Georgia
Texas ran all over Clemson, and the Longhorns may have Georgia to thank for that
AUSTIN — Yeah, yeah, sure. Georgia has beaten Texas twice already this year. The Bulldogs have done their best to ruin a perfectly good season on the Forty Acres. If not for Georgia, well, Texas wouldn’t even have had to go to work Saturday.
But hear us out: Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
After all, Texas got another Bevo Walk, one more time for an experienced senior class to soak in the atmosphere of 101,150 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. It gave the Longhorns one more opportunity to hear Matthew McConaughey get weird on the sound system. Most importantly, it gave the Longhorns another opportunity to get back to what they actually do really well: Run the damn ball.
In a 38-24 win over Clemson in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Texas outmuscled and then outran the overmatched Tigers defense for a season-high 292 yards and four touchdowns. Texas will take its regrouped ground game back to Atlanta, site of the most recent loss to Georgia, to play Arizona State in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl on Jan. 1.
Texas split things up pretty evenly: Quintrevion Wisner and Jaydon Blue each got two. Wisner did most of the hard running early; Blue — who had touchdown runs of 38 and 77 yards, the latter coming after Clemson had closed within one score — did the speed work. End of the night: Blue had 146 yards, Wisner, who didn’t play in the fourth quarter to rest a knee he “banged” late in the first half, had 110.
It was, in a lot of ways, just like coach Steve Sarkisian drew it up after Georgia held the Longhorns to 31 yards 10 days ago in a 22-19 overtime loss in the SEC Championship.
“One of the first bullet points I put up in the room was ‘run to win,’” Sarkisian said of his workweek message to his team. “We needed to run to win this game. And we’re going to need to run the football to advance in these playoffs. That’s what playoff football is about. So, we really challenged them on the run game.”
They responded. Just as they did the first time Georgia beat them back in October and held the running game to 29 yards. Texas followed that up with three 200-plus-yard games on the ground in the five games ‘twixt Georgia meetings.
Against Clemson, it was important to demonstrate that the issue was just a Georgia thing. Clemson was the perfect opponent for Texas to reestablish the ground game. Clemson entered the playoff ranked 73rd in the country — last among the playoff teams — in run defense. There was a weakness to exploit and eventually a message to send to the rest of the remaining playoff field: Sarkisian may have been a quarterback once and may remain a quarterback at heart, but Texas will run to win. Arizona State, consider your Sun Devils warned.
“The run game is really important for us on a lot of levels,” Sarkisian said. “One, our offense is better when we can run it, because then the balance can really kick in for us. It opens up a lot that we do. When we can run it effectively, teams have to prepare for a lot when they’re getting ready to play us.”
On Saturday, this is how effective Texas’ running game was: It literally didn’t matter who was where on the offensive line. Texas got left tackle Kelvin Banks, who missed the SEC championship game, back Saturday, but lost center Jake Majors and right tackle Cameron Williams on successive plays late in the first half. Guard Hayden Conner moved over to center and Cole Hutson moved into the offensive line, which was jumbled to say the least. Worked good enough to spring Blue on a 77-yard TD run through the right side three plays after Clemson had cut a onetime 28-10 lead to 31-24. On both of Blue’s long touchdown runs, Ewers had checked off a pass play after reading the Clemson defensive set.
It was also good vindication for Blue, who dealt with issues holding on to the ball earlier this season, and had fallen into more of a secondary role to Wisner.
“The guys up front, those guys paved the way for me,” Blue said. “We made a big emphasis that we’re going to have to run the ball in order to win this game.”
For that, Texas can somehow thank Georgia for the reminder.
So far, so good: See photos from Texas’ first-round College Football Playoff win over Clemson in Austin
Find more Texas coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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