Final: Miss St. 3 @Georgia 31

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Will Sammon‏Verified account @WillSammon

why Mississippi State was No. 1 in @SBN_BillC 's S&P+ ratings (if no preseason projection) & why he wasn't surprised

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Jason Butt‏Verified account @JasonHButt

Your primer for Saturday's game between Georgia and Mississippi State:

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 Will Sammon‏Verified account @WillSammon 36m36 minutes ago

Mississippi State's shortcomings have really been exposed in this one.

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 Jason Butt‏Verified account @JasonHButt 22m22 minutes ago

Rodrigo Blankenship's 49-yard field goal is good. UGA leads Mississippi State 31-3.

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 Jason Butt‏Verified account @JasonHButt 5m5 minutes ago

Mississippi State finally busts a big run up the middle.

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Georgia (4-0, 1-0 SEC) dominated the game from start to finish, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald was held to 83 passing yards and 47 rushing yards without a touchdown. This game occurred after Mississippi State (3-1, 1-1 SEC) blew out LSU a week ago.

As an offense, Georgia finished the game with 404 total yards.

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Michael Carvell‏ @Michael_Carvell

Report Card: Perfection was in Georgia's grasp versus Miss. State

ATHENS – It'd be hard to imagine Georgia playing any better than it did Saturday night against Mississippi State.

Maybe Terry Godwin doesn't drop that one pass late in the third quarter. Maybe Natrez Patrick and J.R. Reed are able to hold Nick Fitzgerald to less than a yard on fourth down and nix that one field-goal drive by Mississippi State. Otherwise, it was close to a perfect day.

You know a team played well when its head coach devotes as much time and energy to deflecting praise as he does providing it himself.

"We've got to do a good job managing our team," Kirby Smart said toward the end of his postgame question-and-answer session with reporters. "If you have a mature team, they'll handle things well. It does concern me because I do worry about those guys reading it and believing it. But I was around a guy for 10 years who did a good job of managing that."

That'd be Nick Saban, who has patented "the process" at Alabama.

Nobody's quite ready to start comparing Smart's second bunch of the Bulldogs to any of Saban's Crimson Tide juggernauts. But Georgia is exhibiting enough positive traits a quarter of a way into the season to make folks believe they may get to play Bama before this season is over.

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 Will Sammon‏Verified account @WillSammon 12h12 hours ago

that's a final: UGA 31, Mississippi State 3.

Georgia showed it is second-best in SEC.

Mississippi State? will detail that in a bit.

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Will Sammon‏Verified account @WillSammon 27m27 minutes ago

MSU's defense got fooled on a big play, but it also couldn't stop those passes over the middle and Nick Chubb

ATHENS, Georgia — Sometimes it can take just 10 seconds to knock a narrative down a few pegs.

It only took those 10 seconds for Georgia to take the ever-growing story line of the fixed and dominant Mississippi State defense and send all 11 of those defenders chasing a Georgia receiver 59 yards down the field.

On its first offensive play of the game, Georgia handed the ball off to running back Nick Chubb, he tossed it back to quarterback Jake Fromm and fooled the entire Mississippi State defense. Everyone bit, and the flea-flicker led to Terry Godwin being wide open for the touchdown.


The rest of the game didn't go much differently.

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Hugh Kellenberger‏Verified account @HKellenbergerCL

Mississippi State got down Saturday and needed Nick Fitzgerald to pull it out of the hole. He couldn't.

Fitzgerald is far from the only reason No. 19 Mississippi State lost 31-3 to No. 12 Georgia on Saturday at Sanford Stadium. He may not even be in the top three. But MSU was down 14-0 nine minutes after kickoff and Georgia's junkyard dog of a defense denied any threat of a running game all night, and that's the kind of situation where your quarterback has to be able to step up and pull you back into a game.

Which Fitzgerald really has not been able to do during his season-plus career as MSU's starter, at least not with his arm. He is now 2-4 in Southeastern Conference games when he threw at least 29 passes.

Against Georgia, Fitzgerald threw it exactly 29 times, tying a season-high. The problem is he completed only 14 of those attempts, for 83 yards. That's 2.86 yards per attempt, and if you're not familiar with the stat you'll have to trust me on this: that's abysmally low.

"There were a couple of dropped passes and a missed throw here or there or two, but I thought (Fitzgerald) did OK getting us to the right reads and checks at times," coach Dan Mullen said. "He missed a couple of things, he over-managed some things. We'll look at it. We need to make some more plays down the field."

Said Fitzgerald: "We didn't get a ton of plays today, a ton of chances to go downfield."

Again, it's not totally on him that this was the case. His receivers did not make plays on throws into tight coverage (which, against Georgia, seems to the only type of coverage), and it's glaring that Mississippi State's biggest weakness overall when it has the ball is the lack of a No. 1 receiver. Right now, Dan Mullen would probably settle for a really good No. 2 (Donald Gray was once the latter and was supposed to be the former, but he had two catches for 13 yards Saturday and has 108 yards receiving through four games).

"I don't think we won one 50/50 ball day," Mullen said.

[twistitup]

Chaney?