Georgia’s annual “G-Day” spring game took place on Saturday with the Red team falling short against the Black team 21-13. Red consisted of the second-string defense and starting offense and special teams, while Black was the starting defense and backup offense.

The Dawg Walk with Jake Fromm, Justin Fields and Kirby Smart #GDay18 #Dawgs pic.twitter.com/toGcQsRkfc — Jonathan Perez WMAZ (@_JonathanMPerez) April 21, 2018

Attendance

Yet again, the players had a chance to play in front of a huge crowd despite an entire section of the stadium being under construction. The Bulldogs once again led the SEC in attendance for the scrimmage with 82,184 fans showing up to watch the game, making it the second largest crowd in Georgia spring game history (largest was in 2016 when 93,000 fans showed up to the game). Only the Nebraska Cornhuskers had a larger turnout this year with 86,818 showing up for their game. Coach Kirby Smart certainly appreciated the huge crowd as he said in his post-game press conference, “That was an incredible atmosphere…Great crowd.”

Close to 15,000 in Sanford Stadium already, says @JohnFricke. #GDay18 kickoff over two hours away. pic.twitter.com/AMx7cPn2ZO — 92.9 The Game (@929TheGame) April 21, 2018

Dang near full except blocked off end zone. Guessing 70 to 75. #GDAY18 pic.twitter.com/8KqpfGRGtq — Dawg4Life-Curt (@ALiferGaDawg) April 21, 2018

The QB Battle

This year’s upcoming quarterback battle has already been a matter of debate among fans and this afternoon’s game only made it a more intriguing matchup. Fromm struggled throughout the game, completing 19 of 38 (50%) for 200 yards and throwing a touchdown and two interceptions with one being a pick-six. He finished with an overall rating of 92.4. Fields, on the other hand, completed 18 of 33 (54.5%) for 207 yards with a touchdown and only one interception. His final rating was 111.2. You have to take the stats with a grain of salt as Fromm was facing a starting defense that looked scary, while Fields was facing a team of backups that looked good but are still just backups. Like coach Kirby Smart said, “I think that you all were sitting here last year; said a lot of same things we’re saying right now because the other guy was throwing against the 2 defense and he was throwing it pretty good.”

Stats aside, Fields mechanics and quarterback IQ were much more impressive. He was throwing crisper passes and making better reads. Before the half, Kirby Smart asked Fields whether he thought they should try to make the play to continue the drive or go short to set up the field goal. Fields wisely picked the setup and gave Brooks Buce a good look from thirty-three yards out. Buce missed the field goal (and his one other field goal attempt), but the setup play showed maturity from the true freshman quarterback. On the other side, Fromm’s two interceptions look bad enough, but there were a couple of other points where he could’ve been looking at more interceptions, including an instance where tight end Charlie Woerner broke up a catch. It is just one game and the quarterbacks were playing against two different levels of defense, but Fields played a superior game than Fromm, which will only stir up even more speculation as to which player will get the start against Austin Peay on September 1st.

Justin Fields (@justnfields) with an impressive touch throw to Matt Landers (@M_Landers1) who holds on for a great TD catch. #GDay18 pic.twitter.com/UrDnEAyBCC — Dayne Young (@dayneyoung) April 21, 2018

Tremendous throw from @justnfields to set up a Black team TD. #GDay18 pic.twitter.com/IXtkBgWlnM — Dayne Young (@dayneyoung) April 21, 2018

The Rest of the Offense

The Black team did not really have any stars on offense besides Justin Fields. Zamir White was technically on the team but is still recovering from an ACL tear so he did not get any playing time. However, a surprisingly good redshirt sophomore made an impact on the game as former preferred walk-on Prather Hudson ended up with five receptions for thirty-five yards and nine rushes for forty yards and a touchdown. Sophmore Matt Landers also had an incredible touchdown catch to go along with his two receptions for twenty-eight yards. On the red side, they were loaded with stars including Riley Ridley, who led the game in receiving yards with two receptions for seventy-two yards and had the lone Red touchdown on a fifty-seven yard pass from Jake Fromm, and Brian Herrien, who recorded four receptions for forty-four yards and five rushes for thirty-four yards. Red also had kicker Rodrigo Blankenship, who picked up where he left off last season by going two of two on field goals from forty-one and thirty-five yards out. Rushing wasn’t as big a focus this year as the teams only combined for ninety-three rushing yards. Smart said, “Everybody will be asking me about rushing yards or do we have a rushing problem, but if you didn’t watch that game closely, you will realize there was not an intent to rush the ball a bunch, in which we think we have the capabilities of doing that; that’s not the purpose of our spring game. It’s to throw the ball, catch the ball and gain confidence in the passing game.”

Defensive Dominance

The starting defense really helped dominate the game for the Black team as they came up with three interceptions from William Poole, Deandre Baker, and Richard LeCounte with Baker taking his thirty-two yards the other way for a defensive touchdown. D’Andre Walker came up with two sacks, while Tae Crowder and Jonathan Ledbetter each got one. Tyrique McGhee led the Black team with six total tackles. The Black team looked unstoppable up front and the secondary was able to shut down Fromm for the most part. For the Red side, KJ Smith recorded the only interception off of Justin Fields. Monty Rice led the game in tackles with fourteen total. The backups looked like backups, but they were definitely a good group of players and have a lot of potential. After the game, D’Andre Walker said, “I feel like we as a whole did rush pretty well. We stayed in front of the quarterback a lot, and then towards the end, it did kind of get sloppy. We’ve just got to go back to it and work on it in the offseason.”

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