Missouri pulled off a big upset in Athens Saturday afternoon, defeating the Georgia Bulldogs 41-26 in a blowout victory that announced the Tigers' arrival to the big-time SEC stage.
Missouri vs. Georgia reaction: Tigers look the real deal in Athens
Missouri pulled off the big upset road win, and both fan bases were impressed with the Tigers’ performance.
Kevin C. Cox
Georgia got on the board first, as Aaron Murray found Brendan Douglas for a seven-yard touchdown, and James Franklin tied it up with a five-yard touchdown run before the end of the first.
The Tigers exploded in the second quarter, building an insurmountable lead with three touchdowns in the period. Franklin found L'Damian Washington for a 16-yard score, and after a Georgia field goal Marcus Murphy ran for a 36-yard touchdown. Ten seconds later, Michael Sam recovered a fumble and returned it 21 yards for a touchdown.
The Bulldogs kicked a field goal and scored a touchdown in the third quarter, and scored another early in the fourth to make it a two-point game. L'Damian Washington scored on a nifty trickeration play that put the Tigers up eight, and Henry Josey sealed it with a seven-yard touchdown run with two minutes to go.
dcrockett17 of Rock M Nation praised the Tigers’ defensive performance, and said that the game cemented the fact that Missouri’s defense is scary good.
Georgia’s offensive line is solid. More importantly though, Aaron Murray is one of the best in the business at manipulating the pocket. We saw some of that today. It’s not about sacks. It’s about the ability to affect the entire passing game. Sometimes interceptions are an illusion. They are an artifact of poor pass defense. The occasional home run you can hit, even when you have no clue what you’re doing at the plate. In Missouri’s case the interceptions are the finishing touch on a defense that just terrorizes passing offenses.
MaconDawg of DawgSports says that Georgia’s issues go past the myriad of injuries that have plagued the team, and pointed to the Bulldogs’ inability to stop the Missouri attack.
It's tempting to blame the injuries, except that so much that went wrong in this one had absolutely nothing to do with the play at positions that were thin. Keith Marshall's hamstring has nothing to do with Corey Moore aimlessly wandering around the middle of the secondary like a lost puppy. Or Ken Gates spending 20% of snaps looking back into the backfield as Missouri Tigers raced by him. Or Amarlo Herrera committing an uber-dumb roughing the passer penalty to fuel a drive ending with the score that functionally ended the game. Or our redshirt senior quarterback throwing the kind of try-hard interceptions that only Aaron Murray can throw. This one's not on the injuries. Rather, it was turnovers, poor tackling, coverage breakdowns, and bad penalties. Rinse, repeat. That's how you lose football games. There's really not a lot more to say.
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