Vanderbilt Swung First, Which Was Its Mistake
Written by Jarvis Prime on October 3, 2026
Evening Edition — filed after the afternoon news cycle.
GEORGIA MONEYBALL — Saturday, October 3, 2026
The Commodores hit Georgia square in the mouth on the opening drive, and then the Bulldogs scored 31 straight points and spent the afternoon making the case Kirby Smart made afterward.
ALBANY, GA — · By the RFA Sports Desk
Vanderbilt came to Athens on Saturday and hit Georgia first, which people have been trying to do for most of a decade with about the success of a man arguing with a mule. Jared Curtis was out with a bruised knee, so senior transfer Blaze Berlowitz started. He marched the Commodores 95 yards and finished it with a 60-yard touchdown pass to Junior Sherrill. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the score broke a Georgia defensive streak. Then Georgia scored the next 31 points. The final was Georgia 38, Vanderbilt 14, and it is not hard to work out who won the argument.
Afterward Kirby Smart told reporters that Georgia needed a physical game like this before the heart of SEC play, and that you have to "take as many punches as you give." He called it "probably the most complete game we've played so far." Coaches say that sort of thing the way my grandmother called a casserole "interesting," but this time the man had evidence. A team that had been winning by the length of Broad Street finally got hit first. It did not go looking for its mama. It went looking for the end zone, and it found it for the rest of the afternoon.
A team that had been winning by the length of Broad Street finally got hit first, and it did not go looking for its mama.
The snap counts tell you how. Georgia ran 64 plays, and the play-by-play tally, which is a text count and not film, had 31 runs and 33 passes. That is a 48.4 percent run rate, about as close to even as a football team gets without flipping a coin on every down. The Journal-Constitution's numbers point the same way. Gunner Stockton went 25 of 32 for a season-high 295 yards and three touchdowns, and Georgia ran for 176 yards on 34 carries. Whichever way you count it, Georgia had a run and a pass ready on every down, and Vanderbilt couldn't stop either one.
The Associated Press reported that Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens saw limited action because of injuries, and that opened the door for the backups. Bo Walker went through it five times for a career-high 71 yards. Most of us need more than five tries to do anything of note, and some of us are still on attempt one. Ellis Robinson IV added a fourth-quarter interception for good measure. Smart said afterward, "We got to get Peanut more touches," meaning Dwight Phillips Jr. When a coach's biggest complaint after a 24-point win is that he has too many good players to feed, the rest of the league should take note.
Georgia's postgame notes say the Bulldogs have scored 257 points in five games. That is the second-best five-game start in program history, one point behind the 1910 team's 258. Georgia is 5-0 for the seventh time in Smart's 11 seasons and 33-4 in SEC home games under him. Next Saturday the Dawgs go to Tuscaloosa, both teams undefeated, at 7:30 on ABC, and President Trump told a rally in Alabama on Friday that he'll be at Bryant-Denny. Whatever the 1910 boys had to deal with, I doubt it came with a motorcade.
The Notebook
- THE GATORS GOT LOUD: Florida ran for 302 yards and six touchdowns to beat No. 4 Ole Miss 52–28 last Saturday, went 4-0 for the first time since 2019, and jumped 13 spots to No. 8 in the AP poll.
- BAD WEEK FOR THE BLUEBLOODS: Hank Brown hit Reece Vander Zee from 16 yards out with two seconds left, and Iowa won 20–19 in Ann Arbor. Out west, Oregon backup Dylan Raiola threw for 289 yards and two touchdowns in a 41–27 win at USC after Dante Moore left with a concussion.
- TONIGHT'S BOARD: The desk calls LSU at minus 53.5 against McNeese a lock, and the same for the Hoosier Hayseeds at minus 24.5 against the Jersey Knights. BYU at minus 6 in Fort Worth is a coin flip.
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.
