Georgia remembers last year’s loss to Tennessee, but not as motivation

Aaron Davis doesn’t remember the specifics of every game he has played, but he still remembers the way he felt after Tennessee completed a 43-yard pass with no time on the clock to beat Georgia last season.

As Volunteers receiver Jauan Jennings came down with the desperation heave from quarterback Joshua Dobbs, Davis looked on from about 10 yards away. He had been guarding the only receiver on the right side of Tennessee's formation. For Davis, the moment didn’t feel like real life.

Georgia had just taken a 31-28 lead when Jacob Eason found receiver Riley Ridley for a 47-yard touchdown. Then there was Jennings, catching the ball while six Bulldogs surrounded him.

“It was a blank feeling,” Davis said.

Georgia’s game Saturday against Tennessee will be nearly a year to the day since the teams last met. In the year since, the play has remained present in the lives of Georgia’s players. Thanks to highlight packages and social media, it will never leave.

Inside Tennessee’s media guide, at the beginning of the section reviewing 2016, there is a full-page picture of Jennings rising above Georgia’s players.

“It plays back in my head every day just because Tennessee — I don't like losing to them,” center Lamont Gaillard said. “It's something we have to deal with and move forward from.”

Although Georgia’s players are not dismissing that the play happened, they maintain they are not drawing motivation from last year’s improbable finish for this week’s game. It’s something that happened and something they tried to learn from.

“I think you have to be careful psychologically with that,” head coach Kirby Smart said. “We don't use that as motivation. Our motivation is about us and trying to get better.”

This season, Jennings is out indefinitely with a wrist injury. Dobbs is a rookie on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Every Georgia defender on the field for that play, with the exception of Quincy Mauger and Maurice Smith, is expected to play Saturday.

At 6-foot-6, outside linebacker Lorenzo Carter was in the end zone to knock the ball down that day. After the game, Carter did postgame interviews. Where he stood, he could see the empty field. He kept looking back at it in disbelief.

Last week, after Georgia beat Mississippi State 31-3 and cemented itself as the favorite in the SEC East — a position Tennessee was in this time last year — Carter, standing in the vicinity of where he did almost a year earlier, was asked how many times he has seen the play.

“I can’t even tell you,” Carter said. “But I've seen it more than I like.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Georgia remembers last year’s loss to Tennessee, but not as motivation."