There has perhaps been no greater bloodlust in Athens, Ga. than in 2014 when the Bulldogs welcomed Auburn in the latest version of the Deep South’s Oldest Football Rivalry.
The desire for payback was reason enough for Georgia fans to get juiced up after the previous year’s fluky win by eventual national runner-up Auburn and a dismissed former Bulldog turned feel-good story. But the build-up was so much more than that. It was also the first game back from suspension for Todd Gurley, who committed the high
crime of signing a few items and taking a bit of cash, which sounds all the more silly in today’s college football landscape. It derailed a good chance for a Heisman run for Gurley. During his absence, Georgia trudged on, the only loss being to Florida as the season hit its final month with the Dawgs in the hunt for a division title.
But all of those conference aspirations paled to the main attraction of this game – Gurley’s return.
In all honesty, the biggest moment of the game is one that is not recorded on the stat sheet. Down 7-0, Gurley’s first touch of the game went all the way to the house on a kick return that was called back. One of our long-time tailgate friends has said that next to Herschel, Gurley may have been the only player at Georgia who could turn on a switch and score when they wanted to. That element was proven on that kick return.
That touchdown may not have counted, but it set the tone for the rest of the game. It stated plainly that Georgia was going to own Auburn this night, especially on the ground when Georgia rushed for 289 yards with both Gurley’s 138.
Chubb’s nine-yard run in the second quarter but the Bulldogs up 14-7, and Georgia would never trail again, slowly grinding away against an Auburn team that turned it over three times. The Bulldogs were physically superior on this night, and that continued I nthe second half when Gurley’s three-yard run capped a 57-yard drive with the bigger hammer coming from Chubb in the fourth when his 11-yard run concluded a 98-yard drive.
That night also quickly ended any momentum Auburn has had in this series against Georgia. The Tigers’ 13 points in Athens last year snapped a streak of six games in a row in which the Bulldogs held Auburn to 10 points or fewer in Athens. The win in 2014 also ensured that Auburn did not win against Georgia for a consecutive season, something that has not happened since 2004 to 2005.
Here’s to that dominance over the Fighting Plainsmen continuing this weekend.
Go Dawgs!
