In what wound up being a Wildcat bloodbath, the much-anticipated SEC matchup showed us a good glimpse of everything these Georgia Bulldogs can be with Carson Beck having a career day leading his team to a 51-13 victory over Kentucky.
Since Week 1, there’s been a big fat question mark that would pop into the mind of anyone who wanted to form an opinion on the Georgia offense. Other than Brock Bowers being an absolute cheat code, there just wasn’t much anyone could say because it’s been a weird couple of weeks. After having multiple key offensive players lost to the draft, the introduction of a new offensive coordinator, and injury after injury after injury across the board, many were still pointing to Carson Beck as being the problem.
The Dawgs just haven’t been dominating like people have been expecting. And it’s not like Beck has had the most consistent performance across all four quarters in the games Georgia has played to this point either, but this game against Kentucky was definitely the best we’ve seen out of him yet. A career day for the fourth-year Florida-native, Beck completed 28 of 35 of his throws with an 80% completion rate and totaled up 389 yards and 4 touchdowns scoring at least one passing touchdown in every quarter he played in– they pulled him out after three by the way. To say the least, Beck had a day against Kentucky, and quite frankly so did the rest of the team.
Something that made the “difference” in this game was Georgia’s ability to run the ball, something he spoke about in his postgame presser. Kendall Milton’s return paired with improved offensive line play from last week made way for the Dawgs to go for 173 yards on 31 attempts averaging 5.6 yards a carry. Looking at the run game this week against Kentucky compared to the other week at Auburn is like looking at night and day.
Improved offensive line play allowed for better rushing ability and longer time to throw in the pocket. Both of those factors helped the Dawgs run up the score and force Kentucky into a race that they had no intention of running. The Kentucky Wildcats aren’t built for shootouts. They’re built for tough, low-scoring games where they can dominate on the ground so that they can impose their physicality, but not this go ‘round. The Dawgs were able to outdo the Cats at their own game.
The preparation this team underwent leading up to facing Kentucky turned what was expected to be Georgia’s toughest regular season matchup into an offensive showcase for Carson Beck and Mike Bobo to brag about, and hopefully silenced the critics in the process. Now having this momentum heading into next week’s road game against Vanderbilt, the Dawgs should be able to continue this uptick in offense while getting some of the younger guys time to play.