On a defense with three projected NFL first-round draft picks in 2025, the guy who made the biggest plays in Georgia football’s instant classic, eight overtime win over Georgia Tech Friday night was hardly a blip on the Bulldogs’ recruiting radar.

Safety Dan Jackson’s punishing hit on Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King — “one for the ages” in the words of coach Kirby Smart — forced a fumble that set the Bulldogs up to score and force overtime.

Georgia Tech and some outside observers thought Jackson should have been called for targeting on the game-changing hit on King in regulation.

He wasn’t done. Jackson shot up the middle on a safety blitz and brought down King in the sixth overtime.

Pretty heady stuff for a guy that came to Georgia as a walk-on, right?

Jackson had offers out of North Hall High in Gainesville from Air Force and Division II Shorter.

He got accepted to Georgia and walked on with the team after reaching out to the staff. He’s now thriving in his sixth season with the Bulldogs.

“I was just excited for the opportunity ’cause I’ve always wanted to come here,” Jackson said Monday.

“We’re lucky to have Dan Jackson because we fell into him,” Smart said earlier this season. “We didn’t do one thing to earn Dan being here. He came to us, and he has made himself into a really good football player, but he did that through hard work. He’s proof that if you stick around and you have toughness and you’re smart, you’re going to play.”

Those same qualities can be found in running back Cash Jones, who also came to Georgia as a walk-on and also came up huge in big moments in the 44-42 win Friday.

Jones led Georgia in receiving yards with 53 on four catches, none bigger than a 25-yard touchdown on a wheel route on Georgia’s first play of the second overtime after Georgia Tech had gone ahead.

Jackson and Jones are two unlikely cogs for No. 5 Georgia, which plays No. 2 Texas on Saturday in Atlanta for the SEC championship.

On a team loaded with talent from elite recruiting classes stacked one on top another, they are the latest walk-on success stories for a program that had the ultimate in two-time winning national championship quarterback Stetson Bennett.

With the SEC planning to stay at 85 scholarships for football in 2025, walk-on spots could be trimmed to just 20 due to the start of revenue sharing and stories like Jackson and Jones could become rarer.

Jones was a New Mexico State commitment at one time, but the Brock, Texas, native didn’t get a sniff from Texas or Texas A&M. He’s admitted he’s shorter than his listed 6-foot, 182 pounds, but has thrived in a third-down role for Georgia.

He has more touchdown catches in a single season— three —than any Georgia running back since James Cook’s four in 2021. That was Jones’ first season with the Bulldogs.

“I think he’s a really smart football player and I think you never put that past someone,” quarterback Carson Beck said. “The intelligence in the game of football, it goes a long way. His understanding of defense and coverage, ‘Is a linebacker on me, is a safety on me? It it zone, is it man? How do I need to run this route?’ It helps a lot and it truly gives you an advantage when you can think that way.”

Beck says a running back like Jones against a linebacker or safety is a mismatch.

“He spent a year on the scout team as a receiver, guys,” Smart said. “There are clips of him running around out there against Kamari (Lassiter) and Kelee Ringo, like going one-on-one at receiver, and he’s catching deep balls. So, he’s like a jack of all trades.”

Jones’ role has expanded even more with Trevor Etienne battling injured ribs since the Florida game.

His profile rose early last season with the running backs shorthanded, but played sparingly in the back end of the regular season and didn’t play in the SEC championship game a year ago.

The 6-foot-1, 200-pound Jackson, on the other hand, has logged the third-most snaps — 581 — of any Georgia defensive player this season, according to Pro Football Focus. That’s with having to sit out the first half of the Florida game due to a targeting call at Texas.

Malaki Starks, who like defensive end Mykel Williams and linebacker Jalen Wilson are viewed as first-round talents, said he and Jackson “kind of feed off each other.”

“When I’m down, he picks me up and when he’s down, I pick him up,” Starks said.

Jackson had a significant role in 2021 including four starts but was a backup the last two seasons while battling a foot injury.

This year, he leads the team with two interceptions and is third in tackles with 56.

“I really believe the guy’s got a chance to play in the National Football League because he’s fast, he’s tough, and he’s smart,” Smart said after the win over Auburn in early October.

Jim Nagy, the Senior Bowl director, posted on X late in the game Friday that if Jackson wasn’t “a former walk-on the narrative around him as an NFL prospect would be way different.”

Jackson plans to pursue landing a spot in the NFL after this season.

“That was one of the goals I had for myself,” he said.

It may not be as much of a longshot as it once would have seemed.

Several local seats across Georgia will be decided Tuesday in runoffs that will take place after candidates for county and city offices failed to win the 50% of votes required to win the Nov. 5 general election outright.

A number of voting rights organizations are stressing the importance of Georgia residents making their way to the polls on Tuesday for races that’ll decide who takes office in January.

In total, 18 races are Tuesday’s ballots across the state, including multiple positions around metro Atlanta.

Polling places are open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters can find their designated precinct by visiting the state’s My Voter Page or by contacting their county board of registrar’s office.

Miatta Harris, a student organizer for Equity for All, said it’s important to vote in local elections that shape aspects of the public’s lives more directly than national office holders can. The Spelman College student said local officials make decisions about police reform, affordable housing, environmental policies and education funding that directly affect communities and residents.

“When people say my vote doesn’t matter, they’re falling for the biggest political trick in history,” Harris said. “The truth is local elections are often decided by just a few hundred votes. Your voice, multiplied by the young people in your community, can literally change who sits in city hall and what policies get passed.”

State Rep. candidates disputes electron results

The Nov. 5 general election also featured  presidential, Congressional and state legislative contests as a record 5.3 million Geogians cast ballots.

The winner of one state legislative seat remains unsettled after a candidate filed a petition requesting a new election be conducted. Sparta Republican Tracy Wheeler is challenging her loss in House District 128 that for now was determined by 48 votes in her loss to Democratic challenger Mark Jackson.

Wheelter filed a lawsuit last week that argues that her election should be overturned because ineligible voters were able to cast ballots while some eligible voters were blocked. The legislative seat represents portions of Baldwin and McDuffie counties and the entirety of Hancock, Warren, Glascock and Washington counties.

“Because the irregularities wrongly rejected votes, and illegal votes in the election exceed the margin of victory of 48, the election must be invalidated, and a new election held,” Wheeler’s attorney Jake Evans wrote in the lawsuit filed in Washington County Superior Court.

Georgia Republicans will have a 100-80 majority in the House after flipping two seats during last month’s election if current results stand. Democrats were unable to flip any seats in the state Senate, leaving the GOP’s 33-23 edge there intact.

Democrats were also unable to flip a string of House seats in the northern Atlanta suburbs that were seen as the most competitive this year, and some incumbents found themselves fighting for another term after last year’s court-ordered redistricting do-over left them in a precarious spot.

The government launched a bloody crackdown on protesters in the eastern European country of Georgia after the newly elected leader paused a years-long effort to join the European Union in what opponents said was turn toward Russia.

Demonstrations swept the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, for a fourth day on Monday. Crowds of protesters packed onto a square outside the city’s parliament waving Georgian and European Union flags. Police in riot gear descended, firing water cannons and tear gas, as protesters exploded waves of fireworks, according to videos posted by news organizations.

Outgoing President Salome Zourabichvilia, a Western-allied supporter of Georgia’s integration with Europe, begged European countries to help Georgia.

“We want our European destiny to be returned to us,” she told France Inter radio. “This is the revolt of an entire country.”

More: After talk of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine ‘in a day,’ Trump names peace envoy

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia had anything to do with Georgia’s distancing from Europe. Georgia is “moving rapidly along the Ukrainian path, into the dark abyss,” which could end “very badly,” he said on Sunday.

Dozens injured, hundreds arrested in protests

Dozens of protesters were injured in what international organizations have called a concerning crackdown on political protest.

Zurab Japaridze, a leader of the opposition Coalition for Change party in Georgia’s parliament, was briefly arrested on Monday amid a clash between police and fleeing protesters.

More: Charges of pro-Russia ‘pressure’ on voters in disputed Eastern Europe election

Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said 21 of its employees were injured during the clashes on Sunday night, including “severe head, face and body injuries,” due to the “illegal and violent actions carried out” by protesters near Parliament.

Authorities said a total of 224 people were arrested “petty hooliganism” and resisting arrest, as of Monday.

What triggered the protests?

Kobakhidze announced last week that Georgia would pause negotiations to join the EU and refuse any European budgetary grants until 2028.

“The end of 2028 is the time when Georgia is economically properly prepared to open negotiations for accession to the European Union in 2030,” he said on Thursday.

More: Georgia defies EU and ‘returns to past’ with Russia-style law that sparked mass protests

The U.S. criticized the move, with U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller saying “Georgian Dream has rejected the opportunity for closer ties with Europe and made Georgia more vulnerable to the Kremlin.”

Georgia is a candidate for EU status – it applied to join in 2022, and its plans to become part of both the EU and NATO are written into its constitution.

But the country is also a staging ground for competing Russian and Western interests, even more so since Russia invaded Ukraine and some Russians fled to Georgia to escape political repression.

The ideological clash deepened after Georgian Dream won an Oct. 26 parliamentary election with more than 53% of the vote. Election monitors raised concerns about pressure on voters and public sector employees and possible election irregularities.

Why did Georgia suspend European Union accession?

Kobakhidze said he suspended Georgia’s EU bid in response to pushback against an authoritarian Georgian law that passed in Georgia’s parliament in May, despite Zourabichvili’s efforts to toss it out.

It requires any organization in Georgia that receives more than a fifth of its funding from abroad to register as an agent of foreign influence.

Critics call it a near-exact duplicate of a law on Russia’s books that has empowered the Russian government’s broad elimination of political opposition and free speech groups.

Contributing: Reuters