Nazir Stackhouse interception lifts Georgia against Missouri
ATHENS, Ga. — When they gab later on in the living rooms and the barrooms about this 2023-24 season when Georgia either won its third straight national title or did not quite win its third straight national title, they’re going to have to include the play that gave this invulnerable fortress of a stadium the kind of great-big boom that can sprout out of doubt.
They’re going to have to relish again the play that turned No. 2 Georgia’s 30-21 win over No. 12 Missouri on Saturday, the play that took those rare little shrieks of insecurity from the usual 92,746 at Sanford Stadium and replaced them with an outpouring tinged with relief. Luckily, they will get to dwell on a play that ranks among beloved American phenomena, an interception return by a 320-pound lineman, an act always cherished in a country that eats a lot and reveres the antics of those football players who have eaten a lot.
They will have to mention the sparkling personality of 6-foot-3, 320-pound senior Nazir Stackhouse from Stone Mountain near Atlanta, and they will have to giggle at how Stackhouse said Georgia speed trackers on the sideline had gauged him at 17 or 18 mph because they will have to recount Coach Kirby Smart’s reaction to that.
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“No chance,” Smart barked.
He did have a caveat.
Stackhouse might “hit 18 miles an hour on a bike or a car.”
Nobody will remember — or nobody should remember — how Stackhouse’s 44-yard interception return to the Missouri 5-yard line with 7:46 left actually got called back by a chop-block penalty, not that the roarers gathered around the famed hedges seemed to mind. That’s because what that play did was foil Missouri as it nibbled at a mere 27-21 deficit and nibbled near midfield. It became the game’s first turnover, and it set up freshman Peyton Woodring’s 48-yard field goal for a 30-21 lead and kept alive so many things.
Those would include Georgia’s winning streak (up to 26), its regular season winning streak (up to 36), its home winning streak (up to a program-record-tying 24), and its gaudy overall record since that unthinkable loss to underling Florida in early November 2020 (42-1). It got Georgia to 9-0 in a curious game in which it outgained Missouri only 385-363, a game in which Missouri (7-2) dared to fiddle with Georgian nerve endings with hellish defensive lineman Darius Robinson, fleet quarterback Brady Cook and badass kicker Harrison Mevis, that dude who hit the game-winning 61-yarder against Kansas State. It got Georgia to 9-0 and still vibrant for a fourth College Football Playoff bid even in a game after which Smart went to shake hands with fourth-year Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz and gave that half-shake of the head of a coach who feels grateful to withstand a struggle.
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“Eli does a great job,” Smart said. “That team’s hard to play.”
It’s hard to play for a second straight year, after it threw the biggest regular season puzzle into Georgia’s 15-0 campaign last year in Columbia, Mo., where Missouri led 16-6 at halftime and 22-12 early in the fourth quarter before fading, 26-22. If fans want to be fair the way fans occasionally do, they will have to mention in those future discussions how Missouri had become quite an opponent, even as that program probably most omitted when people sit up on beery nights trying to name all 14 SEC teams.
The Bulldogs of 2022 needed the deep savvy of Stetson Bennett-steered drives of 75 and 68 yards that night, then the Bulldogs of 2023 needed something more whiplashing. They needed Stackhouse to grab a strange little soft pass toward nowhere in particular from Cook on a first down from midfield, almost as if it squirted out, and they needed Stackhouse to venture out to the right sideline with the ball in his left hand, make a slight left turn toward glory and churn, churn, churn, going just a little bit James Harrison.
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“He threw it right in my hands,” Stackhouse would say. “It’s a dream come true for a defensive lineman. Obviously I didn’t score the touchdown” — and at this point he stopped to laugh — as “my legs get really heavy. It’s exciting for the first couple of seconds, and then, you know, when you’re on that stride and your body starts saying, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get it,’ you might as well tuck the ball in.”
In the last flurry of unexpected activity, Missouri offensive lineman Cam’Ron Johnson lunged from behind and tripped up Stackhouse, not that it mattered once the penalty was called and not that the penalty mattered when set against the fresh joy.
“Man,” Smart said of the play.
“Biggest play of the game,” Smart said.
“We told him after the game we had to get the piano off his back,” Smart said. “He thought he was going to score and didn’t realize how he had to run.”
What it all but ensured wasn’t the latest escape for Georgia, because Georgia with Bennett gone and Carson Beck at quarterback hasn’t really had to make what you would fairly call escapes. It has made plays to win the close games that have come along here and there — 24-14 over South Carolina after leading 17-14 after three quarters, 27-20 over Auburn after 17-17 after three quarters, 30-21 here after Missouri painted a nine-play, 75-yard drive that lessened its deficit from 24-13 to 24-21 with 12:50 left. That drive had Cook’s long roll and fling to Mookie Cooper on a third and 10, Cook’s pretty throw deep sideline to Mekhi Miller between defenders for 23 yards, Cody Schrader with a 12-yard touchdown run around the left edge as part of his 112 rushing yards and the muffled but recognizable sounds of slight worry on premises of the mascot, Uga.
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Georgia might not have wowed this year by unreasonable standards of wowing, and it’s pretty easy to pick at if you’re studying it too closely, and its schedule hasn’t been as gutsy as that of Ohio State, and it struggles without the injured Brock Bowers who had aimed to overtake the world from the position of tight end (much as has Travis Kelce). Still, it’s right there around the top with a full tank of victory know-how now streaming across the seasons. “They don’t get a lot of stupid penalties,” Smart said of his 12th-least-penalized team in the land. “And they believe in each other. They believe if they don’t win the last moment, they’ll win the next moment, and if you win enough moments . . .”
If you win enough moments, some of them might even entail 320-pound men running free and a crowd unable to hide its glee at the same, the kind of glee remembered easily in living rooms and barrooms.
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