Cocktail Thursday: Kentucky Edition

If your Georgia Bulldogs are taking the field following their first taste of defeat in some fifty weeks and you’re not sure how they’ll respond, you could probably use a drink. I can help you with that.

I have to be honest, that could have gone a lot worse. I halfway expected the Bulldog fanbase to go into full-on meltdown mode after Kirby Smart’s team got blown out on the road to fall from the ranks of the unbeaten while Mark Richt’s Hurricanes surged into the playoff lineup with a throttling of Notre Dame. I expected a whole lot of buyer’s remorse from Georgia fans to arrive in my inbox in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

For the most part it never materialized. Oh, there was one raging moron whose argument began with "My father wrote for the Red and Black and was friends with Don Leebern’s dad, so I know Georgia football!!!"

But other than that idiot you all seem to have taken in stride that a) Georgia lost a game to a very good football team, and b) Georgia probably isn’t 23 points worse than Auburn on a consistent basis. At least not on a neutral field.

That doesn’t mean the Red and Black don’t need to tackle better (they do). Nor does it mean that the offensive line doesn’t have a lot of growing to do (they do). Or that as a whole the team didn’t regress into some bad mental habits against Auburn (boy howdy did they).

It all means that there’s still work to do and the time to start on it is this weekend against Kentucky.

It’s like this: Kentucky is a decent football team but there’s no excuse for this one to be close if Georgia can do one thing: stop sophomore tailback Benny Snell. Snell, last seen running the Wildcat right down Georgia’s throat last fall, just went over the 1000 yard mark on the season.

In the process he became the first Wildcat to rush for 1000 or more in two consecutive seasons. I expect next season he will become the first Bluegrass State Feral Feline to rush for 1000 in three consecutive seasons. He’s already ninth on Kentucky’s all-time rushing yardage list (and one yard away from eighth). Snell is a weapon, a bruising 220+ pound back with acceleration and vision.

But his production has been 60% of Kentucky’s rushing offense and 30% of the Cats’ total offense. Stop Snell and you put a major dent in Kentucky’s gameplan. End up chasing Snell all over Hell’s half acre and it is going to be one long day.

So what’s the drink for stopping Benny Snell, bottling up the Wildcat offense, and putting a rough weekend behind us? A Snell’s Half Acre.

Start by combining two ounces of chilled bourbon with a pinch of lemon zest in a cocktail glass. Stir in one and a half ounces of orange juice and a teaspoon of lime juice. Then drink up while the Bulldogs wrap up. Until later...

Go ‘Dawgs!!!