Smart and Chubb singled out former UT-Chattanooga and longtime Bulldogs trainer Ron Courson as being crucial to his recovery, and that was certainly true. But Chubb also deserves much praise for the tough, lonely, painful rehab it takes to make such a comeback.
“It doesn’t take much for that guy (to break free),” said losing coach Larry Fedora. “He’s pretty special.”
How special these Dawgs can become may yet take awhile. This was clearly a big win, one that probably vaults them ahead of Tennessee as the favorite to win the Southeastern Conference’s East Division after the Vols’ overtime victory over Appalachian State last Thursday.
Chubb almost certainly will be the best back the Volunteers face all season, and the Georgia defense held UNC to 49 total yards after the Baby Blues took that 24-21 lead, all 49 of those yards coming on their final drive with UGA in something of a prevent D. In the three series before that drive following that 10-point lead, UNC had exactly zero yards of offense.
That’s the kind of defense Smart orchestrated at Alabama. That’s the kind of defense that puts you in the SEC title game come December. And given that Georgia overwhelmed UNC statistically, outgaining the Tar Heels 474 to 315 in total yards before the largest and loudest crowd ever to witness the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game (75,405), the offense isn’t bad, either.
Not that the Here-We-Go-Again crowd had no valid reason for frustration early in that third quarter, right after UNC scored 14 unanswered points in less than nine minutes, including a kickoff return to open the final half.
At that point, USA Today sports writer Dan Wolken was surely not alone when he tweeted: “Kirb Your Enthusiasm.”
But soon after that began the Georgia comeback, fueled by a touchdown pass from true freshman quarterback Jacob Eason to Isaiah McKenzie and a safety 31 seconds later. Suddenly the Dome was shaking from ear-splitting chants of “U-G-A! U-G-A!” Suddenly the Dawgs looked liked the old Junkyard Dawgs, bending but refusing to break.
“I’ve been hard on these guys, that’s not going to change,” Smart said. “We’re trying to change a culture here, and change is hard. But we want our players to understand how to play Georgia football.”
For at least one night, it’s doubtful if any Bulldogs fan anywhere would argue with what Georgia football looked like over the final 21 minutes and 43 seconds against the Tar Heels. Now the trick is to keep it up for at least 11 more games, if not 12, 13 or 14, because that’s the number of games Smart was used to coaching most seasons at Bama.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com