Georgia 14, Kentucky 3: Oomph.

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, Georgia’s 14-3 win over Kentucky this afternoon was ugly in a way that reminded Bulldog fans of some of the ham-handed victories of 2019.

But better a ham-handed victory than a gorgeous loss.

Stetson Bennett had a pretty rough day, to the extent he was relied upon. Mostly Georgia became aware on its first offensive series that Kentucky couldn’t stop the run consistently and decided to just lean into the manball full throttle.

A positive from that was Zamir White’s first 100 yard rushing game of his UGA career. A negative was the lingering sense of dread that if Georgia finds itself in a scoring shootout with Florida next week in Jacksonville they could be in real trouble.

Stetson Bennett was 9 of 14 passing, which sounds like an okay thing for a player who’s being asked to be a game manager. But he also had two interceptions, which is poor management. I remain confused after a bye week why Georgia still has nothing in the offensive playbook to roll Bennett out, giving Gina better view of the field and making him harder to key on. It’s a puzzler.

This was an incredibly vanilla game plan coming out of a bye week. The optimist would say Todd Monken didn’t want to tip his hand before next week. A realist would say that if you asked Kirby Smart right now what his team’s offensive identity is he’s have to shrug his shoulders and say “Whatever’s kind of working I guess???”

It wasn’t 2015 Mizzou game bad. But it wasn’t reassuring, either.

Even with a change at quarterback Kentucky wasn’t able to sustain much on offense themselves, save for some rushing that what frustrating for those who know that the UGA defense can execute better than they showed. We’ll wait awhile to see exactly how many of the apparent injuries on defense are serious. But I’m seriously worried with how many there now appear to be.

Alas, next Saturday is another day.

Go ‘Dawgs!!!