Georgia bounces back from loss by handling Auburn, 31-13

ATHENS, Ga. — The last time Georgia lost a game, the Bulldogs responded by stripping the hide from the bones of Florida State, 63-3, and the ‘Noles still haven’t recovered. So it was fair to expect that Georgia would stomp Auburn into blue-and-orange paste, and going by the scoreboard — Georgia 31, Auburn 13 — that’s pretty much what happened.

But Auburn didn’t get its reputation as the Great Ruiner of college football by rolling over and playing victim. The Tigers did just enough Saturday — particularly with a third-quarter touchdown drive that sent a ripple of tension through the crowd — to keep Georgia engaged, even as the Bulldogs hung touchdown after touchdown on the overmatched Auburn defense.

Auburn played its cleanest game of the 2024 season, but “clean” alone isn’t nearly enough against the locomotive that is Georgia.

There were murmurs in the tailgates all over campus and the bars and restaurants in Athens, the dreaded words “trap game” making the rounds amid concerns about Georgia’s tendency for slow starts and questions about quarterback Carson Beck’s consistency. This was exactly the kind of game the Bulldogs were right to fear, the latest installment of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry, featuring an unstable, unpredictable opponent that’s a few plays from being 5-0.

The trap, as it turned out, was being sprung a few hours to the northwest in Nashville, as Vanderbilt stunned No. 1 Alabama 40-35. Cheers resounded through Sanford Stadium whenever Vanderbilt scored, as Dawg fans followed the game on their phones and watched replays during game breaks.

As has become tradition in 2024, Georgia started slowly, grinding to an early touchdown but meandering through much of the rest of the first half. Auburn couldn’t take advantage, managing only a handful of chunk plays and a single first-quarter field goal in the first half.

“We gotta get off the field, get the field position, battle, flip the field and take it over,” Smart said after the game, “especially at home. I don’t think we did that.”

Auburn’s key early miscue came late in the half. Pinned against their own end zone, down 7-3 with 1:52 remaining, the Tigers didn’t use up nearly enough clock. A foolhardy deep ball on second down stopped the clock, and Auburn gave the ball back to Georgia with 1:02 remaining in the half. Georgia needed only five plays and 45 seconds to thunder into the end zone and take a 14-3 lead that would hold up into halftime.

The Tigers showed a flicker of life in the second half, with QB Payton Thorne engineering a six-play, 68-yard touchdown drive that drew Auburn within four points of Georgia’s lead, 14-10, with 9:45 left in the third. Just for a moment, Sanford Stadium grew uneasy, all those quiet fears aired during pregame tailgates starting to gain a little momentum.

Beck guided Georgia on two straight touchdown drives to effectively salt away the game, but some of the same questions that arose from the Alabama game remained unanswered against Auburn. Georgia still struggled to seal the edges against Auburn’s run game, and Beck struggled with mobility against Auburn’s pressure. Those weren’t game-wrecking weaknesses against Auburn, but against the behemoths looming on Georgia’s schedule, they could prove problematic.

Beck finished the game 23 of 29 for 240 yards and two touchdowns, taking two sacks. Georgia’s Trevor Etienne carried the ball 16 times for 88 yards and two touchdowns. On the Auburn side, Thorne threw for an even 200 yards on 16 of 27 passing, taking three sacks. KeAndre Lambert-Smith had seven receptions for 95 yards, and Jarquez Hunter gashed Georgia for 91 yards and a touchdown.

Auburn now falls to 2-4, 0-3 in the SEC, and while the record is nothing to admire, the effort in Athens was at least free of the mistakes that characterized so much of the Tigers’ early season. The all-time series now stands at 65–56–8 in favor of Georgia, and Auburn will have to wait another year to close that gap.

After the game, Freeze was his typical unfiltered self. “We’re gonna get it turned,” he said, “and we’re gonna find the ones who want to fight for 60 minutes.”

Television appeared to show Freeze ripping into Thorne on the sideline following a botched 4th-and-1 attempt:

Thorne, Freeze said, “absolutely didn’t go with what we had called.” Georgia turned the turnover on downs into another touchdown, and that was basically the end of the day for Auburn.

Over in the Georgia locker room, the mood was pleased but not satisfied. Last week’s loss to Alabama, Smart said, was “all people talked about all week. I mean, it was all over every Twitter feed, all over every social media everything. I told y’all before we played [Alabama], I said, ‘When we win or lose this game, there is a tough physical opponent.’ And guess what? There is next week [in Mississippi State]. Humility is a week away in our league at all times.”