AUSTIN, Texas — Kirby Smart played the doubter card here Saturday night.
He didn’t want to do it. In fact, during his news conference after No. 5 Georgia took down No. 1 Texas, 30-15, Smart actually said that he doesn’t play into the doubters and doesn’t care about the doubters while actually playing the doubter card.
Did you all watch the shows on ESPN and other networks this week, he asked media members. Did you see what they said about his Bulldogs?
He didn’t watch the shows (he was in meetings, he says), but his friends and colleagues did. There were so many people who doubted that Georgia would beat Texas that Smart says he received “8,000 texts” about the doubters.
“Everybody doubted us,” he said.
But on this night, at a burnt-orange blanketed Darrell K Royal Stadium, there were more than just doubters. There was the single-most unusual and perhaps unprecedented reversal of a penalty in recent college football memory — right here in a top-five duel on national television.
Follow me closely now. In the third quarter, with Georgia up 23-8, officials reversed a pass interference call against Texas that had negated a Longhorns interception, after conferring with one another, while the game was paused for stadium staff members to pick up trash that students — angry at the original call — tossed on the field.
Has this happened before? When factoring in the hundreds of thousands of games played over the course of multiple college divisions, sure, somewhere, probably. In a game of this magnitude? On a stage like this? In this conference? No way.
The call was significant to the game, too. Instead of Georgia having possession with a first down, Texas was granted the interception, got possession inside the 10-yard line and scored two plays later to close a once 23-0 deficit to 23-15.
The reversal sent Smart into an angry, finger-wagging argument with head referee Matt Loeffler on the sideline as Texas fans roared with excitement.
“What!?” Smart can be seen saying to the official. “That’s bulls***!” he barked at him in the final words of the exchange.
Afterward in the news conference, Smart pursed his lips together and squinted at a questioner about the reversal, clearly still agitated.
“Now we’ve set a precedent that if you throw a bunch of stuff on the field and endanger athletes, you have a chance to get the call reversed,” Smart said. “That’s unfortunate. That’s dangerous.”
The SEC released a statement after the game on the call, noting that the game officials gathered to discuss the call, which is permitted, and the official who called the foul acknowledged that he “erred,” so the call was reversed.
Would they have reversed the penalty without the five-minute pause because of the game stoppage for cleanup? It’s a valid question. The statement did not address that question, saying only that it is “unacceptable” for fans to throw debris on the field and that the act will be reviewed.
Teams face plenty of adversity over the course of a game. A momentum-swinging turnover. An opponent’s game-changing touchdown drive. A poor officiating call. But this, a reversal of a judgment call happening more than five minutes after the call was made and announced? This was a new one.
“I was confused,” quarterback Carson Beck said of the call.
“It didn’t phase us,” said Georgia’s terror of an inside linebacker, Jalon Walker. “We kept going. We battled.”
Oh, did they.
The response was an 11-play, 89-yard, five-minute touchdown drive. Beck hit Arian Smith for 21 yards, then tight end Oscar Delp for 43, and then Dillon Bell for 9. On a night when UGA’s receivers dropped what Smart said was at least eight passes, they began to catch them.
The defense, the subject of criticism at times this year, stomped and stuffed the Longhorns the rest of the way. Led by Walker, Georgia defenders finished with seven sacks, 10 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles and an interception, and Texas was 2-for-14 on third downs and had four first-half drives of three plays or fewer.
How about this stat: Georgia became just the second team in the past 20 years to compile seven sacks in a game against an AP No. 1-ranked team, according to ESPN.
Smart’s group was so dominant in the first half that Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian pulled starting quarterback Quinn Ewers and inserted highly billed backup Arch Manning for the final two series of the first half.
What happened? Manning, taking heavy pressure, fumbled on a delivery. Georgia recovered, kicked a field goal and led 23-0 at the break.
Afterward, Sarkisian made it clear that “Quinn is our starter.” Smart made it clear that his defense played one of its best games yet. It unfolded a few days after the coach met with players to “challenge” the core leadership of the team to “do something.”
“Our intent was to be aggressive,” Smart said.
They were. Ewers and Manning were harassed. The Texas offensive line, one of the most experienced in the country, failed to block up the middle, on the edge, every which way.
“We knew what we wanted to do,” said Walker, who had three sacks. “We knew where [Ewers] wanted to escape.”
There’s something else, too. “We knew the doubters,” says Walker with a smile.
In his live television interview after the game, Smart pointed the finger at ESPN.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” he said to ESPN’s sideline reporter, Katie George. “Your own network doubted us and then they tried to rob us with calls!”
Let’s talk more about that robbery, huh?
Georgia led 23-8 with 3:11 left in the third quarter when it happened. Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron intercepted a Beck pass and returned it to the UGA 9-yard-line. The flag flew, and Loeffler announced to the crowd that Barron had committed pass interference.
Furious with the call, Texas students littered the north end zone with beer and water bottles, resulting in a five-minute stoppage of play to clean the mess.
During the pause, officials conferred as the replay of the pass interference aired over the jumbotron at the stadium. Loeffler then announced, to a roaring crowd, that there was no pass interference. Instead of Georgia having a first down, Texas got ball possession at the 9.
It was a stunning and very rare reversal. After all, officials had already announced the pass interference foul and spotted the ball for Georgia’s first down.
Loeffler and Smart’s exchange then unfolded on the sideline, the seething coach wagging his finger toward the referee. Afterward, Smart says that Loeffler told him that the official called the penalty on the “wrong guy,” suggesting it should have been offensive pass interference on intended receiver Smith. A replay showed the two jostling with no clear indication if a foul was committed at all.
“It took him a long time to realize that,” Smart quipped.
While on the field after the game, Georgia president Jere Morehead and athletic director Josh Brooks, clearly still frustrated, declined comment on the reversal of the pass interference. Morehead was seen speaking with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey while on the field.
In the UGA locker room, meanwhile, music blared and voices chanted. The Georgia Bulldogs, losers to Alabama and survivors in a game against Kentucky, are suddenly in prime position to earn an at-large bid into the CFP, if not advance to the league championship game.
In fact, here we are, eight weeks into the season and there are no undefeated teams in the SEC.
Despite the doubters and the “robbery,” Smart’s group exited this stadium with a victory, just the way he thought they would — penalty or no penalty be damned.
“They’re not backing down,” he said. “There was going to be no flinch.”