The No. 1 ranked Georgia Bulldogs displayed another dominant performance last Saturday in their SEC opener against the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Georgia came out firing on all cylinders and found themselves up 48-7 at the end of the game.
Newly emerging Hiesman potential Stetson Bennett completed 16-of-23 pass attempts for 284 yards and two touchdowns. Bennett also added another touchdown on the ground which was his third consecutive rushing score of the season.
Another impressive performance puts the Bulldogs at 3-0 on the season and 1-0 in conference play.
Now, head coach Kirby Smart and his team turn to the Kent State Golden Flashes, who are currently 1-2 on the 2022 season; however, the Golden Flashes’ two losses came at the hands of two Power 5 opponents.
Last week, Kent State fell to No. 7 ranked Oklahoma Sooners 33-3, and the Washington Huskies 45-20 the week before. Smart acknowledged that the Golden Flashes’ success partially stems from their quarterbacks’ ability to make plays.
“They’ve got a really good football team. They’ve got a quarterback that I didn’t know a lot about who is, No. 1, a tremendous athlete. No. 2, he makes a lot of people miss,” Smart said. “He’s dynamic with the ball in his hand. He’s made some wild throws. You’re going to hear about this guy. He’s had some 60, 70-yard passes that are incredible.”
Smart also attributed the Golden Flashes’ ability to stay in games to the way they run their defense.
“You go and watch them on defense, they do enough differently on defense that it can create issues, because it’s not what you see every day. It’s a little more new-aged defense, which people are playing to affect teams that are on the perimeter more, second level, fitters able to disguise a little more,” Smart said.
“I know you guys don’t ever listen to anything we say in here, but this is a really good football team and they have played two really good football teams. And you watch the first half of the Oklahoma game, you have no question how good they are. They, really, played Washington well outside of a couple of drives.”
The Bulldogs have only played the Golden Flashes once in the team’s history, and the contest came back during the 1998 season which resulted in a 56-3 Georgia victory.
Smart, who was a defensive back at the time, had to hold for an extra point at some point during the contest. The play resulted in a botched snap that turned into a two-point conversion when Smart found Marcus Stroud in the back of the endzone.
Smart barely remembered the moment, but commented on it during a press conference Monday afternoon.
“I didn’t even realize we played them when I was here. I do remember that game. I think I dropped a snap,” Smart said. “It’s probably a good idea that I got to throw it to a guy that was 6-foot-7 and 320 pounds, and he was hard to miss; if that was in fact the game it happened in, but I don’t remember much about that game then. It was a long time ago.”