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The game has changed for Kirby Smart and Georgia, but the Bulldogs still remember how to crush an opponent

Andy Staples head shotby: Andy Staples3 hours agoAndyStaples
NCAA Football: Texas at Georgia
Nov 15, 2025; Athens, Georgia, USA; Georgia Bulldogs running back Cash Jones (32) and teammates celebrate during the second half against the Texas Longhorns at Sanford Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images

ATHENS, Ga. — When he had Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter and Travon Walker in the same defensive line room, Kirby Smart didn’t need to resort to such trickery. But the world changes, and the best either adapt or die.

And so this is what Smart and his staff cooked up Saturday for the kickoff after Georgia took a two-score lead in the fourth quarter on a Gunner Stockton-to-London Humphreys pass.

A replay showed Smart smirking before the play and downright beaming after Cash Jones recovered a perfect Peyton Woodring onside kick. The Bulldogs stole a possession and used the profits from the larceny to drive for a Stockton-to-Lawson Luckie touchdown that put them up 18.

When the onside kick worked and Smart celebrated with his assistants on the sideline, the obvious callback was Smart’s final game as Alabama’s defensive coordinator under Nick Saban. On that night in Glendale, Ariz., Saban had run up against an offense (Clemson’s) and a quarterback (Deshaun Watson) that Saban wasn’t sure his defense could stop enough times to win. It wasn’t a critique of Smart on that night; it was an admission that spread-out, uptempo offenses had changed the game. The hulking, lumbering defenses Saban preferred were not equipped, and he had already started adapting body types and positional characteristics. But on this night, with Watson cooking, Saban just needed to get the damn ball back for Alabama.

So he called a sky kick that caught Clemson completely off-guard. And we all remember that grin.

It was the image that sprang into my head when Jones recovered that kick.

Back when Georgia won national titles in 2021 and 2022, the Bulldogs could suffocate opponents with overwhelmingly superior talent. On Saturday, the Bulldogs were playing well defensively. But Texas had scored a third-quarter touchdown that had cut Georgia’s lead to four.

Facing fourth-and-1 from his own 36-yard line on the ensuing possession, Smart did something those 2021 and 2022 Georgia teams probably wouldn’t have needed to do. (Except in that Peach Bowl against Ohio State.) He went for it. Those first-round factory teams would have been almost guaranteed to get the ball back. Smart, with Stocking throwing darts, opted to keep applying pressure offensively. And coordinator Mike Bobo made a great call, rolling Stockton away from the Texas pressure and slipping tailback Chauncey Bowens into the flat. Bowens gained 10. Later in the drive, the Bulldogs converted another fourth down in Texas territory by making the Longhorns jump offside.

And after that touchdown throw to Humphreys early in the fourth quarter offered the Bulldogs more cushion, Smart decided to go for the jugular. The Bulldogs probably would have won by kicking deep and playing defense, but on a day when Texas A&M and Ole Miss nearly got shocked at home by below-.500 teams and Alabama lost by two at home to Oklahoma, Smart opted against taking chances.

He multiplied aggression by aggression. Even if Georgia can’t smother the way it did when it had a prohibitive talent advantage, it now can leave an opponent breathless. Stockton’s toss to Luckie was his fourth touchdown throw of the night. The Bulldogs then forced a three-and-out, got the ball back and tacked on another touchdown on a Stockton run.

On a day when, for a while, it seemed the order of things in the SEC might get completely upset, the Bulldogs — defending SEC champs, standard-bearers of the last SEC program to win a national title — showed that even though they can’t win exactly the way it used to, they haven’t forgotten how to dominate.