“We’ll see after we practice this week, but I will say this: We’ve got confidence in both these guys”. It’s the 72nd consecutive season when they’ve played each other. “We try not to really talk about it”, said Bulldogs tight end Jay Rome, who was injured and watched that game on TV. He was one of the two defensive backs defending Louis on the play, a moment he’d surely like to erase by having an impact in Saturday’s game.
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Auburn’s 73-yard pass two years ago scratched what would have been the greatest comeback in Georgia history. Auburn doesn’t want to be the third.
“As a senior”, Frost said, “you always want to leave your stamp on your school, a school that you spent so much time at and a school that you love so much. If you’re a competitor, you’re going to win every time you step on the field”.
The Georgia defense does not have a shut-out this year, but they have kept two SEC teams out of the end zone.
Auburn is last in the SEC in total defense, but they gave up only ten points last week against Texas A&M.
“People aren’t anxious about what’s going on here, what’s going on there”, Ganus said in Athens early this week. Not saying he’s not excited about playing, but there’s a little different body language there. The last month alone has resulted in dramatic endings to the Michigan-Michigan State, Florida State-Georgia Tech, Duke-Miami and Arkansas-Ole Miss games, leaving Georgia coach Mark Richt and Alabama’s Nick Saban with plenty of company in the heartbreak department. The Tigers benched starting quarterback Jeremy Johnson three games into the season in favor of redshirt freshman Sean White, whose nagging knee injury opened the door for Johnson to return to the lineup last week.
“I mean I hit my knees and then my chest hit on the ground”, Richt said. “We won’t have him back this year”. That alone raised a few eyebrows among Georgia’s players. “He’s more of a guy that’ll just kind of get pumped up emotionally”.
Auburn and Georgia kick at noon Saturday on WDEF News 12. Only eight rivalries are older, and only four have met more often than the 118 games the Bulldogs and Tigers have lined up for.
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Gus Malzahn’s offense was a mess in the first half of the season, turning the ball over at a ridiculous clip and averaging just 343.8 yards of total offense in the first five games of the season. “We feel very good going into this game with our quarterback situation”.
