Colorado Vs Georgia Tech TLP Post-Game Breakdown

Colorado 14, Georgia Tech 13. Final. The Buffaloes trailed by six with under two minutes left, needed a touchdown just to get to the lead, and got it — then had to survive one more Georgia Tech possession to keep it. They did, on the final play, on a block.

That’s the whole game, right there: Colorado lost the middle two and a half quarters and won the only two minutes that counted.

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The Box Score Says Georgia Tech Should Have Won

Georgia Tech outgained Colorado through the air by 113 yards. Alberto Mendoza threw for 237 yards and posted a 160.5 rating in his first collegiate start, at home. Georgia Tech was the more explosive offense — 14.8% of its plays gained 20-plus through the air or 10-plus on the ground, against Colorado’s 7.9%.

None of it was enough, because Colorado controlled the game Georgia Tech wasn’t playing.

	Colorado	Georgia Tech	What it meant
Turnovers	0	1	Colorado finished plus-one
Third downs	7-of-17 (41.2%)	5-of-13 (38.5%)	Nearly even — Colorado converted two more
Time of possession	34:09	25:51	Colorado held the ball 8:18 longer
Total offense	307 yds	288 yds	Colorado plus-19, on only 124 passing yards
Rushing offense	183 yds	51 yds	Colorado flipped the pregame storyline completely

The Must-Have Stat: Colorado ran 76 plays to Georgia Tech’s 54 — 22 more offensive plays. Georgia Tech played fewer, bigger snaps. Colorado played more, smaller ones, and the extra volume is what put the ball in Julian Lewis’s hands with 1:40 left instead of on the sideline.

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Play of the Game: Boo Carter Blocks the Walk-Off

Georgia Tech had one shot left. Mendoza hit Dalen Penson for 42 yards on the first snap after Colorado took the lead, moving the ball from the Georgia Tech 25 to the Colorado 33 in a single play. Colorado’s defense held from there, forcing fourth-and-four at the 27. Aidan Birr lined up for 45 yards, on the final play of the game, for the win.

Boo Carter got a hand on it.

The block turned Julian Lewis’s go-ahead touchdown from “a nice answer” into the actual final score. It was Carter’s second game-changing play of the night — he also recovered a Georgia Tech fumble in the first quarter, on a night the Yellow Jackets’ only turnover proved to be the margin.

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Players of the Game

Offense — Julian Lewis, Colorado. Quiet for three and a half quarters, then decisive when it mattered: four completions for 60 yards on the winning drive alone, capped by a 20-yard touchdown to Charlie Williams with 37 seconds left. He finished 14-of-27 for 124 yards, one touchdown, no interceptions — a 102.7 rating built almost entirely in the final two minutes.

Defense — Colorado’s run front. Not one player — the whole group. Georgia Tech ran 30 times for 51 official yards, 1.7 per carry. Justice Haynes, one of the most productive backs in the country a year ago, managed 19 carries for 64 yards and was held to 3 yards on the third-and-seven that set up the blocked kick.

Kicker/Special Teams — Boo Carter, Colorado DB. A fumble recovery and the game-winning block. Two decisive plays, neither of them a stat line anyone predicts before kickoff.

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The Non-Obvious Stat: Colorado Solved the Exact Problem We Flagged

Our pregame breakdown pointed at one specific tension: Colorado’s defense graded 76.5 against the run in 2025 while still allowing 223 rushing yards a game — a grade that didn’t match the box score. Justice Haynes, we wrote, was “exactly the back that gap needed.”

He wasn’t. Colorado held Georgia Tech to 51 rushing yards on 30 attempts — 1.7 per carry, sack-adjusted to 2.7 on designed runs. The run-defense grade that looked too good to be true a day ago showed up in the actual result tonight. That’s the storyline reversal of the game: the unit we questioned was the unit that won it.

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Hidden Plays

Fourth-and-goal at the Georgia Tech 3, first quarter. DeKalon Taylor gained 2 yards to the Georgia Tech 1. Georgia Tech’s defense stopped Colorado short of the goal line, ending a drive that began at the Georgia Tech 26 and keeping the game scoreless.

The overturned fumble, 2:03 left in the second quarter. Officials initially ruled a Julian Lewis sack-fumble had given Georgia Tech the ball at the Colorado 17. Replay changed it to an incomplete pass. Colorado kept the ball, and a prime Georgia Tech scoring chance disappeared with it.

Justice Haynes stopped for 3 yards on third-and-seven, fourth quarter. The gain left Georgia Tech facing fourth-and-four at the Colorado 27. The Yellow Jackets then attempted the 45-yard field goal that Carter blocked.

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Scoring Timeline

Quarter	Time	Play	Score
2nd	13:06	Micah Welch 5-yard rushing TD	Colorado 7 – GT 0
2nd	12:52	Rahkeem Smith 100-yard kickoff return TD	Tied 7-7
2nd	2:03	Aidan Birr 22-yard field goal	GT 10 – Colorado 7
4th	1:40	Aidan Birr 29-yard field goal	GT 13 – Colorado 7
4th	0:37	Julian Lewis to Charlie Williams, 20-yard TD	Colorado 14 – GT 13
4th	0:00	Boo Carter blocks Birr’s 45-yard field goal	Final: Colorado 14 – GT 13

A 100-yard kickoff return and two blocked field goals in one game — special teams decided this one as much as either offense did.

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Scoring the Pregame Pick

Our call was Georgia Tech, by a margin tighter than the line, on the logic that Colorado’s imported pass rush would need time to show up against a proven tackle duo. Wrong on the winner, closer to right on the shape of the game than the score suggests. We got the margin right — this was a one-score game decided in the final minute, as tight as we projected. We got the run-defense read backwards: Colorado’s defense didn’t just play sound football that a rushing-yardage total obscured, as the pregame numbers suggested — it actually held Georgia Tech to 51 yards on the ground, the best version of what that grade promised.

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All figures sourced from the official final box score and play-by-play, verified September 4, 2026. PFF postgame grades were not yet available at publication — PFF still showed its in-game feed, not final processed grades, at data-pull time — and will be added once PFF marks the game Final Grades Available. TLP Sports Club.

Sources and corrections

Official final box score and play-by-play · Georgia Tech game report · Colorado game report.

Correction, September 5, 2026: The earlier version described Mendoza’s home start as a road start, called offensive plays possessions, misidentified the first-quarter goal-line stop, and misstated the distance remaining before the final field-goal attempt. Those passages have been corrected. A graphic with an incorrect scoring timeline has also been removed.

Harry B. and TLP use AI to research and assist in the publication of this article. AI makes mistakes, so please check for yourself.