There are 47 days till college football season, and today we focus on a play that went from being remembered forever, to a play that Georgia fans play want to forget ever happened.
The Georgia Bulldogs had led nearly the entire game against Tennessee last season. Georgia led 17-0 late in the second quarter, but Tennessee executed a two-minute dill to make cut the lead to 17-7 at the half.
With a 24-21 lead late in the fourth, Georgia quarterback Jacob Eason was sacked in the end zone by Derek Barnett and Corey Vereen jumped on the ball to give Tennessee a 28-24 lead with 2:56 remaining. Eason threw an interception on the following drive, appearing to seal Georgia’s fate, but they got the ball back at their own 19-yard line with just over a minute remaining.
On the first three plays of the drive, Eason hit three different receivers for gains of 16, 11, and 12 yards. Then a false start gave the Bulldogs the ball at the Tennessee 47-yard line.
And that leads us to no. 47 on the Southbound and Down College football Countdown.
Georgia’s Jacob Eason threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to Riley Ridley against Tennessee in 2016.
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The touchdown from Eason to Riley Ridley put Georgia up 31-28 with 10 seconds remaining, appearing to give Georgia and head coach Kirby Smart and his true freshman signal-caller the trademark win of their young careers.
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But we all know what happened next. If Georgia’s win was improbable, Tennessee winning this game would be damn near impossible.
Because of a celebration penalty on the touchdown, a phrase Georgia fans have heard before, the Bulldogs were forced to kickoff from the 20-yard line, and the Volunteers were able to take the kick return into Georgia territory.
Tennessee was then able to answer Georgia’s “Hobnail Boot” from 2001 with the “Dobbs-nail Boot” in 2016, to pull out a 34-31 victory in Athens. If it weren’t for Tennessee’s Hail Mary, this would go down as one of the most famous plays in Georgia history, but now Dawg fans don’t even want to think about it.
While it was a heartbreaking loss for the Bulldogs, they should be encouraged by their true freshman quarterback and first-year head coach. We’ll see what this duo has in store for 2017, because the Georgia Bulldogs have a high expectations in year two of the Smart era.