Georgia had Alabama, and then it didn’t

ATLANTA – There is never just one moment that turns a win into a loss, that rips a championship from your grasp, that creates a lifetime of heartbreak.

It’s a missed tackle here, a pass bouncing off a helmet there, a would-be interception that was bobbled so slightly and a face mask the referee didn’t see. It’s little moments of fate followed by big mistakes, a haze of preventable problems compounded by bad luck that will be a choose-your-own adventure of regret for years to come.

But there is only one takeaway for Georgia from Monday night, in its home state, with 37 years of championship frustration on the verge of being erased. The Bulldogs blew it.

A game that seemed like it couldn’t be lost is now etched in history as Alabama

26, Georgia 23, and nothing that happens for the rest of Kirby Smart’s long and probably successful career will hurt as bad as this one.

That’s probably the good news. “I’m still kind of stuck in the moment, but life goes on from here,” said Davin Bellamy, the Georgia linebacker whose overtime sack proved to be a historic tease after Alabama’s walk-off touchdown on the very next play. “Eventually I have to get over it. I left it all out there.

Second-and-26 makes it so hard.”

Second-and-26. Words that will live in Bulldogs infamy the way 28-3 does for fans of another football team in this state. Which brings to mind: Does Georgia know how to do sports collapses or what? Maybe there’s a reason fans in Atlanta think they’re cursed: It just keeps happening.

The Atlanta Falcons from 28-3 to devastation in the Super Bowl last year. The Braves coming away with only one World Series from 14 consecutive playoff appearances. The 60-win Hawks getting swept by LeBron James in the NBA Eastern Conference finals. These fan bases are not all the same, of course, but the evidence of some epically bad juju within these borders is mounting.

After blowing a 13-point lead, then getting an all-time lucky break when Alabama kicker Andy Pappanastos shanked a 36-yard field goal attempt with no time left in regulation, how do you lose on second-and-26?

Well, you lose because Alabama found a matchup with DeVonta Smith running past senior cornerback Malkom Parrish and the safety help from senior Dominick Sanders coming way too late to prevent a touchdown that will be replayed every year at the College Football Playoff, cutting deeper in to the Georgia psyche with each viewing.

“Second-and-26 with a kicker who can barely make it from the 20,” Georgia cornerback Deandre Baker said. “Things like that, you can’t ever forget.”

It was all unforgettable, every bit of it, including the nauseating feeling that had to creep into the stomach of Georgia fans the moment it started to turn.

Because this was all but over. This was such a thorough domination that Alabama coach Nick Saban had to throw out his game plan at halftime and play freshmen at quarterback and running back. This was Georgia, for much of the game, doubling up college football’s greatest dynasty in yards and appearing to be one play away from putting the hammer down for good and riding out of Mercedes-Benz Stadium into an epic party all over downtown Atlanta.

“We had it in our hands and we just fumbled,” receiver Mecole Hardman said.

There will, of course, be sour grapes, because that’s the only proper way to do Southeastern Conference anguish. For a few decades, probably, fans will swear that if the officiating crew had seen Isaiah Buggs blatantly grab the face mask of D’Andre Swift on Georgia’s first drive of the second half, the drive continues and Alabama doesn’t get good field position after a punt, freshman backup quarterback Tua Tagovailoa never gets comfortable and Alabama never comes back from its bleak 13-0 halftime deficit.

There were other calls and non-calls, too, that left Georgia players furious. A blocked punt to start the third quarter that was wiped away by a questionable offside call. There was a third-down pass with 9:34 remaining that was a slight bobble away from being a Georgia interception, which would have kept the lead at 20-10 and made the climb back so, so difficult for the Crimson Tide. There was an opportunity for Georgia’s defense to get off the field with a sevenpoint lead and six minutes left, but Parrish delivered a slight and unnecessary shove that kept Alabama going all the way to the end zone. And to top it all off, when Alabama tied the score on a fourth-and-4 touchdown with 3:49 left, replay showed the Tide should have been called for a false start.

Georgia isn’t going anywhere as a national factor, but its moment has been delayed again, and as close as it seemed Monday night, history tells us it can be a long climb back to the brink.

Leading 20-7 midway through the third quarter, with Saban having made the desperate decision to bench Jalen Hurts and play Tagovailoa, this should have been over. Tagovailoa had made a freshman mistake, making a bad decision that resulted in an interception, giving Georgia the ball at the Alabama

39-yard line. A touchdown all but ends the game. Even a field goal makes it extremely difficult for Georgia to lose.

Instead, the very next play, Fromm bounced a pass off an offensive lineman’s helmet, and as it caromed high into the air, the dread began for Georgia. That interception for Alabama changed everything. The Bulldogs never came close to scoring again in regulation, trying to hang on by their fingernails.

Instead, they got their whole hand chopped off.

“That’s a feeling you never want to leave a game with,” tight end Isaac Nauta said. “We missed opportunities.” Oh, were there opportunities. Georgia pushed Saban to the edge of conventional wisdom, forced him to scrap everything he’d done all season and freewheel it all the way to the end. And if Georgia had just stopped one more play in the fourth quarter, one more play in overtime, it would have been over then, too. That’s the reality of losing this game, in this stadium, in this fashion. And it will never go away.

“It sucks, and it’s heartbreaking,” linebacker Roquan Smith said. “All the work we put in knowing how close the game was and there’s not much we could do about it once it happened.”

On the night Georgia got closer to winning it all than at any time since

1980, anything except disaster would have sufficed. Then disaster arrived, reminding everyone that this is still Georgia and, until further notice, we shouldn’t expect anything less.