Georgia was dominating, they just scored a touchdown to extend their lead to 25, but apparently that wasn't enough.
Kirby Smart held up two fingers. Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett took the snap, flipped it to WR Adonai Mitchell on the reverse, who then found Darnell Washington in the endzone for the nifty conversion and a clean 50 points.
But why? Was it a twist of the knife in a blowout? Did Georgia just want to run a play they really liked? Is 49 an ugly number? Was Kirby just bored? The answer: None of the above.
"We went with it because it was by the book," Smart said after the game. "We felt that differential made it right. ... It was just by the book.
"The book said if they were able to score, their analytics were to go for two. We might as well save that play. It's one we've worked on for a long time. In football you don't save plays. You run 'em when you need 'em. We didn't know what was going to happen the next three to four series, so we executed it."
The logic is pretty simple: If a 2-point play is going to be attempted at any point -- which is what Smart was saying was going to be the case, the analytics go both ways. You're effectively deciding whether you want to be the team trying to execute the play or trying to defend it. There were similar decisions made late in LSU-Alabama earlier this season on both sides of the ball, a game that went to overtime with the Tigers winning on a walkoff 2-point conversion.
While fans watching might've been annoyed, that sentiment wasn't echoed by Tigers coach Brian Kelly, a man who leans heavily on analytics to make his own decisions in those situations. He wasn't sure what the analytics said regarding Georgia's choice, but it simply wasn't anything he was going to concern himself with.
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"I don't get too caught up in what other teams are doing," Kelly said. "It's not my job. ... It's my job to stop them, not to figure out whether they should go for 2 or not. So no, I really didn't give it much thought."
LSU didn't stop that play, and they weren't able to stop much of what the Bulldogs were doing. It was the first time the Tigers allowed 50 points to an opponent since they were blown out 55-17 by Alabama in the 2020 season.
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