Georgia Football earns sloppy 43-29 victory over Missouri

The Georgia Football team overcame their worst performance of the year to beat Missouri 43-29.

Well that was ugly. I guess any time you can go away from home and earn a 14 point victory over a conference rival, its a good week. Still, the Georgia Football team played their worst game since going to Auburn last November. In a lot of ways, they were lucky to get out of Columbia with a win today.

The offense that many of expected to do so well this week against a poor Mizzou defense struggled mightily in the first half. After their first drive ended in a Jake Fromm interception, the offense scored only 6 points all half. In six possessions, they turned the ball over on downs and missed a field goal. Fortunatley Georgia’s defense and special teams found a way to bail out an offensive unit that played their worst half of football since 2016.

Tyson Campbell had his first touchdown since arriving in Athens after he ripped away the ball from Albert Okwuegbunam and returned the fumble for a 68-yard touchdown. Fellow CB Eric Stokes then blocked a punt in the second quarter and also returned it for a touchdown. Tae Crowder also intercepted Drew Lock to set up a UGA field goal and D’Andre Walker forced a fumble from the Tiger QB on 4th down to stop another drive.

Things were better in the second half from the offense but then, of course, the defense fell apart. Both UGA and the Tigers scored 3 touchdowns on their first four drives in the half as the game became a shootout. Jake Fromm threw 3 TDs to JJ Holloman, Riley Ridley and Mecole Hardman but the Dawgs couldn’t get their much hyped running game going. D’Andre Swift struggled to find room again as the offensive line was pushed around too often by a defense they should have dominated.

In between all of this lackluster play were sloppy penalties in all three phases of the ball and stupid mistakes. It was in short the most disappointing performance the Dawgs have put together this season and you could see from Kirby Smarts reactions through the game how he felt about it. I can’t imagine next weeks practices are very fun after this showing.

Still, the Dawgs got out of a hostile environment against a decent team with a 14 point win. Still, Smarts message about how these games are about Georgia, not their opponents rings true. When they play well, they look like world beaters but in games like this, they could well lose to lesser teams. Hopefully this is the wakeup call this team needs to stay focused going forward. If not, they will probably lose a game or two like this and they can kiss their CFP hopes goodbye.