It didn’t take long for Chris Cole to find another runaway moment.
Georgia’s linebacker - known around the locker room as “Tarantula” and “Daddy Long Legs” because of his unusual athleticism - turned a sack into six points again Saturday, scooping up a fumble and sprinting 66 yards for a touchdown in No. 3 Georgia’s 27-8 win over No. 17 Florida at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The play came in the second quarter after Florida quarterback Tramell Jones Jr. entered following Aaron Philo’s second interception of the day. Quintavius Johnson got to Jones for a three-yard loss and forced the fumble, and Cole did the rest, grabbing the ball at Georgia’s 34-yard line and racing to the end zone. The score pushed Georgia ahead 24-0 before halftime and marked the first time Florida had been shut out in the first half all season.
Cole has done this before. In Georgia’s 41-13 win over Oklahoma on Sept. 26, he recovered a loose ball from quarterback John Mateer and returned it 85 yards for a touchdown.
“It was a great play by Q,” Cole said of Johnson’s forced fumble. “… Them getting the ball from the QB and just me scooping and scoring.
And again, you know, just first off, not getting caught, and second, not getting tackled by the QB. So it was, you know, a blessing.
Awesome.”
He was everywhere for Georgia on Saturday, finishing with nine tackles, a sack and a tackle for loss.
The Bulldogs’ defense set the tone all afternoon, forcing three interceptions and helping create four turnovers that led to 17 Georgia points. Florida never got comfortable, and the Gators were held to 48 rushing yards after entering the game averaging 39.6 points per contest.
Georgia piled up 217 rushing yards of its own, while Florida’s Jadan Baugh was limited to 38 yards on 17 carries. Stopping the run was a clear priority for the Bulldogs, and Cole said that was the focus all week.
“Our focus was just stopping the run,” Cole said. “You know, we knew Florida coming in, they had a lot of good running backs and especially (Baugh), so we had to be able to stop the run and just kind of stop the explosive plays.”
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said the pressure up front helped create the turnovers, and he pointed to the sack-fumble sequence as one of the game’s biggest swings.
“If you get sacks, then you get turnovers,” Smart said. “Most fumbles occur on sacks.
We got pressure on the quarterback. We affected both quarterbacks, and anybody will tell you if you can’t run the ball and they struggle to run it, it makes you one- dimensional, and then everybody gets to feast and rush the passer, and that was a big play in the game.
It was a huge momentum play because, again, it’s really a 14-point swing. If they go down and score, fumble, Chris picks it up and scores, which he has a knack for doing.”
That knack is becoming familiar to Cole’s teammates, too.
“It’s unreal,” Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton said. “I definitely, I get to see it every day at practice and kind of the freaky stuff that happens.
But he’s an unreal player and a great teammate. And you know, he works just as hard during the week for that to pay off.”
Georgia’s offense had a quieter stretch after halftime, managing just 14 yards in the third quarter while Florida gained 76. The Bulldogs were nearly blanked in the second half before Peyton Woodring’s 21-yard field goal with 3:35 left in the fourth quarter.
Florida also had a chance to make things interesting in the third quarter, reaching the Georgia 3-yard line before Jones threw an interception directly to Braylon Conley in the end zone. The Gators finally scored midway through the fourth after a fumble by Georgia wide receiver Talyn Taylor stalled a Bulldog drive that looked poised to stretch the lead.
Still, the day belonged to Georgia’s defense, which stayed aggressive, stayed simple and kept Florida off balance from start to finish.
“I thought (Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann) had a good game plan, a very disruptive game plan, but the defensive staff did a tremendous job,” Smart said. “Tried to keep things simple because (Florida offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner) causes a lot of confusion.
And, we didn’t do a whole lot. Like, we kept it simple and played fast, played hard.”
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Auburns upset of No. 1 Georgia looked like one of the seasons biggest results two weeks ago, but the Tigers have since taken hard losses to LSU and Ole Miss, which has changed the way that defeat is being viewed around the SEC. What once felt like a jolt to the national title picture now reads a little differently, with the Bulldogs left to wonder whether a rough afternoon in Auburn was as much about timing and fortune as it was about anything deeper.
For Georgia, the larger issue is what the loss does to the road ahead. The Bulldogs path to the SEC Championship Game and the College Football Playoff is still alive, but it has become less forgiving, and the next stretch matters even more now. Florida looms as a critical test, the kind of game that could shape whether Georgia stays on course or has to fight through a far narrower postseason lane. [Read more 🡒]
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Kirby Smart said Robinsons knee tightened up, and there was no confirmed structural damage at the time of the report, but the bigger issue now is his status going forward. For a defense that leans on depth and versatility in the back end, the uncertainty around Robinsons availability is the kind of development that can linger well beyond a rivalry game. [Read more 🡒]