3:49 p.m. — A.J. Derby just made a fabulous, one-armed catch of a Brandon Allen throw near the right sideline to get the Hogs’ going positively after a few bad plays. On second down before the completion, Jonathan Williams fumbled after a yard or so, and the ball was batted around by both teams before rolling out of bounds near Bret Bielema. It was placed back at the 29 where Williams had fumble.
Georgia is getting chippy with the Hogs’ young guys, it appears.
Arkansas isn’t finding much running room after its initial march.
3:45 p.m. — Arkansas doesn’t have Korliss Marshall today. The Hogs have the wind at their back but the kickoff is deep, 8 yards, into the end zone. Georgia, in case you were wondering, won the toss before the game and deferred, and the Hogs chose to receive, giving Georgia the wind to start the game. It’s only about 7 mph out of the north.
Arkansas will fall a few hundred fans or so short of a full house today, with those seats open high in the north end zone. Looks like several have been filled by the armed services guys who held the huge American flag before the game. Arkansas was asking for a $35 surcharge to $65 tickets, to go to the Razorback Foundation, for those end zone seats. That’s a hefty price for ANYBODY’s end zone.
3:43 p.m. 10-6 Georgia — Marshall Morgan, a real SEC kicker, knocks through a 37-yard field goal to push the Bulldogs lead to four. Georgia moved it 51 yards in 10 plays. Hutson Mason is 4 of 6 for 106 yards passing for the ‘Dawgs. Chris Conley has three receptions for 88 yards, 40 of them on the second Georgia possession. Jarod Collins was on him most of that drive after Toliver had let him loose on first down.
3:39 p.m. 7-6 Georgia, end of first quarter. “Please turn the clock off,” an edgy sounding referee, Matt Moore, announced through his microphone, and the press box erupted in laughter. Once again, the War Memorial Stadium scoreboard was “malfunctioning.” What else is new?
At one point the clock kept rolling off time while there was timeout on the field. They tried to reset it and then it did something else that finally got Moore’s goat. They still didn’t turn the clock off.
The first quarter finally ended on the field with Georgia on another march, with Arkansas’ pass defense being exposed to slant-route after slant-route, and Nick Chubb also broke free early in the drive through a couple of tackles. Georgia is at the UA 20 as the second quarter begins.
3:28 p.m. 7-6 Georgia — Yes, we typically don’t start blogging after two touchdowns have been scored, but the worst stadium that still hosts Southeastern Conference games has the worst Internet service available to the media. It was 1996 all over again with long, long load times for everybody. If you had a hotspot, which my employer won’t buy for me, you were in luck. The rest of us watched as we went back in time waiting for pages to open.
Arkansas drove 75 yards on its first possession, eating up 7:59 of the clock, with Alex Collins powering the final yard off a toss and then a cut up the middle, just as Jonathan Williams had on a previous play as the Hogs pounded the Bulldogs defense from edge to edge.
Then, after showing off its old-time SEC power football display, the Hogs trotted out their high school specialty kicking team, as John Henson’s PAT didn’t get enough elevation to avoid the hand of Georgia’s Ray Drew, who was behind the d-line. 6-0 Arkansas.
Georgia merely needed five plays to answer, hitting a 48-yard pass Chris Conley zipped right around freshman defensive back Henri Toliver for a well-thrown pass at the left sideline and carried to the UA 26. Hutson Mason threw a bullet to Michael Bennett on the next play for 18 yards, and two running plays by Nick Chubb and a final sneak by Mason for a foot polished off the rapid response. Georgia was in full hurry-up mode. The Bulldogs kicked a college style PAT that was perfect.
Then, Georgia did something we certainly didn’t expect, indicating that it didn’t have a lot of faith in its defense: an onside kick that Arkansas’ Eric Hawkins recovered for the Hogs at the Georgia 46.
Why Mark Richt didn’t have the faith in his defense is anybody’s guess, because on two successive plays, Brandon Allen was crushed by the Georgia pass rush. On first down, safety Damian Swann came off the right edge, got around OK protection as Brandon Allen waited for a receiver to break open (didn’t happen) and decked Allen while swiping the ball free. Hunter Henry, was able to recover but it was a loss of 10 yards. On the next snap, strongside linebacker Leonard Floyd came up the middle untouched to pound Allen for a 13-yard loss, and Allen seemed to fall on the ball and knock the wind out of him.
Austin Allen came on for one snap, a third-and-33, and smartly just gave it to Jonathan Williams on a draw to get back a little of the yardage before the Hogs punted the ball away.
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