Poor Mike Patrick.
When you think about the 2007 Georgia-Alabama game, there are a lot of things that should be remembered. It was after all, a road win for the Bulldogs on Matthew Stafford’s walk-off touchdown pass to Mikey Henderson.
But that is not the case.
Instead, it’s one sound byte from the ESPN broadcast that happened mere seconds before the game-sealing score:
Milli-moments later, Matthew Stafford struck gold on a deep route to the end zone corner, and Georgia won in overtime.
Between the 2012
SEC Championship and everything that has happened with these two programs since 2017, games like this can get easily lost. But it still ranks as one of the classic showdowns between two of the SEC’s deepest-dyed blue bloods. How even were the two teams this night? Consider that Georgia had 377 yards of offense to the Crimson Tide’s 349.
Both teams began 2007 with expectations to be on the upswing. When Georgia hit its stride to end 2006, capped off by the Chick-fil-A Bowl win, the dynamic was that with Matthew Stafford settling in under center, that the Dawgs were on their way to being among the SEC’s elite again. In Tuscaloosa it was simple – the Crimson Tide needed someone to restore the program’s glory, and Nick Saban was talked into hanging up his NFL whistle in favor of Alabama.
Georgia stumbled in week two, losing 16-12 to South Carolina, but the season was hardly lost – but few other losses could be afforded to win the SEC East. The Crimson Tide entered 3-0, the big win being a 41-38 offensive slugfest against Arkansas.
Georgia found success early, going up 10-0 less than six minutes into the game on a quick pass from Stafford to Thomas Brown later followed by a Brandon Coutu field goal. But after Alabama tied 10-0, the Bulldogs put together another 10-point swing, leading 20-10 after a third-quarter touchdown by Knowshon Moreno and another Coutu field goal. That’s when Alabama rallied for ten points in the final 6:10, sending things to overtime.
There, after Bama led 23-20, Georgia made sure that the Crimson Tide didn’t come back again.
Nobody knew it then…but it’d end up being the first of many instant classics to come between these two teams.
Go Dawgs!
