The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Georgia destroys TCU in the National Championship

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to Georgia’s blowout win over TCU in the National Championship game. Joel discusses his experience at SoFi Stadium for the game and describes what he saw in the lead-up, during the actual game, and the aftermath. Then, Joel shares his thoughts on what this means for Kirby Smart, Stetson Bennett, and the Georgia football program now that the Bulldogs have won back-to-back titles. Georgia is now definitively the top program in the country and they showed why in their win over the Horned Frogs. Finally, Joel explains why a blowout result like this is far less likely to occur in an expanded CFP, and why it is better for the sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome into the show, everybody. It is the Joel Klatt show. I am Joel Klatt. Special recap edition of the National Championship game. How about that? That was an absolute beatdown. Georgia goes back to back. They are the national champion after a 65-7 win over TCU. Man, lots to get into, obviously. And there's not a ton from the actual game. I do have some observations. But we'll get into some overarching topics as well. First and foremost, thanks for George. joining us as always. You can follow the show at Joel Clatt show. You can follow me on Twitter at Joel Clatt. Instagram at Joel underscore Clat. You can follow us along. Anything that we do is always posted and you can kind of interact with us there as well. Okay, so let's get into it because Georgia is the king of college football and rightly so. And I'm just going to start with

something that I said September 22nd of this year after Georgia had played so impressively through three weeks against Oregon, then an FCS, what was it, Sanford or something, who knows and who cares? And then they had just beaten South Carolina, basically shut them out when South Carolina scored their only touchdown late in that game in the fourth quarter. This is what I said.

Is it Georgia or the field? And judging by the way that they've played early this season, a conference game, a ranked matchup against Oregon, I'm taking Georgia. If you force me to bet, Today, my own money in a Georgia versus the field equation, I would bet on Georgia. They have looked that good.

So it comes down to this. When Georgia plays well, they were head and shoulders above everybody else. Okay, the only games that they were even close in, basically Missouri and Ohio State, they didn't play their best. Obviously against Missouri and even against Ohio State. No one would say that they played their best football. Now, did the Buckeyes have something to do with that? Yeah, obviously they did.

Bennett didn't play well in that game. But when they were playing well, they were not going to get beat by anybody this year. And it was pretty clear early. And I think a lot of us were hoping that this was going to be a good game and trying to talk ourselves into why TCU could possibly remain close. But in the end, this team is the best team in college football. They have been for two years.

and Kirby Smart is building something that is very special there in Athens, Georgia. All right, let's go into the game a little bit. Let's start with this. There's going to be a lot of talk about, yeah, TCU didn't deserve to be here. That's not the case in my estimation. I think they obviously earned their right to be here. Obviously, the Fiesta Bowl win over Michigan kind of validated that. But as was the case in their win over Michigan, I think that you've got to look at this

in terms of probability. And what was the probability that we were going to get the outcome that we saw in the semifinal? And then what is the probability that we were going to get the outcome that we got in this game, the national championship game? And here's what I come down on this. I think that we got the one out of ten game in both of those cases. All right. So let's just play this out.

If Georgia or excuse me, I'm sorry, if TCU and Michigan were to play 10 times, Don't we think that Michigan would beat them probably seven and a half, eight times out of ten? Yeah, probably. And guess what? We got one of those moments where TCU was going to win the game. Everything went their way. They played really well, in particular on defense at times inside the 10-yard line. And they got the win.

And good on them. That's why you play the game. Well, what we got in this championship game was what I feel like was the one out of 10 where Georgia just stomps them. Okay, so Georgia probably is going to beat TCU 9, 9 and a half times out of 10. Okay? And maybe there was a scenario where you could say, if the right things happen, TCU could beat Georgia. I think that that's a very narrow path, a very narrow path.

Having said that, I don't think that Georgia is going to beat TCU 65 to 7 every single time that they play. So we got kind of a one out of a 10 moment in this national. championship game. But that doesn't diminish the season that TCU had. It doesn't diminish any of the accomplishments that that team has had this season. Doesn't diminish Max Duggan or any of their coaching staff or anything along those lines. I just think it was kind of the one out of 10 deal. And here's the problem. I could sort of sense it immediately once I got to SoFi Stadium. Let me tell you why. I've been around college football and really just football in general my entire life,

but certainly college football for the better part of my life and been fortunate enough to be able to call big games for a long time for basically 10 years now. I've been around a lot of big games, all levels. And in most big game environments, there is a palpable, aggressive tension between the two teams. there's a lot of trash talking going on in warm-ups, in particular when one team is leaving the field

and they've got to leave kind of like around the other team and head to their tunnel. And you can see it, right? And there's this tension and everyone stops and they kind of jaw at each other and they are fired up and ready for a fight. And the problem was, is tonight at SOFI, it wasn't there. It wasn't there.

So I was there. I was able to take, you know, some friends of mine and my brother-in-law, my nephew is actually a freshman at TCU, a rough game for him. And we were sitting there and I'm watching the warm-ups. And there's about 30 minutes left before kick and TCU heads into their locker room for the final time before they come out to play. And there was none of that interaction. The teams didn't even look at each other. And I understand, like there's not a natural rivalry.

They're not going to jump up and down like it's like Georgia and Bama about to play each other. or whether it's like Ohio State of Michigan or Oklahoma and Texas. I understand it's not a rivalry game. But there wasn't an aggressive tension there like you should feel for a national championship. And right then I thought to myself, I don't love the body language of TCU. To me, it was a team that seemed to be happy to be there at that moment. And this was about 30 minutes before the game. And I thought to myself, this is bad news.

because on the opposite end of the field is Georgia, and you could tell they are ready. They are talented. They were relaxed. They were confident. And they went out and played as such. And they played one of their better games of the season, in particular to their quarterback, Stetson Bennett,

played one of the better games he's played all season long. And I just did not sense the same vigor from that TCU team like we've seen during the course of this year. They seemed tight and tentative, and then they played like it. And quite frankly, they felt a little, even from the stands, overwhelmed, even before the opening kick. Now, maybe that's not fair, but that's just what I felt. That's just an observation from the stands. Sitting there watching that team, knowing that team, knowing the type of fight that they have

and the type of grit and competitive spirit that they have shown all year long, And it just kind of wasn't there. It just kind of wasn't there. And that manifested itself early in the game. So you can point to a lot of different things of like why the game went the way it did. But I think it's interesting watching it from the stands and you can kind of see things materialize, even in a different way than what I'm calling a game in the booth. And certainly different from when we're all watching a game at home.

I will tell you, though, that, like, the very first snap, granted, it was a false start, excuse me. So the first snap that TCU has on offense, Duggan scrambles away, and you can see it open up. I mean, it's there. Savion Williams breaks open behind the secondary. my angle, I can see Savion Williams, he's breaking open, and I see Doug and see him and like go to throw the ball. And so from that vantage point, and I have this, and I'm fortunate enough to have this every single Saturday, you can kind of see the play materialize and you think to yourself, all right, that's a big play. And you start asking for replays and everything.

So I just said, I was like, ooh, big play. Because that's the way it felt. Like college players, in particular at this level, they make that play. And he overthrew him. I was like, yikes. Not a good omen. Not a good omen. They would go on.

Next series seemed to have a big open hole right there for Demarcato. It's like, oh, he's going to gain about 10. Bam, it closes quickly. They had a couple of little swing screens or a little like outside screens where they're trying to get guys the ball on the outside. It looks like, oh, they've got numbers. Bam, closes quickly. the Georgia defense is just hyper fast. They're physical.

They tackle well. They're always in position. They had a great game plan. Their coaching staff, you can tell, was experienced. They knew how to attack TCU, both in their past protection and in what they were doing in their run game. And it was overwhelming. It was overwhelming from the start,

and you could kind of see it materialized. Now, that being said, there were glimmers of hope for TCU in that game, the second series that Georgia has offensively, they go down, march down the field, kind of like they did all night long, but they marched down the field. And then TCU was able to hold them to a field goal. So you're thinking to yourself, okay, like it's 10-0. Maybe we've got a game. It's looked pretty easy for Georgia, but we've got a game if they can go down and score.

And they were able to do that. They got a big play on that drive, and they were able to go down and they stuck it into the end zone. And it's like, their fans are all excited. and you think to yourself, okay, like maybe we've got a game. Maybe they can get a turnover in the next couple of series. Maybe they can force a punt in the next couple of series. But then they go out there and it's 10-7, and the next scoring drive for Georgia was four plays and 70 yards.

Over. Over. Over. That Georgia team was on a mission. They had a great game plan. And at that moment, you had a very, abrupt realization, at least I did, and I think most people watching the game did, they're not stopping them. TCU's not stopping Georgia all night long. I don't know if they're going to start turning the ball over or get conservative, but based on the game plan that I saw in those first three series, it was over.

It was over at that moment. One of the things that they did a great job of, in particular when the game was, I guess you could say like in jeopardy or in question. was that they did exactly what I talked about last week, which was target Brock Bowers. He's the best player on the field. He was the best player on the field on Monday night. I think that was very apparent.

Seven catches, 152 yards and a touchdown, and he caught every one of the seven targets that they threw at him. He was the best player on the field. Here's my question. How is that your game plan if you're a TCU? How is that your game plan defensively? to allow Brock Bowers to be the focal point, not only to be the focal point,

but not be double covered, and go 7 for 152. That cannot be your... He's the best player on the field. The entire game plan should have been about Brock Bowers. You take away Stetson Bennett's best weapon in order to make Stetson Bennett uncomfortable. You have to do that.

If he can throw it to number 19 all day, what got it? A lot of guys could do that. So I didn't love the game plan from TCU defensively, and I loved what Georgia was doing offensively targeting him. And the reason I loved it is because they did make it difficult on the defense to know where he was going to line up. And we talked about this, by the way, in breaking the huddle last week,

and we showed it on film of all. the different ways that they line Bowers up in order to have him attack the defense. They line him out as a wide receiver. They flex him. They put him in line. They have him as a little flex H-back. He does all of these different things and he does them all really well. You can hand him the ball. You can throw him screen passes. You can send him right down the middle of the field. And he did all of those things. And he did them extremely well. My question is, how is he not double covered every single time? Every single defense. Like if somebody else beat you, I get it. And they did, by the way. Everybody beat TCU. But you can, you can sleep with that a lot better than

letting Brock Bowers get absolutely anything he wants when the game was in question in the first half. And was it really in question? I'm not sure. I'm just using that as a frame of reference there. When the game was not out of hand, Bowers was getting whatever he wanted on the field. That can't be your game plan in a championship environment. And that leads me to kind of the next observation, which was you could tell the coaching staff for TCU, very inexperienced in a moment like that. And Georgia's, they were not inexperienced. They knew exactly what they were doing.

They knew exactly how to go win that game. They knew exactly how to prepare, how to warm up, how to do everything, how to deal with the schedule, the game plan. And in a championship environment, look at the opponent and say, that piece, is not going to beat us. And guess what piece that was for TCU? It was Quentin Johnston. As soon as Kendry Miller was not available in this game as the running back,

there was one thing that TCU was going to be able to rely on, and that was their best player on offense, which is Quentin Johnston. And guess what Georgia did? Took them away. I thought that the coverage was brilliant on Quentin Johnston. I thought that the plan was brilliant. give Kirby Smart a lot of credit for what they do because it was very clear that Johnston was not going to be the reason TCU was going to move the ball up and down the field.

Every single time he split out, he was double covered. He was either double covered or there was a safety over top. They understood how to play defense in a big environment against a really good player. TCU did not. They did not understand how to adjust with their 335 stack defense against Brock Bowers. So that was very apparent. The inexperience from the TCU coaching staff, in particular on the defensive side,

and the experience from the Georgia coaching staff. And this is why Georgia is now running college football, is because they know how to do this, and they do it extremely well. Next observation from this game is, before we talk about Stetson-Bennett, because that's a more overarching conversation, Did anyone else realize it was 59 to 7 when Kirby's going for it on 4th Down and blitzing Max Duggan and like coming after him?

And I was like, man, this is ruthless from Kirby Smart. And part of me is like, man, is this necessary? Do you really need to do this? And then you know what? Like, it's a game. So you've got to go out there and play the game. If they're going to run their offense out there and you're going to run your defense out there, then it's like, hey, call a defense.

This is not an All-Star game. This is not a Pro Bowl. So Kirby's under no obligation to call the dogs off. No pun intended. And I think Sonny Dykes would probably agree with me on that. You know, he's got backups in on offense when he goes forward on fourth down. So it's like, listen, if you can't stop our backups, that's not my problem. if you're Kirby smart. And listen, I'm okay with that. I generally speaking, don't mind guys just

playing to the zeros. Now, if you're playing an FCS team or rubbing it in in some sort of way, I don't love that. But listen, this is a national championship game. In a lot of respects, Kirby wasn't trying to embarrass TCU, and this wasn't. wasn't anything about his hatred or vitriol for Sunny Dykes and the Hornfrogs. This was a moment in time, that fourth quarter, to put the entire sport on notice that we run the sport now. We run college football. If nothing else, that's what Kirby was saying in that moment.

It's that we don't care what the score is. we don't care what the week of the season is. We don't care what environment we're in. We run the sport. And if you're going to be on the field with us, you better buckle up. You better buckle up. Now, there are some teams that can do that, right? And they can buckle up and play a great game against them.

We saw it the previous week with Ohio State. But that's the message that he was sending. And I can't argue with that. I can't argue with that at all. Now, do I love seeing Max Duggan get, get blitzed when he's down 59-7? No, I don't love it. Listen, you're talking to a guy that got blitzed.

When we were down, I think it was like 70 to 3 in a Big 12 championship game to that great Texas team that won a national championship. And that ended in my career, by the way. You know, I got concussed. I wound up in the hospital. Great. I mean, that's, I was out there to compete. You know, like, what was Texas supposed to do?

Take it easy on us? Isn't that more embarrassing? I mean, 73 is pretty embarrassing. I'm lucky I don't remember it. So thank you very much. But, you know, that's kind of the nature of the game. Texas was sending a message to USC that day in 2005. And I think Kirby Smart and Georgia, they were sending a message to all of college football.

Georgia runs college football now. They have been the best team in college football for two straight years. Back-to-back national championships. Kirby Smart and Georgia have passed Alabama. Alabama's current run is the best run that we've ever seen in college football. I don't think that we're going to see it equaled. Having said that, if you take more of a micro outlook of what we're seeing in the last 18, 19 months in college football, Georgia is the preeminent program in the sport now.

They run the sport. Everybody's chasing the Georgia Bulldogs. And in a lot of ways, that fourth quarter in those decisions, that was Kirby announced. that to the world, to college football. We run the sport. You come out here against the dogs, you better buckle up. If you beat us, we'll tip our caps. But we're not going to lay down and we're not going to take it easy on you.

Why? Because we run the sport. And I agree with them. And they do. And for the better part of the year, if we're honest with ourselves, and you heard me talk about it there in September, we kind of knew Georgia was going to be this team pretty early after their win against Oregon, after they're win against South Carolina,

which, by the way, in hindsight, looks even better with the way South Carolina finished the season with wins over, what was it, Clemson and Tennessee. I think it's pretty obvious, and this is going to ruffle some feathers, in particular in Ann Arbor. But our assumption most of the year was that there were three teams that were the best teams in college football. Georgia, Ohio State, and Alabama. Now, Tennessee and LSU beat Alabama and Michigan beat Ohio State. And so you've got to give those teams a ton of credit. And if Tennessee could have taken care of business against South Carolina,

Tennessee would have been in the playoff, all right, even after losing in Athens to the Georgia Bulldogs. But if we're really looking at this and we say to ourselves, listen, Michigan probably has a bit of an outlier game against Ohio State. Now, they're going to cry foul on this opinion, but they were an underdog for a reason. And then we saw Ohio State when they were actually playing well and what they were able to do against Georgia. Now, they didn't beat Georgia, and that's why Georgia is running the sport right now. But these teams, and I guess, like, let's even include Michigan, because their worst game obviously happens in the semifinal. there's not a lot of teams that can even play with Georgia when they play like they did on Monday night.

That's the level that they're at. Like, this Bama team probably doesn't beat this Georgia team this year. This is the best team in college football. They have replaced Bama as the benchmark. They are the benchmark. And everyone else is chasing them, everybody, from Ohio State to Bama themselves, to Michigan, to TCU, to everybody else. Everybody is chasing the Georgia Bulldogs.

Let's get into Stetson Bennett. Okay. Stetson Bennett is going to go down as one of the best big game players in college football history. There's not many guys that can say that they've won a couple of national championships. Leinert can say it. What is it? A.J. McCarran. I know people claim that like Tebow.

won two national championships, but really, if we're honest with ourselves, Chris Leak won one of those as the starter. Not a lot of people, not a lot of quarterbacks have won two national championships. And so we are forced to at least talk about Stetson Bennett's place in college football history. I think that's incredibly difficult to do. What do we do with Stetson Bennett's place? I think it's one of the more difficult conversations that I can remember in the sport. Because how often is it that we get a guy like Bennett that's right place, right time for a roster and a coach in a time in college football where he's able to win two national championships? And yet none of us believe that he would win a quarterback battle over. frankly, any of the other top five, six players in college football currently, or any of the other Georgia quarterbacks from the last 10 or 15 years.

Do you honestly believe Stetson Bennett would win a quarterback battle over Aaron Murray? I don't. Do we honestly believe that Stets and Bennett would win a quarterback battle over Justin Fields even? do we really believe that Stetson Bennett would win a quarterback battle over Matt Stafford? No. No. And yet, he's going down as the most successful quarterback in Georgia history, period. One of the most successful quarterbacks in college football history.

This guy's never getting in the college football Hall of Fame. and it's just an incredibly difficult placement in the history of our sport. Like, do I think he's a great player? No. I know that that sounds abrupt and frank, but I don't. I think he played really quality ball with a great team in key moments. And by the way, I'm not trying to minimize him at this point. I'm just saying like, it's a tough placement. It's a really tough placement.

And this guy is going to be alleged. in Georgia circles forever and rightly so. And this guy, you know, has been huge in some of the biggest moments for a really storied program at the most important position. And that's, that should not be minimized. But I think it's really difficult to start talking about like, is Dutson Bennett one of the best players in college football history? No.

Is he one of the best players in Georgia history? No. he's one of the most successful. He's the most successful quarterback to ever dawn that uniform, period. Period. But like, he's not Herschel Walker. He's not David Pollock. Those guys were three-time All-Americans, you know?

So, like, it's just really, it's really tough. And now we're faced with this question of, like, how important is the quarterback position? in college football. See, I would argue that it's paramount. And yet Georgia is trying to prove me wrong. The last two quarterbacks to win national championships, or excuse me, the last two quarterbacks to win multiple national championships, A.J. McCarron and Stetson Bennett. Like, do we think they're even in the top 10 of quarterbacks in college football in

the last 10 years? Probably not. But that doesn't minimize what they were able to accomplish in terms of the success that they led their teams to. All right. And it pays dividends to be a great leader and to play within the system and to do all the things that Bennett was able to do in big moments against great teams. And let's not forget, the guy is ancient, right?

So like, he's 25. I mean, it's still wild for me to think about the fact that he's, he's 25 years old. Him and Hendon Hooker are like, they're borderline retired already. So it's just a fascinating case study. Stetson Bennett, you had a wonderful career. You will go down as the most successful quarterback in Georgia football history. But it's still a very difficult placement in terms of where do we place him amongst the legends of the game? That's just a – it's hard to include him.

It's really hard to include him, even with some of the numbers that he was able to put up. in this national championship game. Last thing that I want to talk about is just more general in terms of college football. And I've got a lot of people texting me and talking about like, hey, this is not a good look. 65-7. Like, we can't have this. Well, I do think we're going to enter an era in which a result like this in a championship game is going to be almost, impossible.

Let's just walk through that. When you start to put layers as in an expanded playoff where there's four rounds now, and even if you get a buy like TCU would have this year, you've got to go through two games in order to get to the championship. Those layers will weed out a team that could have a potential outcome like this, like Monday night, like TCU had against this Georgia team. If there's an expanded playoff, will we get a TCU over Michigan? Yes.

And I think that we might get an outcome like that maybe every single year. But what you will avoid is a team getting themselves into this moment like TCU was able to based on a lot of different things that happened, like Tennessee losing a second game, Alabama losing two games. So like all of a sudden now, TCU is kind of included. Now they're 60 minutes away where a one out of 10 outcome against Michigan. Michigan puts them into a national championship game in which they're overmatched against Georgia. There's no other way to put it. So I just think that more layers is going to prevent the blowout in the championship. And yet it's going to increase the odds that we get a game like TCU over Michigan,

the one out of 10 game, which all of us loved in the playoff semifinals. So again, like I've been a proponent of this expansion. I can't wait for the expansion to happen. obviously it doesn't happen next year. It happens the year after that. And I think that it will fix what we saw on Monday night. I just, I don't see a world in which a team can go through those layers, even if they get a buy, going through two games, a quarterfinal and a semifinal, and winding up in a championship environment in which they are as overmatched as TCU was against Georgia. I don't think that that's feasible. So you can fix the championship game while,

getting the benefits of a potential one out of 10 outcome like we saw in the TCU Michigan game in the previous rounds. You'll see that in the first round. You'll see that in the second round. And then they will begin to be weeded out before we get to a place where we're crowning a champion in the national championship game. That's going to do it for tonight. I know that there's a lot more that we could probably talk about. And so we will. Stay tuned this week because I will be bringing you my way too early top 10 for next season in college football. And even better, I'm going to start throwing out some tiers of teams who maybe we could expect to take huge jumps like we saw from TCU from five wins to a national title game appearance.

Like USC and the jump that they made, like Washington, the jump they made. Maybe Colorado's going to be on that list. I don't know. But I'll give you some tears as well as the top 10. That's coming this week. so make sure to stay tuned and come back and make sure you're checking out what we've got going on on the Joel Clatt Show. You can follow us on any of the social medias at Joel Clatt Show. You can follow me personally at Joel Clat on Twitter, at Joel underscore Clat on Instagram. Remember, please subscribe to the podcast and then go ahead and rate and review us.

That always helps and we appreciate your feedback as always. Thanks for listening. And again, we will be back. this week with my way too early top 10 for 2020. Thanks for listening to everybody.