Georgia football: 8 takeaways from Dawgs 8th statement victory

5. Turnovers were the turning point for Georgia football

Those three turnovers at the end of the second quarter turned out to be the biggest sequence of plays for Georgia football. Without those three massive momentum-shifting plays, who knows how this game would have gone.

That momentum shift is enormous for rivalry games like the Georgia Florida one, and the Dawgs finally executed off all the turnovers, scoring 21 points off them.

As for Florida, they forced three turnovers too but were only able to score seven points off them, and that was because Georgia’s defense wasn’t as fresh as they could have been.

The Dawgs have forced 10 takeaways this season through eight games, including four pick-sixes. Georgia’s defense can provide an offensive spark if needed, and this group did just that on Saturday.

After Nolan Smith stole Anthony Richardson’s lunch money, James Cook ran it in 11 yards for a touchdown. Then Smith picked off Richardson, bullying him a little harder, which allowed Stetson Bennett to connect with Kearis Jackson for a 36-yard touchdown pass.

Nakobe Dean scored himself on a 50-yard pick-six return, and the Dawgs went from leading 3-0 to 24-0 in a blink of an eye.

These turnovers meant everything for the Dawgs on Saturday, and it defined the game because they scored every time they took it away from Florida. The Gators had some success, but when they needed to be successful, Georgia took the ball away from them and showed them what they should have done with it.

Turnovers can either kill a game or help a team win, and thankfully this time, it was a positive thing for Georgia.