Georgia State once led this series 6-3. Georgia Southern has won the last three to even it, and a win in Atlanta would put the Eagles back in front for the first time since 2014, when Southern Not State first met State Not Southern.
Last Saturday the Panthers went to Boone, where they had never won, and beat App State 39-23 for their first win over the Mountaineers in 13 tries. They did it the plain way: run the ball and don't give it away. Lanear McCrary Jr. ran for more than 100 yards, Ayden Pereira threw three touchdown passes without an interception, and Coby Owens picked off Malachi Singleton twice, taking the first one back for a score.
Fall comes early in the mountains, and so, it seems, did a change for Georgia State. Boone ended a three-game skid. Saturday at Center Parc, with the downtown skyline looking on, will show whether it turned the season too.
That same afternoon, by the time the crowd filed out of Paulson Stadium, Georgia Southern had taken Marshall apart 49-13, and Max Johnson looked like himself again. He hurt his throwing shoulder at Old Dominion in mid-October and missed most of that game. Against the Thundering Herd he threw four touchdown passes and ran for another, his first rushing score of the season. The Eagles' defense keeps coming up with the ball, too. Chace Calicut returned an interception for a touchdown on Marshall's first play. Later, Chance Gamble picked off another, a week after his interception in the end zone sealed the win over App State.
It looks like Pereira's job again. Cameran Brown has missed two straight games with an undisclosed injury, and he's listed as doubtful for Saturday. After the way Pereira played in Boone, the Panthers have no reason to hurry Brown back.
The real fight on Saturday comes in two matchups that mirror each other. On the ground, one of the best running teams in the league meets one of its stingiest run defenses. The Eagles' worst day against the run came last Saturday, when Marshall went for 250 yards, and that same day Georgia State ran for 265 in Boone, its best against an FBS team all season. Up front, Georgia State leads the Sun Belt in sacks, and Georgia Southern's line has allowed the fewest, just eight all season. The Panthers had six sacks in Boone, but Marshall didn't get a single one against the Eagles.
The mirror holds on third down, too. Georgia State converts more often than anyone in the Sun Belt, and the Eagles' defense is among the league's best at getting off the field. Flip it around and it's the same story: Georgia Southern moves the chains well, and no defense in the conference gets more third-down stops than the Panthers'. Both teams would rather keep the ball than chase the game, and on Saturday only one of them gets to.
Something has to give.
Both teams are 5-4, though they took opposite roads to get there. The Eagles started 1-3 and have won four of five, and the Panthers started 4-1 before losing three straight. The winner gets to six wins, the usual mark for a bowl trip. The Eagles come to Atlanta perched alone atop the East, with James Madison one loss back and looking up. A win would keep them there with two games left.
Georgia State is out of the division race, but a sixth win would mean plenty. Dell McGee's first two teams won four games between them, and this one would make the Panthers bowl eligible for the first time on his watch. It would also break the series tie in the Panthers' favor.
There's hardware on the line as well. This is the third Georgia Grown Bowl, and the winner takes home the Commissioner's Cup. Two years ago the Eagles won it in this same stadium and took it home to Statesboro on the team bus, and they kept it last fall. A Panthers win would park the Cup in Atlanta for the first time.
Clay Helton and Dell McGee were teammates at Auburn in 1992, so both were hollering "War Eagle" long before either one coached the Eagles in Statesboro. McGee coached the running backs there in 2014 and 2015, and when Willie Fritz left for Tulane that December, he took over for the GoDaddy Bowl and led Georgia Southern past Bowling Green, 58-27, in the first bowl game in program history. Fritz's team earned that trip. Eleven years later, McGee is one win from earning one of his own.
The projection is Georgia Southern 27, Georgia State 24. The Eagles have the steadier quarterback, the best passing game in the Sun Belt going against a Panthers pass defense in the bottom half of the league, and an offense that rarely gives the ball away. They have also won the last three meetings by double digits. But the Panthers are at home, coming off the biggest win of their season, and built to keep Johnson waiting, so this should be closer than the last three.
The market, for the record: Georgia Southern is about a 5.5-point favorite, and the total is 56.5. The projection (Georgia Southern by 3) sits a little under the line.
What breaks it: Georgia State runs the way it did against App State, and Johnson spends the afternoon on the bench watching. The other way it breaks: the Panthers fall behind early, have to throw, and give the Eagles' secondary the chances it has cashed in over the last two weeks.