Like the Vietnamese general said to the US colonel when he pointed out that the US Army won all its battles with the AVN, "True, but irrelevant." That Georgia beat most of its opponents as badly as they did Tech doesn't make it any less a rout. What I want is close games where Tech has a decent chance to win. No doubt you remember those.
We were up 7-0 and driving across midfield and we dropped an easy pass that would’ve been a first down and a 20+ yard gain. We would’ve been very close to field goal range, and at the very worst would’ve flipped the field. At that point we were almost moving the ball at will. Very easily could’ve went up 14-0, with Georgia’s offense struggling and then having the added pressure of being down 2 scores early. Remember, nobody had even scored a TD in the first quarter against Georgia all year. We were in position to score 2 in our first 2 possessions.
We were down 13-7 early in the 2nd half and a bad snap led to our punter being tackled on our own 17 yard line. Instead of having to drive the length of the field, they just needed 17 yards. Even still, our defense made some damn good plays and almost held them scoreless, some weird officiating helped contribute to another UGA score. At this point, our own mistakes have contributed to what might be a 14 point swing, and at the very least would make Georgia play with more pressure, and give our defense who is one of the best in the country at creating turnovers more opportunities to do so.
Immediately coming out of the dropped punt we fumble on our own 25. Defense plays like hell to hold them to a field goal. Also, on 3rd down we force what looks like a fumble, which we would have recovered and taken in for a score. Officials didn’t see it that way, so they kicked a field goal. Now we’re up to a 17, maybe even as much as 20 to 24 point swing on basically 4 plays. We could be looking at a 17-10 or 21-7 GT lead at this point, instead it’s 23-7 UGA.
There was another dropped pass in there somewhere, but I don’t remember exactly what the game situation was at the time.
The whole point is that we were poised to be in position to win the ball game. They basically scored 13 of their points
immediately after our unforced errors. Plays where they didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves. So not only did we hand them 13 free points, which BTW makes the final score a 10 point game, we lost the opportunity to score points of our own.
AND we gifted them about 100 free yards via our fumbles and dropped passes, which are 100 yards our defense could’ve fought for and potentially got the ball back.
37-14 is not a close game, I understand that and I agree. But our unforced errors led directly to a third of their points, and totally changed the flow of the game. If we go up 14-0, or even 10-0 within the first 10 minutes of the game, the outcome is totally flipped on it’s head. Maybe in that scenario Georgia comes out playing totally differently and ends up blowing us out without needing us to make our own mistakes. But that’s not what happened. We left at least 20 points on the field offensively and defensively, enough points and yards that could’ve won us that game.
