Georgia Football: Five takeaways from the win over Kentucky

Georgia Football defeated the Kentucky Wildcats in a hard fought game to win the SEC East. Here are our top five takeaways from the  34-17 victory.

D’Andre Swift is back:

Earlier in the season, it was fair to wonder what had happened to D’Andre Swift. The explosive player that we saw for much of the 2017 season just didn’t quite seem to be there. He put together solid games but we never saw that next level explosiveness that was so obvious as a freshman.

During the bye week, it was confirmed that he was dealing with some lower body issues. Since that break, however, we’ve seen a whole new player emerge. Getting some time off must have given Swift the chance to get healthy and boy does he look good. Last week he recorded his first ever 100-yard rushing game. This week he dominated the Wildcats to the tune of 156 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. He did all of that in just 16 carries, four less than Benny Snell had on the other side and more than double the production.

His two touchdown runs were beautiful. Much like the dagger he ran in last week against Florida, his breakaway speed is just different from other backs. His second touchdown reminded me a lot of that magical one he had to ice Auburn in Atlanta last year. His first was probably even better, to be honest. Twenty-yard runs don’t normally make highlight reels, but they do when they have the best cut I have seen all year from a UGA player. Swift actually had two of those in the same play, showing a level of burst and explosiveness that is just tough to stop.

Swift really benefits from playing alongside Elijah Holyfield. The latter is a bruising running back who wears defenses down with his power and in the past two weeks, a fully healthy Swift has been able to take advantage of that. It’s also helped that UGA has gone back to the ground game after the LSU loss. This was not an easy team to run on, Kentucky has been stout all season but the Dawgs gashed them for 331 yards on the ground. With Swift back to his best, Georgia’s offense looks better than it has all season and with Auburn waiting next week, that’s a big deal.