Presented by TURN RIGHT SERVICES.
This Day In Sports…September 3, 2011, 15 years ago today:
Six years to the day after falling flat in its first appearance on a big national stage, Boise State avenges its 2005 rout at Georgia with a dominating 35-21 victory over the Bulldogs at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. After starting the game (and his senior season) 1-of-3 for four yards, Kellen Moore finished 28-of-34—an 82.3 percent clip, the seventh-best mark in Bronco history. Moore threw the 100th touchdown pass of his career to freshman Matt Miller and followed with TD strikes to Kyle Efaw and Tyler Shoemaker. It was, needless to say, the Broncos’ first-ever against an SEC school.
Boise State fans had a sinking feeling after finding out that wide receiver Geraldo Boldewijn, safety Cedric Febis and defensive tackle Ricky Tjong-A-Tjoe weren’t on the trip to Atlanta. Then they saw fullback Dan Paul decked out in jersey and jeans in pregame warm-ups on TV (or in person). The Broncos’ running game consequently struggled in the first half against Georgia. Yet Doug Martin and D.J. Harper clawed for every yard without him. Boise State had to show it would and could still run to change things up while Moore was surgically dissecting the Bulldogs. (It’s not lost on me that Paul and Martin are no longer with us.)
Moore’s national cool quotient rose exponentially after he totaled 261 yards with three touchdowns and one interception. KTVB’s Jay Tust (after the first Boise State game he ever covered) compiled some numbers for Sunday Sports Extra that magnified Moore’s cucumber-cool demeanor. After his interception in the second quarter, Kellen responded by completing 14 of his next 15 attempts for 118 yards and two decisive touchdowns.
You can’t take away the three Georgia touchdowns in the game, but those were the only three big plays the Bulldogs offense had all night. So let’s revisit what happens when you do take away those 167 yards they gained on the TDs. The Dawgs managed only 206 yards on their other 60 plays, just 3.6 yards per snap. More specifically on the rushing side, subtract Brandon Boykin’s 80-yard surprise and Boise State held Georgia to just 57 yards on the ground, less than two yards per carry. The six sacks the Broncos laid on quarterback Aaron Murray contributed nicely to that number.
Boise State players didn’t look at it this way. The coaches? Maybe a little (coach Chris Petersen, after all, was offensive coordinator at the time). But the huge win provided closure for the 2005 game in Athens that stuck in the craw for so long. The Broncos won 71 of their next 79 games and won two Fiesta Bowls, but the 48-13 loss to Georgia between the hedges was brought up annually in national discussions of the Broncos’ worthiness, as irrelevant as it became.
Forner quarterback Jared Zabransky, Boise State’s central figure in the Sanford Stadium debacle, said numerous times leading up to the rematch that the Broncos program wouldn’t be on the pedestal it had reached had it not gone through that experience. The team that drubbed the Bulldogs in 2011 was playing for that year’s props, not for 2005. But if the net effect was an exorcising of six-year-old demons and the climbing of another rung on the ol’ ladder of respect, so be it.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
