A freshman is Georgia’s biggest weapon in the passing game. He’ll be vital in the Orange Bowl
The Georgia Bulldogs’ X-factor in its passing game is a true freshman tight end from Napa, California, who wasted little time bursting onto the scene for one of the Southeastern Conference’s top teams.
And it didn’t take long for Georgia coach Kirby Smart to realize he had a gifted player in Brock Bowers.
“When we recruited him, I thought he was different than a typical freshman,” Smart said Wednesday ahead of No. 3 Georgia’s College Football Playoff semifinal game against No. 2 Michigan on Friday at the Orange Bowl. “This was a guy that would put his phone up and go run up a mountain or a hill out in Napa and sprint up the hill and back down the hill and send video of it. He was wired differently.”
The result? Bowers has started 12 of 13 games and leads the Bulldogs with 47 catches, 791 yards and 11 touchdowns — the final two are already single-season records by a Georgia tight end. He was a semifinalist for the John Mackey Award, which is given annually to college football’s top tight end.
He has topped the 100-yard mark in four games this season, including a 10-catch, 139-yard performance against Alabama in the SEC Championship Game and a 101-yard, two-touchdown effort against Kentucky.
“When you combine good size and speed with great work ethic, you tend to get a good player,” Smart said. “But we felt pretty good that he was a special player while we were recruiting him, and then during the spring he made some flash plays that we knew he was going to be a good player.”
And he’s certainly on Michigan’s radar heading into Friday’s semifinal.
“He’s a heck of a player,” Michigan defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald said. “I think the first thing you have to have is an awareness on where he’s at, and if he’s out of place you have to understand that. And then just understand the things that he likes to do from certain positions so we can help try to slow him down as best we can.”
They said it
▪ Smart, on Georgia being in the College Football Playoff after losing the SEC Championship Game: “The fact that you’re in the playoff, it makes the practices so much more energetic, the work ethic so much better, and coming off the loss at the SEC Championship, certainly disappointing, but it was also a little bit of an awakening for our guys of where the brutal truths and how can we work on those. You grow probably the most you grow in a year after a loss, and things are made a lot more relevant to you when you have those.”
▪ Michigan running back Hassan Haskins on practicing in the South Florida heat: “We just get in there and just try to get used to the weather and the humidity and all that and things like that. [The coaches are] telling us to drink water and stuff like that, so we’ve definitely been doing that, and we’re getting used to the humidity and the heat.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 2:27 PM.
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