Georgia Football: After sluggish start offense shows promise

Georgia football’s offense was sluggish but showed promise for the future.

Georgia football’s offense got off to a slow start in the Peach Bowl, punting on their first two possessions and turning the ball over on their third. On those first three drives, they moved the ball 174 yards, but they kept shooting themselves in the foot with penalties and a turnover.

Georgia football was zero for two on third down, with two penalties for 20 yards, and turned the ball over once on its first three possessions. Georgia’s offense ended up converting just one of their 11 third downs while committing three penalties for 30 yards and turning the ball over twice.

Georgia first got on the board when JT Daniels connected with George Pickens for a 16-yard touchdown at the end of the first quarter. It was Daniels’ only touchdown of the contest. Daniels would throw for a total of 404 yards, his second 400-yard game since becoming the starting quarterback.

Pickens was Daniels’ main target. He caught seven of ten passes thrown his way for 135 yards and a touchdown. Five of his catches also went for first downs.

Another star on Friday afternoon was Kenny McIntosh. He pulled in five catches and also ran the ball five times. He was able to pick up a total of 60 yards on his ten touches. McIntosh was also a huge part of the game-winning drive that set up Jack Pod’s field goal.

Georgia continued to get their tight ends involved in this game with Darnell Washington catching three passes for 46 yards and John Fitzpatrick catching four passes for 41 yards. Getting seven catches for 87 yards from their tight ends is exactly what the big-time tight end recruits want to see.

Georgia football’s offense as a whole put up 449 yards and 7.13 yards per play on Cincinnati’s defense. Cincinnati was only giving up 310.8 yards per game and 4.32 yards per play coming into their matchup with Georgia.

Outside of the few mistakes, this was a very solid effort from an offense that hadn’t played a game in two weeks and was missing a few key players while going against a top ten defense. This bodes very well for year two of Todd Monken running Georgia football’s offense. Especially once Dominick Blaylock is back in the fold.

The future is very bright for this offense, too bad it will be another eight months before they are seen on the field together again.