Less than two years after halting Georgia’s 29-game winning streak with a 27-24 upset in the 2023 Southeastern Conference championship game, Alabama foiled the Bulldogs again.
Saturday night’s 24-21 triumph by the Crimson Tide snapped Georgia’s 33-game winning streak inside Sanford Stadium. It was also the biggest victory of Kalen DeBoer’s 17 contests as Nick Saban’s successor, as it extended Alabama’s series mastery of the Bulldogs to 10 wins in the past 11 meetings since the surprise “Black Out” thumping of 2008.
Alabama ended DeBoer’s first season with a whimper in the ReliaQuest Bowl against Michigan and opened this year with a 31-17 loss at Florida State, but the Crimson Tide are back in the top 10 of the Associated Press poll after a third straight impressive triumph.
“I think there’s a toughness that’s being built,” DeBoer said late Saturday night. “I don’t think we’re there yet, and I think there are things that we can do better, but we talked before this game about the mental, physical and emotional toughness that it was going to take. We knew that turnovers and takeaways were going to be critical, as well as executing in critical situations, and we did all that.
“There is a toughness that our guys are building, but we still have a long ways to go, and they know that.”
Alabama only had four penalties for 16 yards, marking the first time under DeBoer that the Tide had fewer penalty yards than their opponent.
The Tide ran 77 plays to Georgia’s 53, and they converted 13 of 19 third-down opportunities compared to a 2-of-8 clip by the Bulldogs. Georgia coach Kirby Smart wasted no time in bringing up that massive discrepancy, saying, “We did not play well on third down, and it showed all night.”
Georgia won last season’s SEC championship despite starting slow in multiple games, and that trait has continued this year. The Bulldogs fell behind Tennessee 21-7 after the first quarter of their 44-41 overtime win in Knoxville on Sept. 13, and they trailed Alabama 14-0 in the early moments of the second quarter.
“I can’t say that it’s everything,” Smart said, “because we’ve made some plays in the kicking game, and offensively we’ve made plays. Defensively, against the two better opponents we’ve played, we have not executed well in the first quarter.
“It’s really frustrating, because we’ve shown we can in the second half.”
Both teams had missed opportunities galore Saturday night in Athens, including dropped deep balls, and the most memorable play was Alabama 6-foot-7, 366-pound tackle Kadyn Proctor catching a lateral from Ty Simpson before burrowing his way for an 11-yard gain to the Georgia 2. Simpson scored on the next play to give the Tide a 24-14 lead in the final seconds of the first half.
“That play went in during fall camp,” DeBoer said. “It was going really well, and then we had one that didn’t go well, so it got shelved for a little bit, but we brought it back out. He made a catch earlier in the week that gave us a lot of confidence. It was in the middle of practice, so he had sweaty hands, and it was not a great throw, but he pulled it right off the ground.
“It’s pretty impressive seeing a big guy like that do what he did, and he’s been pretty consistent on it. Who wants to tackle that guy, right? He’s such a great athlete, and he’s worked hard to continue to improve in other ways, too.”
Tennessee five-star freshman tackle David Sanders Jr. wasn’t able to play in the opener against Syracuse due to a shoulder injury, and he couldn’t ease into the season against ETSU or UAB, either.
Instead, Sanders was thrust into action midway through the fourth quarter of Saturday’s 41-34 overtime win at Mississippi State due to Jesse Perry having to come out. The Volunteers were trailing 34-27 at the time but wound up tying the game on Joey Aguilar’s 6-yard touchdown run with 1:55 left in regulation.
“He’s a young guy who’s had to deal with an adverse injury right out of the gate, and he’s handled it well,” Vols coach Josh Heupel said. “He’s been a great teammate, and he’s worked hard to be on that field.
“You deal with a lot of hard moments, but when he got the word that he was cleared, that’s one of those great moments that stays with you, too.”
Perry returned and was in for DeSean Bishop’s 25-yard touchdown run on the first play of overtime.
Some Tennessee tidbits: The Vols lead all 136 Bowl Subdivision teams with 20 sacks this season, and they are tied for first with seven forced fumbles. … Junior linebacker Arion Carter had 17 tackles in Starkville and has 49 this season, 15 more than the next-closest SEC defender. … Tennessee has won seven consecutive games in orange jerseys and orange pants since losing 31-26 to Ole Miss in 2021.
Mississippi State had lost 12 consecutive SEC games by double digits entering Saturday, but there was no discussion of moral victories after second-year coach Jeff Lebby and his Bulldogs made a top-15 opponent play longer than 60 minutes.
“We’re crushed. We’re disappointed,” Lebby said. “Everybody inside our walls the entire week knew that we were going to have the opportunity to win this game. We weren’t able to make the plays, and they did make the plays to win it. That is this league.
“I think our guys understand that, and the message is to hold on to the hurt and understand that these moments are what we’re fighting to stay away from.”
The Bulldogs matched the Vols in a lot of ways, with the biggest difference being Tennessee’s ability to impact the game defensively. Mississippi State’s ground game pounded the Vols for much of the afternoon, but Tennessee tallied 11 tackles for loss, five sacks, forced a Blake Shapen fumble that was returned for a touchdown and pressured Shapen into throwing an interception that was returned for a score.
“There were sacks, and there were other times when there was just pressure, and it affected Blake,” Lebby said. “That is going to be a huge piece of this thing moving forward. We’ve got guys who are good enough to do it, and we’ve got to go do it and be able to protect against the D-lines that we’re about to face.”
Arkansas became the first SEC football program since the end of the 2023 season to make a coaching change, firing Sam Pittman on Sunday and naming offensive coordinator and former Razorbacks coach Bobby Petrino as the interim.
Petrino’s first game in that role will be Oct. 11 at Tennessee.
Athletic director Hunter Yurachek announced that Petrino, who was fired in Fayetteville in 2012 for lying about an extramarital affair with another athletic department employee, will have an opportunity to earn the job on a permanent basis. Among the other names that were tossed about Sunday were SMU coach Rhett Lashlee, Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall and South Florida coach and former Tennessee offensive coordinator Alex Golesh.
Lashlee is a former Arkansas quarterback — he backed up Matt Jones during the 2002-04 seasons — and was a graduate assistant for the Razorbacks when Gus Malzahn was Houston Nutt’s offensive coordinator in 2006.
Pittman was 32-34 overall and 14-29 in SEC contests. He led the Razorbacks to three bowl victories, including a downing of Penn State in the Outback Bowl after the 2021 season, but after last year’s upset of Tennessee, the Hogs lost their next four home games against ranked teams — LSU, Ole Miss, Texas and Notre Dame — by the average score of 43-16.
South Carolina’s 35-13 whipping of visiting Kentucky included a fumble return and an interception return for touchdowns.
The Gamecocks already have six non-offensive scores this season, tying a program record.
Ole Miss is the highest-ranked SEC football team for the first time since the early stages of the 2015 season, with the Rebels having improved to 5-0 with Saturday’s 24-19 topping of LSU.
The Rebels racked up 480 yards to LSU’s 254, and Ole Miss sixth-year coach Lane Kiffin was just as happy with his fans as his players.
“I hope our fans had a good day, and I appreciate them not rushing the field,” Kiffin said. “To me, it’s really cool that you’ve got to a place at a program that when you do beat the No. 3 team in the country you don’t rush the field because we did what we were supposed to do.
“That makes me happy that this program has gotten to this place.”
“Unacceptable” was the word Auburn coach Hugh Freeze kept using to describe Saturday’s 16-10 loss at Texas A&M.
The Tigers have a revamped offensive line that showed promise in the opening win at Baylor, but they rank last nationally with 21 sacks allowed. Auburn ranking 110th in third-down conversions (33.9%) and 129th in penalties (8.8 per game) isn’t helping either.
If winning is the bottom-line business, check out how these Auburn coaches have fared in SEC games:
Pat Dye (48-27-3)
Terry Bowden (30-14-1)
Tommy Tuberville (50-30)
Gus Malzahn (39-27)
Hugh Freeze (5-13)
The SEC had five head-to-head matchups Saturday, and four were decided by a single possession.
So far this season, eight of the 12 head-to-head league games have been decided by seven points or fewer.
“This is the new era of what we’re going to see,” said Smart, who has experienced two of them already. “There are games like this all over college football, and there are going to continue to be. It’s just what it is.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.