With a dominant late burst, Georgia dethrones Alabama for its first national title since 1980

Georgia got that first national championship in 41 years in the College Football Playoff title game, and it gave sixth-year coach and Georgia alumnus Kirby Smart his first win in five games against his former boss, Alabama Coach Nick Saban, and it reversed its shocking 41-24 loss to Alabama 37 days prior in the SEC championship game. It got all that before 68,311 through an ordeal of a game strewn with short passes, Georgia penalties and, for a long while, no touchdowns.Yep, the barren bear of a game yielded no touchdowns until 1:20 remained in the third quarter, Zamir White’s one-yard run for Georgia’s 13-9 lead, arranged by James Cook’s electrifying 67-yard run right, then through the line, then leftward and long.Highlights from Georgia’s win over Alabama in the national title gameThen, when the Bulldogs (14-1) found trouble and deficit again, they got the winner that will thrill their craving fans for merely the remainder of life, former walk-on Stetson Bennett’s 40-yard touchdown pass on second and 18 up the right side to Adonai Mitchell, who won a wrestle for the ball in the end zone and in tight coverage against Alabama’s Khyree Jackson.That made it 19-18.Some 8:09 remained.Georgia had drawn close.It would get Bennett’s 15-yard touchdown pass to stud tight end Brock Bowers with 3:33 left. I have no words.”“I think our defense is definitely in the history books,” safety Lewis Cine said of a unit dominant all year, then torched by Alabama for 536 yards Dec. 4, then resolute when Alabama got 399 yards but stalled repeatedly in the red zone Monday.In the mix and mirth of all of it, Georgia had weathered a nightmare.That came after the game creaked into the fourth quarter with an eccentric little score of 13-12 (to Georgia), just as Alabama’s defense seemed to ratchet up its speed and energy. And the injury fate got lousy.It befell Jameson Williams, the blur of an Alabama all-American wide receiver as he completed the kind of dazzling 40-yard long ball up the middle that called to mind Dec. 4: the SEC championship game, the day Alabama receivers found shockingly open prairies against Georgia’s Hercules defense.