By the time evening struck in the Classic City, Georgia waltzed away with a seven-score win over UAB. The game saw its fate 38 seconds into regulation when the Bulldogs scored their opening touchdown and only continued to pile on.
Such a result would lead many to believe that Georgia made its way through a boring football game without any excitement or anticipation. The Bulldogs’ home opener became exactly the opposite — a game full of intrigue, drama, pageantry, and the awaited feeling of playing football with all of its bells and whistles in Athens for the first time in a while.
Georgia (2-0) blazed through UAB, 56-7, for the final tuneup before a slate of eight consecutive SEC games. A surprise in who started for the Bulldogs at quarterback made one thing certain: The takeaways were aplenty.
Georgia didn’t take many deep shots against Clemson, but fill-in quarterback Stetson Bennett didn’t waste much time silencing those concerns. On the game’s second play, he fired a pass to sophomore Jermaine Burton and he streaked toward the end zone for a 73-yard score. It gave those who were questioning the offense a sigh of relief.
But Bennett didn’t stop. He picked apart UAB’s defense in a run full of explosion. The walk-on, who was supposed to be the third-string signal-caller, threw four touchdowns in five passes. Three of those were receptions over 60 yards. His quarterback rating soared to 775.6 and reached the point where a single incompletion dropped the metric over 100 points.
Because of JT Daniels’ upper-body injury, head coach Kirby Smart made the decision to start Bennett over redshirt freshman Carson Beck due to his experience, and it paid off for Georgia in ways unimaginable. Bennett’s 88-yard strike to Brock Bowers gave him the ninth-longest touchdown pass in school history, and the longest since Aaron Murray set the record with a 98-yard pass in 2013 against North Texas.
Bennett’s fifth touchdown tied him for the most single-game touchdown passes in school history. He didn’t get a chance to write his name alone in school lore, but Bennett had the best game of his career. He finished 9-for-11 passing with 279 yards and five scores.
