No. 2 Georgia walked into one of the loudest stadiums in the SEC on Saturday night and had it quiet within about 22 minutes. The Bulldogs scored on four long drives to open the game, broke two huge plays to the same young receiver and shut out No. 10 Ole Miss for three full quarters in a 42-7 rout at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. By the end of the night, the only real question left in college football was a simple one: is Georgia the true No. 1 team in the country?
The game headlined Saturday’s slate of seven ranked matchups, and it turned out to be the least competitive of the bunch. Georgia (8-1, 6-1 SEC) led 28-0 at halftime and 35-0 late in the third quarter. Ole Miss (6-3, 4-3 SEC) did not score until the fourth quarter, and by then the outcome had long been settled for the sellout crowd of 68,814.
Four long drives set the tone
Georgia opened the night with touchdown drives of 72, 96, 61 and 50 yards, all of them inside the first 22 minutes. In that same stretch, Ole Miss crossed midfield exactly once, according to the Associated Press. The Bulldogs finished with 481 yards of offense to 252 for the Rebels, and they held the ball for more than 34 minutes.
Gunner Stockton needed only 15 pass attempts to wreck the evening. He completed nine of them for 186 yards and four touchdowns, and he added a 15-yard touchdown run for good measure. Three of the scoring passes went to sophomore Talyn Taylor, who caught four passes for 140 yards in a breakout game. Taylor scored on a 58-yard strike in the first quarter, a 6-yard catch late in the third quarter and a 65-yard bomb in the fourth that answered the only Ole Miss touchdown of the night.
The ground game did the steady work around them. Nate Frazier ran for 107 yards on 16 carries, and Georgia rushed for 295 yards as a team, wearing down a defense that spent most of the night on the field.
A top offense ran into a wall
The bigger surprise was what happened when Ole Miss had the ball. The Rebels came in averaging 37.1 points and 439.6 yards per game. Georgia held them to seven points and 252 yards. Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss finished 18 of 34 for 170 yards with one interception. The Bulldogs sacked him four times and held him to minus 12 rushing yards, according to DawgNation.
The loss snapped a 16-game home winning streak for Ole Miss and gave Georgia coach Kirby Smart his first win in Oxford in three tries, the AP reported. It also settled an old score. Last season, Ole Miss knocked Georgia out of the playoff with a 39-34 win in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal. This time, the Bulldogs gave up one late touchdown, an 8-yard run by Shekai Mills-Knight with 10:43 left in the game, and answered it on their very next drive.
Who is the real No. 1? Tuesday will tell
The rout landed on a night when the top of the sport flipped upside down. No. 1 Miami lost 31-24 at Notre Dame, where CJ Carr threw three touchdown passes and the Irish survived a frantic final drive. Utah stayed perfect at 9-0 by beating BYU 28-20 in the Holy War, and UCLA also reached 9-0 with a 34-20 win at Minnesota. In its live CFP predictions updated late Saturday night, USA Today projected Georgia at No. 1, with Utah second, Alabama third and UCLA fourth.
The case for Utah is the cleanest record in the country. The case for Georgia is the strongest single Saturday. A one-loss team just dismantled a top-10 playoff contender on the road by 35 points, on top of the SEC, the league the committee stocked with five teams in its first projected playoff field. If the committee rewards the best win over the best record, Georgia gets the top spot. If it rewards perfection, Utah does.
The rest of the picture cleared out fast. Ohio State lost 41-28 to Oregon, its second straight defeat, and fell to 6-3. LSU lost 31-13 to Alabama and dropped to 6-3 as well. Ole Miss is also 6-3, and USA Today projected those three teams 16th or lower, which in a 12-team field means the playoff is effectively gone. Kentucky kept a narrow path alive with only its second loss, a 34-6 defeat at Tennessee, but the projection still dropped the Wildcats to 12th, the last rung of the ladder.
The committee releases its second set of rankings on Tuesday, November 10, at 9 p.m. ET. Georgia cannot do anything more to help its case before then. After Saturday night in Oxford, it may not need to. Follow the rankings fallout in our Sports coverage.
Sources: Associated Press via theScore; USA Today; sportradar box score; Georgia Sports Communications postgame notes; Field Level Media; DawgNation.