Thirty seconds after the game clock ran out of time and the Georgia Bulldogs had officially trampled the Texas Longhorns 35-10, the stairways in Sanford Stadium were alive.
“Hey, what’s that coming down the track?”
“A mean machine in red and black!”
Voices boomed as fans filed out of seats, buzzing from yet another win over Texas and joining each other in a chorus of victory.
“Ain’t nothing finer in the land, than a drunk, obnoxious Georgia fan!”
But tucked away behind the east endzone, behind curtains separating the press table from an elevator lobby, the Longhorns were quiet and simmering in a loss that, at one point, had been just four points away from a comeback.
“I thought we played pretty good for three quarters; now we need to play better,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “We played hard, but the fourth quarter was, for lack of better terms, a disaster. We got beat 21 to nothing in the fourth quarter.”
What’s the most disappointing thing about this loss? It’s hard to decide with so many options.
Maybe it’s the way the potential from all season seemingly led up to this moment, or the roster, for the first time all season, was fully healthy.
Maybe it’s that this is the third defeat from Georgia in a row since Texas joined the Southeastern Conference. Maybe the disappointment was intertwined with the hope early in the third quarter — before a Georgia touchdown and a final kill shot in the form of an onside kick caused every fan in burnt orange to exhale the breath they were holding when the Bulldogs’ lead was extended.
Or maybe it’s the fact that this was just another showcase of Texas continually shooting itself in the foot.
“We handed it to them,” senior defensive back Michael Taaffe said. “Everything that we did was in our control. We messed up a lot of stuff, and you’ve got to look in the mirror first and realize what you could have done better.”
“Self-inflicted wounds” has been a topic of conversation all season, but it doesn’t get much worse than what happened on Saturday night.
Texas was responsible for nine penalties, which resulted in a loss of 58 yards. Four passes were dropped, three of which resulted in failure to gain a second or third-down conversion. And to top it all off, the Longhorns ran for just 23 yards on 17 attempts.
Georgia is notorious for its imposing defense and stifling interior, but it’s given up points to plenty of teams before that weren’t even in the top 10 — just look at unranked Mississippi State from a week ago with 21 points up on the board.
The biggest disappointment of this game isn’t an inability to overcome Georgia’s dominance. It’s not even in the crushed hopes and dreams of a playoff berth, because several of the guys still think a comeback is possible.
“Don’t lose hope. We’re not dead yet,” Taaffe said. “We’ve got two games to go, and focus on Arkansas, and (we) got a game after that, and then give it up to the playoffs to see who they let in.”
The disappointment is in the fact that this team has all the talent and potential to come out, if not on top, then at least better than where they are now. The Longhorns defeated themselves Saturday — and that’s something they have to live with through the next two weeks.
