Kirby Smart has Georgia peaking again, with help from an onside kick years in the making

ATHENS, Ga. — Cash Jones kept asking Kirby Smart: When will we do it? They practiced it over and over, several years now. When would they do it?

When Smart told Jones and others on the Georgia football team that this would be the week, safety KJ Bolden didn’t believe it. Such a big game. Such a big opponent.

And when they finally did it, when kicker Peyton Woodring turned his foot out to give the onside kick just the right push, when Jones caught the bouncing football in stride, it caught more than just Texas by surprise.

“I didn’t even know we were doing it,” Georgia receiver Noah Thomas said. “I just heard the crowd screaming. And I was like, ‘Oh, we’re going back in.’”

“I tried to go up and say something to him, but he was so hyped,” Bolden said of Smart.

Smart has been Georgia’s coach for 10 years, and it took until Saturday night for his team to recover an onside kick. He did it against a big-name opponent, at an unusual time, with Georgia already leading by two scores in the second half. He did it — even though it risked giving back field position and momentum — because Smart trusts his team again.

And so should everyone else. Here comes Georgia, back in the College Football Playoff, barring a catastrophe, and back as a national title contender. Here’s Georgia, its defense rounding back into vintage Georgia defensive form, the offense and its quarterback playing explosive football in a 35-10 blowout of Texas.

“If we can get the defense and offense to play together like we did tonight (in) every game, it’s going to be disgusting,” Bolden said.

The Bulldogs have done so now twice in a row. Disgusting, in the good way Bolden referred to, appears to be happening.

Georgia’s ceiling wasn’t in question earlier this season, when quarterback Gunner Stockton won at Tennessee in a shootout, showing the offense would be better than expected. But that was operating under the assumption that the typical Georgia defense would show up once again, which it didn’t for a while. Stockton had to do it again against Ole Miss. Both sides fell short in the home loss to Alabama.

It was fair to not quite trust this Georgia team, which kept having to rally to beat mediocre opponents like Florida and Auburn.

But now the Dawgs are peaking. They won at Mississippi State in a blowout. Then they jumped on Texas but went into a lull, leading Smart into daring mode. They didn’t turn off that mode until it was too late for Texas.

Fourth down. About a yard to go, ball at Georgia’s own 36, clinging to a 14-10 lead late in the third quarter. The old Smart, the conservative coach who leaned on his defense, would have punted. But his normally reliable punter, Brett Thorson, was having perhaps the worst game of his career. Plus, offensive coordinator Mike Bobo had a play call that Smart had seen in practice and thought could work.

If it hadn’t, Smart and Bobo would have been raked over the coals the way they were after Jones’ fourth-down run flopped in the loss to Alabama. This time it worked beautifully: Stockton rolled right and hit Chauncey Bowens on a short pass.

Four plays later, Smart did it again — sort of. He sent the offense out on fourth-and-5, but only with the idea of trying to draw the Longhorns offside. And Texas jumped.

“We weren’t going for it,” Smart said. “But it worked.”

The gambit led to a touchdown when Stockton hit London Humphreys to make it 21-10. And then it was time.

“All week in practice, coach has been telling us, big-time game, we’re gonna need something to use to give the team some momentum,” Bolden said. “He kept telling us he was gonna run it. I didn’t believe him at first, I’m not gonna lie.”

Jones caught the ball in stride, in between befuddled Longhorns, then hit the ground in celebration.

“Little walk-on kid from Texas, Cash Jones,” Smart said. “I bet you he’s taken 250 reps of that of his time being here.”

Georgia had a couple of mantras in the lead-up to this game. Drew Brannon, the team’s mental coach, used an analogy of what Navy Seals do in training: Go to deep water, see who can survive in the water, see who taps out first and who stays in and rings the bell.

Smart liked the analogy because he thought it would require that kind of effort against Texas, whose run defense negated one of Georgia’s strengths. The game would be “down and dirty,” as Smart kept telling players during the week. For as much as Georgia has modernized itself the past few years, as much as it passes more, it still considers physical play and the run game (and stopping the run) its hallmark. So “down and dirty” was hammered home this week.

“We don’t do it all the time,” Smart said of mantras. “We do it sometimes. The mantra didn’t win the game for us guys. The players did.”

Players like Jones, a walk-on skill position player on a team of blue-chippers, keep popping up at key moments against all odds. Same on the resurgent defense, which held Texas to a net 23 rushing yards, counting 16 yards lost on the three times it sacked Arch Manning.

Players like Stockton, who accounted for as many touchdowns (five, four passing and one running) as he threw incompletions, and who afterward threw flowers at his coach, the much-criticized Bobo, when asked a long question about the offense.

“Mike Bobo is the best OC in the country,” Stockton said.

He then walked away but after a moment turned his head and yelled back: “The best OC in the country!”

This team now has a chance to be the best team in the country. That doesn’t mean it will be. The Playoff will be a grind, requiring three or four wins, depending on whether Georgia gets a bye. And before that, there may be the matter of the SEC Championship Game, which appears to depend on whether Texas beats Texas A&M in the regular-season finale.

Either way, the regular season is nearing an end. The Playoff, which was always what a program like Georgia will point to now, is nearing. Before the past two weeks, it was fair to wonder whether this team had the right stuff for it. Now you know: It has an offense, it has a defense, it has intangibles and it has a coach who trusts his team enough to call an unexpected onside kick.

Smart trusts his team. The rest of us can, too.

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