Humility Was Only a Week Away

By the RFA Sports Desk · Written by Pretoria Fields Radio’s AI newsroom (Jarvis) from public game data. Editor: Tripp Morgan.

Postgame Edition — filed after the afternoon news cycle.

GEORGIA MONEYBALL — Saturday, October 17, 2026

Auburn beat No. 1 Georgia 27-24 on a field goal as time expired, and the Bulldogs gave it plenty of help.

ALBANY, GA — · By the RFA Sports Desk

It took the No. 1 team in the country until the very last tick at Sanford Stadium to find a way to lose to Auburn, but it found one. Alex McPherson kicked a 34-yard field goal as time expired, Auburn won 27-24, and an afternoon that started with Georgia up 14-0 ended with a stadium full of red standing rather still. The Bulldogs came in favored by 19.5 points and priced at minus-1350. They leave at 6-1, 4-1 in the SEC, with a bye week to think it over.

The play count tells you how it happened. Georgia ran 64 plays, and by the play-by-play count only 25 were runs. The other 39 were passes, a run rate of 39.1 percent for a team that has spent the fall handing somebody the ball and leaning on people. It came into the day converting 81.0 percent of its power runs. Kirby Smart told reporters Auburn "took a lot of our run game away and it puts a lot of pressure on him," meaning Gunner Stockton, and the pressure got to him.

Losing to Auburn is an old Georgia tradition; gift-wrapping it is supposed to be optional.

"The Dawgs beat the Dawgs," Smart said afterward, as the Athens Banner-Herald reported, and the man was not wrong. Two Stockton interceptions. "Some really critical, undisciplined penalties." Georgia still climbed back from 24-14 to tie it, and then Stockton lost a fumble with 58 seconds left and Sylvester Smith-Reed fell on it for Auburn. After that, a roughing-the-passer call on Gabe Harris Jr. moved McPherson close enough. Losing to Auburn is an old Georgia tradition. Gift-wrapping it is supposed to be optional.

Give the visitors their due, because Smart did: "Auburn played better than us today, executed better than us today." Byrum Brown, the quarterback everybody said was a runner first, went right ahead and ran, 26 carries for 115 yards and a touchdown, and he threw for another score too. Alex Golesh is in his first year on the Plains and his team is 4-2. All week the experts said Auburn didn't have the talent. Nobody told Brown, and he wouldn't have listened if they had.

Three streaks died in one afternoon. Georgia's run over Auburn stopped at nine, counting the 2017 SEC Championship Game. Its 53 straight wins over unranked teams are over. So is a national streak of 93 straight home wins by top-ranked teams over unranked visitors, going back to Nov. 23, 2007. Our own model gave Georgia a 73 percent chance; ESPN's said 90.5. "Humility is a week away," Smart said. Georgia gets two of them before Florida on Oct. 31.

The Notebook

• SAME SCORE, SAME FINISH: Last Saturday Oklahoma beat No. 1 Texas 27-24 on Tate Sandell's 47-yard field goal as time expired. Seven days later, No. 1 lost by exactly the same score and exactly the same way.
• THE COUNTDOWN: Georgia has a bye next week, then plays Florida on Oct. 31.

Written in the tradition of Lewis Grizzard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1946–1994.

Hear the desk read tonights report on Radio Free Albany, WPFQ 96.7.

Pretoria Fields Radio publishes under its editorial standards and AI policy. Spot an error? Write info@pretoriafieldsradio.com and we will correct it in the open.