Oklahoma's championship performance wasn't enough in resurgent Georgia win

PASADENA, Calif. — This Oklahoma team was good enough to win a national championship.

But not against this Georgia team.

Not on this night. Not in a game where defensive stops were at a premium and the slightest mistakes became glaring errors.

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The Sooners’ offensive players might have written the team into song and verse if not for a night of historically bad defense, bungling special teams and suddenly conservative coaching. That’s a lethal cocktail in the College Football Playoff, when the stakes are high and the opponent is this good.

The outcome was a 54-48 double-overtime classic that sends Georgia to the national championship game next week and sends Oklahoma, in some ways, back to the drawing board.

“It’s tough to describe right now,” said Sooners coach Lincoln Riley, who ends his rookie coaching season at 12-2. “It’s a hell of a college football game, you know, an epic Rose Bowl game.”

Georgia was the better team on Monday night as a Rose Bowl classic between two college football titans became a can’t-turn-away, three-act stage drama that fans will remember for years.

Act I, Oklahoma bolted to a 31-14 lead right before the half. Act II, Georgia stole all the Sooners’ momentum with a series of OU errors and a punishing ground game. Act III, Oklahoma dramatically regained the lead, but couldn’t finish the deal.

Georgia's Sony Michel cut through the Sooners for 181 rushing yards and three touchdowns, while Nick Chubb pounded the Oklahoma defense for 145 yards and two touchdowns. The Bulldogs piled up 527 yards of offense, including 317 yards on the ground, breaking tackles a handful at a time and leaving Sooner tacklers grasping at air.

Michel and Chubb countered Rodney Anderson’s 201 yards and two touchdowns for Oklahoma. Anderson’s big night was needed, because Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma’s passing game were rendered average by good Georgia coverage and a great Bulldog pass rush. Mayfield, who spent all week battling flu-like symptoms, threw a season-high 12 incompletions (23 of 35) and, unable to consistently find open receivers (or overthrowing them), was sacked a season-high five times. He finished with 287 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.

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“Our kids are so resilient,” said second-year Georgia coach Kirby Smart. “They never stopped chopping wood. They kept fighting. They believed."

They believed a little more when the Sooners gifted them three points at the end of a first half that had been dominated by Oklahoma.

After Baker Mayfield caught a touchdown pass from wideout CeeDee Lamb with six seconds left to give the Sooners a 31-14 lead, Riley ordered a line-drive kickoff. Austin Seibert delivered one — but right into the hands of a front-line Georgia blocker; the play took no time off the clock and set up the Bulldogs at the Oklahoma 47. One 9-yard pass brought in Rodrigo Blankenship, who buried a Rose Bowl-record 55-yard field goal as time expired and cut Oklahoma’s lead to 31-17.

The mistake ultimately was catastrophic, as Georgia sent the game to overtime with a 2-yard run by Chubb with just 55 seconds to play in regulation. But just as bad for Oklahoma, it gave the Bulldogs a renewed fire and seemed to sap the Sooners.

Georgia took that momentum into the third quarter, where college football’s most explosive offense was suddenly rendered ineffective. The Sooners’ first five possessions of the first half produced 360 yards and 31 points, but Oklahoma’s first five possessions of the second half resulted in just 37 yards on four punts and an interception.

“We got a little one-dimensional,” Riley said. “I probably hung our guys out there a little bit too much, especially against a talented front.”

The Bulldogs took their first lead at 38-31 on Jake Fromm’s touchdown pass to Javon Wims early in the fourth quarter.

But that’s when the Sooners roared back to life. Mayfield engineered a sharp, 88-yard drive on which he threw an 11-yard touchdown to Dimitri Flowers, and then Steven Parker returned a fumble by Michel 46 yards for a touchdown that put OU up 45-38 with 6:52 to play.

The Sooners even forced a Georgia punt and seemed headed to Atlanta. But Riley played the next drive conservatively, and Oklahoma went three-and-out on its penultimate possession. A 29-yard punt by Seibert set the Bulldogs up at their own 41. This time it was the Oklahoma defense that played conservatively, laying back while Fromm, a true freshman, completed three passes for 48 yards, including a clutch 16-yard pickup to Terry Godwin on third-and-10. Chubb’s 2-yard touchdown tied it.

Mayfield took the Sooners nowhere on their last drive, and the Rose Bowl went to overtime.

After Blankenship’s field goal gave Georgia a 48-45 lead, Oklahoma also faced a fourth down on its first possession of overtime. Riley thought about going for it on fourth-and-1 from the 16, but called timeout and brought on Seibert to tie it. In the second overtime, Seibert’s 27-yard field goal was blocked by Lorenzo Cater, and Michel ended it two plays later.

Mayfield, the Heisman Trophy winner, threw into the end zone just once in the two overtime periods (it was intercepted, but the turnover was negated by an offsides penalty), and he didn’t throw downfield once on the Sooners’ final two drives of regulation.

It was odd to see college football’s most outstanding player so limited. As the game tightened up and the minutes wound down, Riley never put the outcome on Mayfield’s dynamic shoulders.

The Sooners played it safe, and it cost them.

“We were still plenty aggressive at times when we thought it was appropriate,” Riley said. “We’ve been able to win a lot of games around here, and hey, again, are there ones I wish I could have back? Sure. I’ve never had a game where there wasn’t. But there was never a time where we were thinking conservative.”

While Georgia returns home to play Alabama in an all-SEC national championship showdown, Mayfield and his senior classmates leave Oklahoma to an uncertain future. It’s never easy to replace a three-year starter at quarterback, especially one with three conference championships and a Heisman Trophy.

The Sooners’ streak without a national title now reaches 18 seasons, and the Big 12 Conference hasn’t had a title game participant since 2009, and hasn’t won it all since 2005.

This Oklahoma team was good enough to break those streaks. But not on this night.