Sports COMING UP SHORT Auburn girls win fifth state title — SWIM, 2B
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017
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Auburn linebacker T.D. Moultry kneels on the turf after the Southeastern Conference championship in Atlanta. Georgia won 28-7.
Georgia flips script in SEC Championship game, trounces Auburn
Grounded Johnson plays through pain, but Auburn run game struggles in SEC Championship game loss
NO. 6 GEORGIA 28 NO. 2 AUBURN 7 BY JOSH VITALE
BY JOSH VITALE
jvitale@oanow.com
jvitale@oanow.com
ATLANTA — There were no questions about what Auburn’s ultimate goal was this season. Head coach Gus Malzahn first said it at SEC Media Days in July. Players repeated it during fall camp. No one inside the Tigers’ locker room ever seemed to waiver, even after the disheartening Oct. 14 loss at LSU. Auburn wanted to win the SEC Championship. It came up one game short. On Saturday, in the Atlanta cathedral that is Mercedes-Benz Stadium, it was No. 6 Georgia celebrating a 28-7 victory over No. 2 Auburn and the program’s first conference title since 2005. The Tigers entered one win away from becoming the first two-loss team to qualify for the College Football Playoff. Fates won’t be decided until Sunday, but it appears likely Auburn will have to watch Georgia claim the berth it fell short of securing. “Obviously, we’re hurting right now. Got a bunch of hurting coaches and players in the locker room,” Malzahn said during his postgame press conference. “But congratulations to Georgia. They were better than us. They outplayed us and outcoached us, and that starts with me.” Auburn (10-3) came into the game with every bit of momentum. It had beaten two No. 1-ranked teams at Jordan-Hare Stadium in a span of just
rendering 30 unanswered points. On Saturday, quarterback Jarrett Stidham capped a game-opening, 10-play, 75yard drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Nate Craig-Myers that put the Tigers ahead 7-0. Auburn went on to total just 184 yards over its final 10 drives of the game, all of them scoreless. This time, it was Georgia that went on a scoring run, closing the game with 28 unanswered points. “They did a great job of bringing a lot of different looks, switching up the coverages, blitzes, fronts, I mean, everything,” Stidham said. “They did a great job tonight of switching it up and
ATLANTA — There was no bigger harbinger of Auburn’s rout of then-No.1 Georgia three weeks ago than what it was able to do in the run game. The Bulldogs came to Jordan-Hare Stadium on Nov. 11 having not allowed any team to rush for more than 183 yards or any individual back to reach the century mark. The Tigers gashed them for 237 yards on the ground, with 167 of those coming from Kerryon Johnson. But No. 2 Auburn was not able to have that same type of rushing success in a 28-7 loss to No. 6 Georgia in Saturday’s SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Not near it. Johnson, playing through a shoulder injury suffered late in last week’s win over Alabama that left him as a “game-time decision” in the days leading up to the championship, rushed just 13 times for 44 yards and lost a crucial fumble. Kam Martin rushed four times for 20 yards, Eli Stove added three rushes for 19 yards and Malik Miller carried twice for 6 yards. Add in quarterback Jarrett Stidham’s 25 yards on nine attempts, and Auburn finished the game with 114 yards on the ground — its lowest total since a 38-yard output against Clemson in Week 2. “They did some different things. They played well. I fumbled. First fumble of the year. That never happens,” Johnson said. “We just did things to harm ourselves. They
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Auburn’s Kerryon Johnson (21) fumbles the ball in the second half against Georgia in the 2017 SEC Championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Inside: » Extra coverage from Georgia’s win over Auburn: Pages, 6-7B » More college football: Page, 11B
three weeks to get to this point. One of those wins was a 40-17 shellacking of Georgia (12-1) just three weeks ago. Saturday marked the seventh SEC Championship game since 1999 that has featured a rematch between teams that played in the regular season. Auburn is just the second team to win the first and lose the second. The game followed a nearly identical script. On Nov. 11, the Bulldogs marched down the field to score an opening-drive touchdown before sur-