“We were gone! I gave up. You did too. We were out of it and gone. A miracle!”

Those were the famous words of the late-great Larry Munson when Lindsay Scott ran Georgia to a 1980 last-second win over rival Florida in Jacksonville. Forty-three years later, the Bulldogs pulled off another win that we could have never seen coming.

Several days after the fact, it’s still hard to make sense of what transpired inside of Mercedes-Benz Stadium last Saturday night during the Peach Bowl. The No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs rallied in the final quarter to beat No. 4 Ohio State, 42-41, in a historic College Football Playoff Semifinal Game played in front of 79,330 anxious fans.

Georgia now gets set to play No. 3 TCU in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday, January 9, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The Horned Frogs upset No. 2 Michigan, 51-45, in a thrilling Fiesta Bowl that would’ve been the game of the year so far, if not for the fireworks in Atlanta between the Buckeyes and Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs trailed forever it seemed like, leading briefly in the second quarter before allowing Ohio State to regain the lead before halftime. But the Dawgs finally took a 42-41 lead thanks to Stetson Bennett’s heroics on the final UGA drive of the game.

Bennett hit Adonai Mitchell on a 10-yard touchdown pass in the corner of the endzone to tie it up at 41-41 with 54 seconds left. A Jack Podlesny extra point put Georgia ahead and a missed 50-yard field goal with three seconds left by Ohio State’s Noah Ruggels allowed Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs to escape Atlanta still undefeated.

It was only the second one-possession game for Georgia all season. The Bulldogs narrowly beat unranked Missouri earlier in the year, winning 26-22 in sloppy fashion. Ohio State had not been involved in a one-possession game before Saturday.

“Our guys are extremely resilient,” said Smart in his postgame press conference. “We talked at halftime about some games that we have been in this year that we've been behind in, including the Missouri game. I had no doubt that our team would come out fighting.”

And Georgia was fighting. The Bulldogs were playing hard. They had to in order to hang around against a team that was clicking on all cylinders.

Ohio State (11-2) played a near-flawless brand of football. After the loss, the Buckeyes’ head coach Ryan Day was understandably shaken. How could he not be? His quarterback, C.J. Stroud, was electric and OSU’s best two receivers each went over 100 yards. The Buckeyes scored 41 points on the nation’s best defense.

Smart’s teams had allowed more than 40 points only five times previously and the Bulldogs were just 1-4 in those games.

Stroud was destined for the game’s Offensive MVP award if his team would’ve held on, and he still wound up with 348 yards and four touchdowns on 23-of-34 passing. Everything pointed to Ohio State winning the game. It was Ohio State’s night.

Until it wasn’t.

“It doesn't mean anything if you don't win,” said Day, who has overseen Ohio State losing back-to-back games for the first time since 2013. “I think that's probably what hurts the most is that, when you put that much work and that much energy and that much time into something and you're right there and you just – you don't get the victory. That hurts to our core.”

While Georgia (-13) is a heavy betting favorite versus TCU (+13) and the Bulldogs are undefeated reigning national champs, it’s still hard to consider any team quarterbacked by Bennett as being a giant. Like Stroud, he finished 23-of-34 passing while throwing for three touchdowns and 398 yards to go along with a rushing score.

He did throw an interception, and that’s the kind of thing Smart wants to eliminate before the National Championship next week.

“If we want any chance at winning a national championship, we have to play a lot better football than we played (Saturday night),” Smart said after the Ohio State victory.

“We've got to keep the resiliency and composure.”

Bennett has become a poster boy for the little-guy success story in today’s bigger, faster, stronger version of college football. If you haven’t heard already, he’s a small-town kid from Blackshear, Georgia. He’s a former walk-on and junior college transfer that was never envisioned as Georgia’s next great quarterback. But that’s exactly what he has become, and the man who sees a giant when he looks in the mirror transformed himself in the game’s final minutes Saturday night.

Smart knows his Bulldogs are playing the role of Goliath this week. And we all know how that matchup with David went: The giant lost in a biblical-sized upset.

TCU (13-1) will be aiming to pull off a second straight upset when the Horned Frogs play the role of underdog against Georgia. Sonny Dykes’ team played that same role against mighty Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl and they played it to perfection. They wanted a sequel and they’ll get it in the form of the Bulldogs.

It’s a made-for-Hollywood matchup taking place right outside of Los Angeles. Go figure. The characters are written and the roles are filled. The script is unfinished, with one final scene left to go.

SPORTS NOTES

• One day later in the same Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Atlanta Falcons ended their four-game losing streak ion Sunday with a 20-19 last-second win over the Arizona Cardinals. Despite that, Atlanta (6-10) was eliminated from the playoff discussion in Week 17 after Tampa Bay’s win against Carolina. With one week left to play, the Falcons are slated to have the No. 7 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft this spring.

• Blitz Border Bowl V is right around the corner, set for Saturday, January 14 at Savannah’s Memorial Stadium. Kickoff between Team Coastal Empire (Georgia) and Team Lowcountry (South Carolina) is scheduled for noon. In its fifth year, the high school football all-star game matches up the top prep seniors from South Carolina’s low country with the best from the coastal empire for one final gridiron showcase. Proceeds from the game benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Coastal Empire. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased ahead of time, online by clicking HERE. The game will also be televised live on WSAV-TV and streaming online at WSAV.com/Sports

This article appears in Jan 1-31, 2023.