Kirby Smart didn’t want to play it safe against Ole Miss. Georgia remained solid by converting all five red-zone trips and trying to squeeze the life out of the clock late, but the plan didn’t fully work. The aggression was through the roof the entire game. But Smart did not have a doubt. He trusted his offense and stood by the call, win or lose.

“So, we’re number one or two in the country in red zone offense, right?  Scoring TDs. What do we do well? We run it,” Kirby Smart said during the post-game presser. “That’s what we do well. We run it down there really well. It’s not very far; you get to throw it. We’ve been really, really good at running and doing it. And by doing that, you also force them to call a timeout. Assuming they stop you, if they don’t stop us, then they’ve got time on the clock to go out there and run their two-minute offense and try to score back. They burnt two timeouts.

They were out of timeouts. And the decision was what he talked about. Do we run it on third and just play for a tie? Because it’s hard to run the ball in from third and three, or I don’t know what yard line we were on. I felt like it was three, three and a half, two, like a two-point play. And I like the call. I like the play. And I like going to win the game because I feel like if we scored there and we kicked it, we’re up and and they’d have to score a touchdown to beat us. And I’m like, I’ll take that every time with our defense in two minutes.”

Georgia did the math and leaned into it. The Bulldogs came in with a solid 91.67% red-zone scoring rate, and Smart believed that in a tight situation, running the ball is still safer than throwing it. That part made sense. Where things unraveled wasn’t the red zone itself, but a massive setback just outside of it.

The turning point came at the Ole Miss 33-yard line on a dangerous fourth-down sequence. Georgia initially sent out the punt team, then sent the offense back in after an injury timeout, trying to catch the Rebels off guard with a quick “hockey-line change.” The plan was simple: either draw Ole Miss offside or take a delay and punt. But everything went wrong.

The ball got snapped at the wrong time. Gunner Stockton and the OL weren’t on the same page, and Ole Miss linebacker Suntarine Perkins came surprisingly in untouched for a strip-sack. The Rebels recovered at the Dawgs’ 23, and two plays later, Trinidad Chambliss passed Harrison Wallace III for a touchdown that pushed the lead to 34–24.

Still, Smart stayed aggressive because the logic was sound. Georgia got that chance, too. On the final drive, the Bulldogs had first-and-goal at the 3. Then it slipped away. Three yards lost on second down, an incompletion on third, and they had to settle for a field goal with 59 seconds left. That gave Ole Miss just enough time to go win it.

Georgia reached the red zone five times, but the issue was completion. Too many first- and second-down runs near the goal line messed it up, turning touchdowns into three costly field goals. The plan wasn’t crazy. The execution just wasn’t there when it mattered most.

The Bulldogs, who had already beaten Ole Miss once in the regular season, never expected this result. And while Smart carefully stood by his playcalling, he also did a solid job of nudging some of the frustration back toward the fans rather than owning it himself.

Kirby Smart’s blame game

Kirby Smart’s frustration with the Bulldogs fans boiled over at the sparse turnout of Bulldog red amid a sea of Rebel supporters. In his post-game press conference, Smart noted, “There were probably more persons in Ole Miss than ours,” adding that the atmosphere felt like an away game, with Ole Miss fans fueling momentum in a back-and-forth thriller that saw Georgia blow a 21-12 halftime lead before falling to a late Lucas Carneiro field goal and safety.

The official attendance of 68,371 fell short of the venue’s capacity of 74,295. And Smart perceived a clear disadvantage. Despite the Bulldogs outdrawing last year’s Sugar Bowl crowd of 57,267 against Notre Dame, this year, their support was less. Smart’s expectations stem from Georgia’s rabid home support. Why? The Bulldogs shattered their all-time attendance record in 2024, averaging 93,033 fans per game over six sellouts at Sanford Stadium and extending a 77-game streak dating to 2012.

Fans have appeared in big bowls too. Remember the 2023 Orange Bowl? The Bulldogs steamrolled the Seminoles 63-3, and the attendance came out to be 63,324 at Hard Rock Stadium. Yet bowl attendance has lagged before, with just 55,211 for the 2020 Sugar Bowl loss to Baylor.

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