In early September, Missouri’s Sheldon Richardson described Georgia’s style of play as akin to “watching Big Ten football. It’s old man football.”
Fast-forward nearly three months, and with Richardson sitting at home watching SEC football, Georgia and Alabama are in the midst of a game of grown-man football, the winner of which will earn the right to keep the conference’s BcS title-winning streak alive..
Despite two turnovers and butchered clock management at the end of the half -- memo to Nick Saban: unlike cell minutes, timeouts don’t rollover -- the defending national champion Tide was able to head to the locker room with a 10-7 lead on the Bulldogs. That development bodes well for the Tide as they are 60-3 when leading at halftime under Saban.
After a scoreless first quarter, and following a successful fake punt, Aaron Murray‘s 19-yard touchdown pass pushed the Bulldogs to a 7-0 lead. That’s somewhat familiar territory for the Bulldogs as, in last year’s SEC title game, UGA held a 10-0 lead on LSU in the second quarter; 42 unanswered points later, the Tigers were headed to the BcS title game.
Despite the hard-hitting, defensive nature of the game, the Tide has still rolled up 246 yards of total offense -- to 157 for the Bulldogs -- on an UGA defense that against LSU last year allowed 237 for the entire game.
One final note, in memo form for the SEC officiating crew watching this game: if you’re going to throw a flag on UGA for a helmet-to-helmet hit on AJ McCarron, respond in kind when Aaron Murray takes a similar, if not exponentially more “illegal,” shot from the Tide.