Georgia bounces back from loss by handling Auburn, 31-13

ATHENS — The last time Georgia lost a game, the Bulldogs responded by stripping the hide from the bones of Florida State, 63-3, and the ‘Noles still haven’t recovered. So it was fair to expect that Georgia would stomp Auburn into blue-and-orange paste, and going by the scoreboard — Georgia 31, Auburn 13 — that’s pretty much what happened.

But Auburn didn’t get its reputation as the Great Ruiner of college football by rolling over and playing victim. The Tigers did just enough — particularly with a third-quarter touchdown drive that sent a ripple of tension through the crowd — to keep Georgia engaged, even as the Bulldogs hung touchdown after touchdown on the overmatched Auburn defense.

Auburn played its cleanest game of the 2024 season, but “clean” alone isn’t nearly enough against the locomotive that is Georgia.

There were murmurs in the tailgates all over campus and the bars and restaurants in Athens, the dreaded words “trap game” making the rounds amid concerns about Georgia’s tendency for slow starts and questions about Carson Beck’s consistency. This was exactly the kind of game the Bulldogs were right to fear, the latest installment of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry, featuring an unstable, unpredictable opponent that’s a few plays from being 5-0.

The trap, as it turned out, was being sprung a few hours to the northwest in Nashville, as Vanderbilt gave Alabama all it could handle. Cheers resounded through Sanford Stadium whenever Vanderbilt scored, as Dawg fans followed the game on their phones and watched replays during game breaks.

As has become tradition in 2024, Georgia started slow, grinding to an early touchdown but meandering through much of the rest of the first half. Auburn couldn’t take advantage, managing only a handful of chunk plays and a single first-quarter field goal in the first half.

Auburn’s key early miscue came late in the half. Pinned against their own end zone, down 7-3 with 1:52 remaining, the Tigers didn’t use up nearly enough clock. A foolhardy deep ball on second down stopped the clock, and Auburn gave the ball back to Georgia with 1:02 remaining in the half. Georgia needed only five plays and 45 seconds to thunder into the end zone and take a 14-3 lead that would hold up into halftime.

The Tigers showed a flicker of life in the second half, with Thorne engineering a six-play, 68-yard touchdown drive that drew Auburn within four points of Georgia’s lead, 14-10, with 9:45 left in the third. Just for a moment, Sanford Stadium grew uneasy, all those quiet fears aired during pregame tailgates starting to gain a little momentum.

Beck guided Georgia on two straight touchdown drives to effectively salt away the game, but some of the same questions that arose from the Alabama game remained unanswered against Auburn. Georgia still struggled to seal the edges against Auburn’s run game, and Beck struggled with mobility against Auburn’s pressure. Those weren’t game-wrecking weaknesses against Auburn, but against the behemoths looming on Georgia’s schedule, they could prove problematic.

Auburn, meanwhile, now falls to 2-4, 0-3 in the SEC, and while the record is nothing to admire, the effort in Athens was at least free of the mistakes that characterized so much of the Tigers’ early season. The all-time series now stands at 65–56–8 in favor of Georgia, and Auburn will have to wait another year to close that gap.