Fleeting Thoughts: Vanderbilt Edition

Abbreviated "Fleeting Thoughts" this week as I get set to hit the road from Nashville (stopping first for pancakes at Pancake Pantry) and heading back to Athens. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things, so feel free to remind me in the comments...

-- The numbers for the running game ended up pretty good: 37 rushes for 173 yards and a 4.7 yards-per-carry average. Those were season highs in both attempts and yards.

-- The problem, however, is this: Vandy came into the game ranked 90th in the country in rush defense, allowing 171 yards per game. Essentially, Georgia simply hit Vandy's average.

-- And the bigger problem is this: Until Georgia's penultimate drive on which the Dawgs marched 68 yards on 10 straight rushing plays, their numbers on the ground for the game were 24 carries for 62 yards. In other words, until Vandy had essentially thrown in the towel, the Dawgs were averaging just 2.58 yards per carry against a team that allows, on average, 171 yards per game.

-- I know Caleb King won't be the guy people are talking about today, but I thought he turned in a great performance. He was a beast on pass blocking and he ran hard. Add to that the two touchdowns and the fact that he was playing with a broken jaw, and he gets a gold star from me.

-- A.J. Green is freaking amazing. The 65-yard run was fantastic, too, because it was something we really haven't seen out of him before. I'm continually impressed, and it gets harder for him to impress me each week.

-- Cox's final numbers: 16-of-31 for 226 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT. Far from great, but then figure that 65 of those yards can be credited completely to A.J. Green and add in the fact that he was just 3 for his first 11 passing and I have to say, I think a dash of Logan Gray might have been a wise investment in the first half.

-- Speaking of Logan Gray, what happened to the notion that he'd never have to worry about getting hit because he'd never return a punt? Not only was he in to field a punt at the 35-yard line, but he backtracked to catch the punt with all his momentum going in the wrong direction AND he tried to return it. On top of all that, Georgia was also flagged for a penalty on that return.

-- Oh, and apparently the one return Gray should have been on the field for, he wasn't. Georgia was once again fooled on a fake punt. You know, there's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee. Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.

-- It was nice to actually see Prince Miller get to return a few punts. I'd almost forgotten how impressive he was last year.

-- Justin Houston is going to get overlooked because the defense overall hasn't been great, but his impact has been immense since his return. For the third time in five games with Houston playing, Georgia finished with at least nine tackles for a loss.

-- Larry Smith isn't very good.

-- Baccari Rambo should be playing all the time. Bryan Evans should be playing when Georgia is either up by 30 or down by 30.

-- Just one turnover this week. Step in the right direction. Of course, the other side of that is that Cox still has at least one interception in every game so far.

-- Blair Walsh is probably the best kicker in the SEC and is quickly working his way up the list nationally. I know Georgia's kickoff philosophy and coverage has cast Walsh in a negative light, but fans need to look past the stuff that's out of his hands. The kid leads the SEC in touchbacks and he is as money as they come on field goals and PATs.

-- Georgia's first four series included a whopping nine plays. That's bad.

-- On Georgia's next eight possessions (i.e. all the rest except the one to end the game), the Bulldogs ran no fewer than six plays on all but two. Included in that is a 12-play drive and a 10-play drive. This is what the offense needs to do against Florida. Chip away, and keep the Gators' offense off the field. (You know, if the officials will allow that to happen.)

-- Along those same lines, after Georgia had possession for just 5:30 of the first quarter, the Dawgs had the ball for at least 8 minutes in each of the final three quarters, including a monstrous 10:59 time of possession in the fourth.

-- Vandy was just 3-of-15 on third-down conversions. Whether or not that was really Georgia's problem all along, the Dawgs did a nice job of getting off the field Saturday.

-- Eight more penalties for 71 more yards. The most egregious? An illegal formation penalty coming out of a timeout.

-- Georgia had just four rushing TDs all year. Saturday they had three.

-- Fred Munzenmaier had three catches to tie for the team lead. That's not exactly great. But… 10 different Bulldogs caught a pass, and that's great. Diversity in the passing game will be a big bonus in two weeks.

-- Apparently spiking the football is excessive celebration when Rantavious Wooten does it. Grabbing the QB's towel after a sack and tossing it up in the air to celebrate is not excessive celebration when someone who doesn't play for Georgia does it. (And, yes, I thought it was just ridiculous that the refs were allowing Tim Tebow to set off bottle rockets, do an Irish step dance and take a few swings at a Hog-shaped pinata during the Florida game without a flag.)

-- Brandon Boykin is up to 600 yards in kick returns through seven games. That's just 90 yards shy of the school record. In. Seven. Games.

-- When I left the press box about midway through the fourth quarter, my initial thoughts on the game were these: Georgia played decent, but Cox struggled at times, the receivers still had too many drops, the running game was brutal for the better part of three quarters, the defense allowed Vandy's longest drive of the season to start the second half, Georgia was fooled on yet another fake punt, etc., etc., etc.

All of that would have been a reasonable and probably appropriate thought process.

And then I went down to the field and I watched the players walk into the locker rooms with giant smiles plastered across their faces. I talked to A.J. Green, who raved about the way the running game came through in the end. I talked to Joe Cox who raved, yet again, about how amazing A.J. is. I talked to Brandon Boykin, who went on and on about how much fun it was for Georgia to play that game. I talked to Caleb King, whose jaw was so sore he wasn't even supposed to be talking, but he couldn't contain his excitement either.

Sometimes "just a win" is more than that. I really think this win for Georgia meant something far more than it might have meant for a lot of the fans.

I'm not saying it means Georgia pulls the upset in two weeks, but I do think it was an absolutely necessary step toward making it a possibility.