UGA Football: ‘Just Go Out There And Do Your Job’

By John Frierson
Staff Writer

ATLANTA — In the moments that matter, that REALLY matter, how do you react? Does the moment overwhelm you and keep you from being at or near your best, or do you reach out and grab what you’re chasing like it was yours all along?

“All 11 guys on that field, I trust them to do their job,” Georgia center Sedrick Van Pran said around 12:30 Sunday morning while wearing a tired smile and a Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl champions cap.

“And the reason that I trust them is because we do a lot of stuff during the week. We go through a lot of scenarios, we do a lot of practice, physical and mental, so when we’re put in this situation, I truly do believe in our preparation, and I trust the guys around us to make plays.”

That trust was rewarded late in a most dramatic, thrilling and back-and-forth College Football Playoff semifinal Saturday night at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. At the end, after No. 4 Ohio State missed a 50-yard field goal attempt in the closing seconds, and after Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, his eyes already red from the joyful tears, took a knee as the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on a new day and a new year, the Bulldogs survived, 42-41, after being down 14 points heading into the fourth quarter.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t believe that we were going to lose,” Van Pran said with sincerity.

Well, he surely wasn’t alone in feeling that way among the Bulldogs, but from the outside looking in, things looked pretty grim for a while. Bennett admitted after the game that there was a stretch of about 30 minutes during which he didn’t play very well. But once it was time to go out and get it, he and the Bulldogs did just that.

The No. 1 Georgia football team looked a bit like the walking dead for a lot of the second half. While No. 4 Ohio State was surging, taking a 38-24 lead into the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs looked like their dream of a second straight national championship was all but over. But it wasn’t.

With 10:14 remaining kicker Jack Podlesny made a 31-yard field goal to cut the deficit to 38-27. It was a two-score hole, but manageable. Then the Georgia defense, lit up in the secondary for much of the evening, forced a three-and-out.

On the next play, Bennett produced yet another holy moly moment, this one a 76-yard touchdown to wideout Arian Smith, who got 10-plus yards behind the defense on his route and cruised into the end zone. That made it 38-33, so coach Kirby Smart opted to go for two. Bennett made a quick throw to the right to Ladd McConkey for the conversion and suddenly that 14-point Buckeye lead was down to three, 38-35, with 8:41 remaining in the game.

Ohio State, its lead having shrunk down to almost nothing, didn’t wilt. The Buckeyes drove and got a 48-yard field goal from Noah Ruggles with 2:43 remaining, pushing their lead to 41-35.

Once Georgia got the ball back with a chance to take the lead, the mood in the huddle was one of confidence and resolve, Bennett and Van Pran said. This is an experienced group that won enormous games last season and plenty of big games this season, including rallying from a 10-point hole late at Missouri on Oct. 1.

Bennett said he couldn’t recall any exact words said in the huddle, but it basically boiled down to this, he said: “Where else would you rather be? Having the ball with two minutes left, and if you score a touchdown, you win the game. I looked around, and there was just a whole bunch of just determined, strong stares from all the dudes. It gave me confidence, and everybody else had confidence when we went down the field.”

And down the field they went. Bennett slipped a pass between two defenders to Brock Bowers for a 15-yard gain. He later hit Kearis Jackson down the middle for 35 yards, to the OSU 15-yard line. That was followed by a 5-yard completion to Kenny McIntosh out of the backfield. And on second-and-5 ant the Buckeye 10, Bennett took the snap, waited a beat, maybe another, and found Adonai Mitchell in the back left corner of the end zone for the game-tying score, with 54 seconds remaining. Podlesny’s extra point put the Bulldogs in front, 42-41.

The tens of thousands of Georgia faithful among the 79,330 in the Benz, they were roaring as the Bulldog defense took the field in search of one last stop. The defense did enough, forcing the Buckeyes to attempt a 50-yarder at the end. Make it, and Ohio State heads out to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., for the National Championship Game against No. 3 TCU on Jan. 9. Miss it, and the Bulldogs’ hopes of a repeat are still alive.

Ruggles missed the kick, which was well off the mark, and the Bulldogs were able to celebrate an improbable, claw-their-way-back victory. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy, but it was still pretty gorgeous in a can-you-believe-it kind of way.

For Van Pran and so many of his teammates, the franticness of that closing stretch felt a lot different to them than it did the rest of us. The crucible of high-level, high-stakes competition is their playground, their arena. When asked to describe what it felt like to be out there at the end, Van Pran said he couldn’t do it.

“I really can’t, just for the simple fact that I know that I probably didn’t handle that situation like a rational person would,” he said, drawing laughs from a group of reporters. “I know a rational person probably would have a lot of nerves, but being completely honest, it was just this, nothing to think about, nothing to be nervous about. Just go out there and do your job.”

They did their jobs, and now the Bulldogs are four quarters away from a second straight national championship.
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He’s also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.