ATHENS, Ga. - The 2010 Florida-Georgia football game stands out in series history as the lone contest that required overtime.
The Gators prevailed 34-31 on a 37-yard field goal by Chas Henry, but the finish also is remembered for former Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham grabbing his neck and displaying a choke sign in Henry's direction before his kick. Grantham returns to the rivalry this week as Florida's defensive coordinator.
"I don't remember that, but I have seen a picture of it," smiling Georgia senior defensive end Jonathan Ledbetter said Monday. "It's ironic, but things happen, and you end up at different places."
The No. 7 Bulldogs and No. 9 Gators began game-week preparations for Saturday's first showdown of top-10 teams in Jacksonville since 2008.
When former Georgia head coach Mark Richt was asked a couple of days later about Grantham's antics in the 2010 Florida-Georgia matchup, he responded, "I'll just say that emotions run high and people do things that they probably wish they didn't do. I don't think he's necessarily proud of it."
That would be the only Florida-Georgia game Grantham would lose during his four years with the Bulldogs, as Georgia won the next three in the series, including a 17-9 triumph in 2012 that was the lone regular-season loss for the 11-1 Gators.
Grantham left Georgia after the 2013 season and worked for three years as Bobby Petrino's defensive coordinator at Louisville. His first year with the Cardinals ended with a 2014 Belk Bowl pairing against Georgia, when Bulldogs freshman running back Nick Chubb shredded Grantham's defenders for 266 yards and two touchdowns on 33 carries in a 37-14 rout.
A second matchup against Georgia took place last season, when Grantham was in his first year as defensive coordinator at Mississippi State under Dan Mullen, who became Florida's head coach last November. That didn't work out well for Grantham, either, as the Bulldogs used a flea-flicker on their first offensive play to set up a 59-yard touchdown pass from Jake Fromm to Terry Godwin that opened the floodgates on a 31-3 pasting.
Grantham guided a Mississippi State defense a year ago that ranked 10th nationally in yards allowed, yielding 302.0 per game, and his first Florida unit has strengthened significantly since getting gashed on the ground in a 27-16 loss to Kentucky on Sept. 8. In three recent wins over Mississippi State, LSU and Vanderbilt, the Gators gave up third-down conversions at just a 22 percent rate.
"They did a good job at Mississippi State last year, and he's doing a good job this year at Florida," Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said. "They're aggressive. They're doing a good job of causing turnovers, and they've got all kinds of fumble recoveries, so there are some similarities between the two, but they're not completely the same.
"When you're a defensive coordinator, you have things you believe in, and when you've been good at defensive coordinator in this conference, you do what you believe in. He's done some of the same things he's done at Mississippi State."
The Gators are allowing just 16.6 points per game after yielding 27.3 last year, and they already have more takeaways (18) through seven games than they did all last season (17). The Gators also are averaging nearly a sack a game more than a year ago.
"He's a really good coach and likes to go all for it when he's running a defense," said Ledbetter, who met Grantham as a high school prospect. "He kind of sends a lot of guys, and you can see he's doing that at Florida."
Odds and ends
Smart said Monday during his weekly news conference that running back D'Andre Swift (ankle) should be fine for Saturday's contest but that offensive lineman Ben Cleveland (leg) and defensive lineman David Marshall (foot) will remain out. Georgia's game at Kentucky next week will be at noon on ESPN, 3:30 on CBS or 4 on the SEC Network.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.