Malcolm Mitchell shares how Aaron Murray one-upped Tom Brady
Malcolm Mitchell played with the greatest of all time in the NFL. Still, he said his college quarterback has the edge in one specific way.
Mitchell joined Aaron Murray‘s show on The Player’s Lounge to catch up about their careers at Georgia and talk about being dads.
One thing both players knew a lot about – even in college – was what it felt like to be Florida’s daddy.
Mitchell played his high school ball at Valdosta right by the Florida border.
Murray played at Plant in Tampa. Both knew the Georgia-Florida rivalry well. Both players had more wins against Florida than they had losses (Mitchell went 3-2 from 2011-2015, Murray went 3-2 from 2009-2013, the first year spent as a redshirt).
Naturally, the two started their convo with a trip down memory lane to the 2012 Florida game.
No. 10 Georgia clung to a 10-9 lead halfway through the fourth quarter over no. 2 Florida until Aaron Murray and Malcolm Mitchell broke it open
Mitchell recalls how he overcame some high-tempered battles with Florida’s Loucheiz Purifoy to set up the game-sealing score.
“During that game, I was in a full-on battle with Purifoy, which was their best defender at the time,” Mitchell said.
“From the first snap, we were jaw-jacking, throwing extra hands after the whistle blows, and a few times John Theus had to come pull me away because I’m in his face trash-talking. I don’t know if many people remember this, but a few plays before that touchdown, I got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that pushed us back out of field goal range. And Coach Richt pulled me off the field and scolded me. But luckily he put me back in a few plays later.”
With Coach Richt’s duo back on track and locked in, Murray-to-Mitchell was all-systems-go
The now-iconic play call gave both Murray and Malcolm Mitchell a chance to display their athleticism in a heated battle against the hated Gators.
“I think I had a run-it route, which is an eight-yard stop route,” Mitchell said.
“At the time, it was my favorite route, because you can sell like you’re going deep and you just hit the brakes. And you were perfect at putting the ball on that outside shoulder,” Mitchell said to Murray.
He was, by the way. Many Georgia quarterbacks through the years had a specialty
Matthew Stafford could side-arm with the best of them. Jake Fromm never missed that out-route to the sidelines.
And Murray was deadly with the back-shoulder toss
Florida still wishes he wasn’t.
“When they called the play, I was begging to the gods that you threw me the ball,” Mitchell said.
“I had enough electricity in me to light up an entire city. When you threw me that ball, I said nothing in the world is going to stop me in this moment from catching it. I am willing to do whatever it takes.”
Mitchell caught the ball, made a cut, and Georgia ran all the way to that now-infamous 2012 SEC Championship game against Alabama.
In his individual career, Mitchell went on to play for the New England Patriots and win that now-infamous Super Bowl against the Atlanta Falcons.
Even with that career milestone on his resumé, Mitchell said Tom Brady could never measure up to Murray’s back-shoulder prowess.
“We were probably the best team in the country at back-shoulder,” Murray said.
“Aaron, I played with some great quarterbacks,” Mitchell responded.
“Maybe one of the greatest of all time. I consider him the greatest of all time. And you, by far, had the best back-shoulder of any quarterback I played with.”
It ain’t a GOAT-worthy Tom Brady NFL career. But Aaron Murray could still spin it.
He and Malcolm Mitchell’s game-sealer still have the Gators spinning to this day.
