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ATLANTA — Hollywood wouldn’t believe this script. Too fantastical. Too unrealistic. It never could happen in real life.
An undersized and under-recruited, one-time walk-on quarterback not only leading his title-starved school to a national championship, but coming back the following year even better? Then, pulling off the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in the nine-year history of the College Football Playoff?
No way. No chance. No shot.
The Stetson Bennett story just keeps getting wilder. Saturday night, as 2023 arrived, he was celebrating a crazy comeback, tears in his eyes as teammates mobbed him.
He carried heavily favored Georgia back from a 14-point deficit in the final 10:14, adding to his legacy in Athens, Ga. with a heart-stopping, 42-41 victory over No. 4 Ohio State in the Peach Bowl. His 10-yard touchdown pass to Adonai Mitchell with 54 seconds remaining sent the No. 1-seeded Bulldogs back to the national championship game, where they will look to be the first repeat champion since Alabama in 2011-12. Georgia’s underdog will face a team of them in upstart TCU, the No. 3 seed, in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium on Jan. 9.
“Where else would you rather be? Having the ball with two minutes left, and if you score a touchdown, you win the game,” he said. “I looked around, and there were just a whole bunch of just determined, strong stares from all the dudes. It gave me confidence, and everybody else had confidence when we went down the field.”
Ohio State (11-2) did get in position to win it in the final seconds, but Noah Ruggles badly missed a 50-yard attempt with three seconds to go, setting off the Georgia Celebration.
“This was an emotional roller coaster,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “It was a back-and-forth game. It was who’s going to blink. Two really good teams fighting.”
For so much of the night, it seemed like it wasn’t meant to be for Georgia (14-0). Its second-ranked scoring defense was shredded by Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud, who threw for 384 yards and four touchdowns. Marvin Harrison Jr. caught two of them, before suffering a head injury late in the third quarter. Bennett threw an early interception and made several questionable decisions, leading to Georgia’s largest deficit of the season. The Bulldogs managed just 15 yards on their first three drives of the second half. They trailed, 38-24, early in the fourth quarter.
From that point on, everything had to go right for them to move on. Somehow, it did.
Bennett found his game just in time. He led Georgia on three consecutive scoring drives and completed 10-of-12 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns in the final quarter. His 76-yard touchdown pass to Arian Smith cut it to a three-point game with 8:41 left. The game began to swing on the previous possession and Ohio State still up 11. The Buckeyes converted a 4th-and-1 on a fake punt, but the officials ruled that Smart had called a timeout before the play.
“It was one of those gut reactions that I didn’t think that we had it lined up properly to stop it, so we called timeout,” Smart said.
Ohio State punted and on the first play Bennett took advantage of a busted coverage to hit a wide open Smith in stride. The Buckeyes only managed one field goal in the fourth quarter, held to 97 yards of offense in the stanza after piling up 370 over the first three quarters.
Georgia got the ball back down a field goal with 2:25 left. Bennett completed 5-of-6 passes on the 72-yard drive, capping a memorable evening and extending his fairy tale career by one more game. A championship last year for the quarterback who supposedly wasn’t good enough. One win from a perfect season this year.
“Now,” he said, “we’ve got to take care of business.”
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