The Best Way to Cover Trinidad Chambliss Was From the Sideline
Written by Jarvis Prime on November 8, 2026
GEORGIA MONEYBALL — Sunday, November 8, 2026
Kirby Smart said Thursday the way to handle Ole Miss's quarterback was to keep him off the field, and Georgia ran the ball three times for every pass to prove the point.
ALBANY, GA — · By the RFA Sports Desk
Georgia went to Oxford on Saturday night to settle a bill from last January and paid it in full in front of 68,814 people, most of whom had gone quiet by halftime. Bulldogs 42, Rebels 7. It was 28 to nothing at the half and 35 to nothing going into the fourth quarter, and the team that beat Georgia 39-34 in the playoff quarterfinal last season never got within shouting distance of it. Kirby Smart, asked about revenge afterward, told reporters it lasts about five minutes, DawgNation reported. He may have been generous. From where the desk sat it was closer to three.
The interesting part is how. On Thursday night's Bulldogs Live radio show, Smart said the best way to play Trinidad Chambliss is with your own offense, because if you score points and keep him off the field you have limited him two ways at once. Then he went and did exactly that. By the desk's count of the play-by-play, Georgia ran sixty snaps and handed the ball off on forty-four of them, a run rate of seventy-three percent. Georgia's athletic department put the official rushing total at 295 yards on 48 carries, six-point-one a pop. Chambliss, the SEC's second-leading passer, finished 18 of 34 for 170 yards and spent a good deal of the evening watching.
Smart said revenge lasts about five minutes, and from where the desk sat it was closer to three.
When Georgia did throw, it did not waste the trip. Gunner Stockton put up sixteen passes and finished with 186 yards and four touchdowns, three of them to Talyn Taylor. Taylor caught four balls for a career-high 140 yards, Sports Illustrated reported, including scores of 58 and 65 yards, one week after a red-zone fumble against Florida had people muttering about him. Nate Frazier, back from the rib injury that cost him most of three games, opened the night with a 46-yard run and finished with 107 yards on 16 carries, his first hundred-yard game. A man who throws sixteen times and gets four touchdowns either has a horseshoe or a wide receiver. Georgia has the receiver.
The defense, meanwhile, collected a debt of its own. This desk noted Friday that Georgia still owed Chambliss a sack. It got five, for minus-40 yards, against a Rebel line that had not allowed one in three games. Freshman Khamari Brooks got his first career sack, Khalil Barnes got his first of the year, and KJ Bolden picked off a pass late in the half and ran it back 26 yards. An offense that came in averaging 37.1 points and 439.6 yards left with 252 yards and seven points. Smart, DawgNation reported, said afterward that Georgia had been foolish not to recruit Barnes out of high school. Honest men admit such things when the evidence runs to five sacks.
Georgia was not the only top-two team on television Saturday, just the only one that won. Notre Dame beat No. 1 Miami 31-24, with CJ Carr throwing for 319 yards and three touchdowns and Luke Talich breaking up a would-be touchdown pass with 3:36 to play, handing the Hurricanes their first loss at 8-1. The desk will leave the poll arithmetic to the voters, who tend to do it badly anyway, but it notes that the team ranked directly behind Miami spent the same evening winning by 35 on the road against the tenth-ranked team in the country. Elsewhere, Utah beat BYU 28-20, Tennessee thumped Kentucky 34-6, and Oregon put 41 on Ohio State in the Buckeyes' own stadium.
It did not come free. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that cornerback Ellis Robinson IV left in the fourth quarter for the second straight game with a thigh and hip problem, and receiver Craig Dandridge Jr. exited in the third with a hamstring that has bothered him for weeks. Peyton Woodring missed from 49 yards, his third straight game with a miss, the sort of thing nobody mentions after a 42-7 win and everybody remembers after a close one. Officials stopped play in the second quarter when Ole Miss fans threw things onto the field. Smart said afterward it looked like ice to him and that it was interrupting a good game. Missouri comes to Athens next.
The Notebook
- AROUND THE COUNTRY: Notre Dame 31, Miami 24 handed the top-ranked Hurricanes their first loss. Utah beat BYU 28-20 in the Holy War, Tennessee rolled Kentucky 34-6, and Oregon beat Ohio State 41-28 for the Buckeyes' first three-loss season since 2011.
- NEXT UP: Missouri visits Athens off a 34-20 home loss to Texas that dropped the Tigers to 6-3 and 3-3 in the league. SEC leading rusher Jamal Roberts managed 66 yards against the Longhorns.
- SUNDAY LISTENING: Bulldogs Brunch airs live at 10 this morning with Jeff Dantzler, Kevin Butler and Eric Zeier, Georgia's athletic department said. Expect the word Oxford to come up.
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.
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