INGLEWOOD, Calif. – When asked to describe the challenge of facing TCU’s 3-3-5 defense in the College Football Playoff championship game at Media Day, Georgia coach Kirby Smart lavished praise on the scheme.
“I can’t say enough about what they do because what they do is so different, you can’t simulate it,” Smart said. “I associate it to being a triple option offense.”
Turns out Smart was hiding the truth. Fast forward to the final question after No. 1 Georgia won a second straight College Football Playoff championship with a 65-7 blowout against No. 3 TCU at SoFi Stadium on Monday.
“Our defensive scout team did the most unbelievable job,” Smart said. “When we got TCU; I called them all in and had the coaches meet with them. We made them meet and become this defense. We said, ‘We’re going to do it better than they do it.'”
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Any questions? Forget the triple-option. The Bulldogs had every option, any option and the only option left was to call it the most-lopsided blowout in CFP history. Senior quarterback Stetson Bennett passed for 304 yards and totaled six TDs in an ageless performance. Tight end Brock Bowers, who had seven catches for 152 yards, could not be covered. Offensive coordinator Todd Monken dialed up an all-time play-calling performance, and Bennett checked to the right plays. The defense topped that off with three first-half turnovers and limited the Horned Frogs to 188 total yards.
No. 1 Georgia (15-0) set CFP records for most points in the first quarter (17) and most points by halftime (38). The Bulldogs averaged 9.3 yards per play and scored on all six of their drives in the first half that overwhelmed No. 3 TCU (13-2).
Bennett, the 25-year-old quarterback whose age is an overdone topic of conversation – completed 8 of 9 passes in a first quarter where eight of the Bulldogs’ first 14 plays went for 10 yards or more. He sprinted past TCU defensive tackle Terrell Cooper for a 21-yard TD on the game’s first possession, then found a wide-open Ladd McConkey for a 37-yard TD with 2:43 left in the first quarter. TCU’s Max Duggan scored on a two-yard TD run, but the Horned Frogs trailed 17-7 after the first quarter.
The second quarter provided more than enough film for Monken to take to his next coaching interview.
On a third-and-11, Bennett reverse pivoted before running untouched for a 12-yard scramble; a check Smart said the quarterback made at the line of scrimmage. Bennett capped that drive with a 6-yard touchdown run that included two lead blockers who had no one to block.
Then, Bennett delivered what appeared to be the dagger on a third-and-15 from the 36-yard line. Bennett threw a pin-point pass between three TCU defenders to Bowers on a crossing route. That set up Kendall Milton’s 1-yard touchdown run.
“When you have a quarterback that can do the protections and check things and know what the defense is doing, yet still beat you with your feet, you’ve got a high-level quarterback,” Smart said. “People have slept on Stetson Bennett for too long. He needs an opportunity to play for a long time at the next level.”
Only it wasn’t the dagger. Javon Bullard intercepted Duggan for the second time on the ensuing possession, and Bennett threw a fade to Adonai Mitchell with 26 seconds left for the 38-7 first-half margin.
By then the only questions were for the record book. Was this the largest blowout between the BCS and CFP eras? The answer was an emphatic yes.
Bennett tied LSU quarterback Joe Burrow’s CFP championship game record with the six total TDs. He became just the sixth starting quarterback to win back-to-back national championships – an elite fraternity of Nebraska’s Jerry Tagge, Oklahoma’s Steve Davis, Nebraska’s Tommie Frazier, USC’s Matt Leinart and Alabama’s A.J. McCarron. Bennett left to a standing ovation with 13:25 left in the fourth quarter. That was about the only thing he did not see coming.
“I told all the guys, what are we doing?” Bennett asked. “Why don’t we have a play? I was, like, they’re letting me walk out of here. In the huddle, just as simple as it is, just one last huddle with the guys, you know? And that was special coming off and seeing Coach Smart, that was really cool.”
“First time he’s ever walked off that I was hugging him,” Smart joked.
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Monken called a game that would pass at any level of football. Bowers showed why he’ll be the centerpiece of next year’s offense. Let the Gronk comparisons begin, right?
Of course, there was defense. After being torched in the air by LSU in the SEC championship game and Ohio State in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, the Bulldogs allowed just one play of 20 yards or more – a 60-yard pass from Duggan to Derius Davis on a blown coverage in the first quarter. Georgia came up with three turnovers, and Bullard had two interceptions.
It was complete domination that showed that the Georgia talent factory – which sent 15 players to the NFL last season – has a legitimate chance to become the first college football team to three-peat in 2023. After all, fourth-string running back Branson Robinson tacked on two more touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
“It’s special,” Bennett said. “It seems like for the past three or four months we’ve been looking to see if somebody could beat us, and we just ran out of games. Nobody could.”
