Why this year’s QB battle at UGA is unlike any other in the Kirby Smart era
Every facet about the upcoming football season feels abnormal for Georgia. Nothing has gone as originally planned. Everything has potential to change within a matter of seconds.
That’s unless you take a walk through the first floor of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. A few doors down the weight room hallway sits Georgia’s quarterback room. New offensive coordinator Todd Monken has five quarterbacks who are viable options to play — or start — in 2020.
Everything is normal down here.
Monken leads each meeting as the conductor of his quarterback orchestra. He has a plethora of options to choose from —nothing new in the five years of Kirby Smart as Georgia’s head coach. The quarterback competition is seemingly a year-by-year occurrence, with 2019 being an outlier.
“I’m glad we have the guys we have in the room,” Smart said on Aug. 16 before the beginning of preseason practice. “We can pick the best one and let them go out and play.”
Three-year starter Jake Fromm announced Jan. 8 that he was leaving school early to turn pro. Then Georgia’s quarterback situation for 2020 began to unfold with National Signing Day and a graduate transfer addition. It already seemed like a deep pool then, until another notable name joined the party.
This battle will be unlike any other in the Smart era.
The Bulldogs have the quantity in order to extract its quality. Meet the five signal callers who will jostle for the starting job. Only one will take a majority of snaps to open the season on Sept. 26 at Arkansas.
Jamie Newman: A graduate transfer from Wake Forest, once believed to be the prized transfer addition for the Bulldogs. The North Carolina native had a strong campaign for the Demon Deacons: 2,868 passing yards, 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
JT Daniels: Amid the pandemic shutdown, Georgia added Daniels from Southern Cal. The former five-star missed most of the 2019 season due to a torn ACL. Daniels received an immediate eligibility waiver as an undergraduate transfer. He is not yet fully cleared to return, per Smart, but is inching closer.
Carson Beck: A freshman quarterback out of Jacksonville, Florida. Smart began to speak highly of the former four-star in February.
D’wan Mathis: Georgia landed Mathis as a 2018 recruit who flipped from Ohio State. Since then, Mathis has caught some bad breaks and awaits his turn. He suffered an injury that required brain surgery ahead of the 2019 season, and has had a gradual recovery. He could be an option in 2020. “I’ll be able to come back and give these guys everything I’ve got,” Mathis said from the locker room of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome after the Sugar Bowl.
Stetson Bennett: The one who players and fans call “Mail Man.” The Blackshear, Ga. native has his fair share of experience in a backup role after joining the Bulldogs as a walk-on, transferring to junior college and returning on scholarship.
Not many other programs have the riches of depth that the Bulldogs possess. These five join walk-ons Nathan Priestley and Jackson Muschamp in Monken’s room.
Of the five, the presumed favorites to lead the competition are the most-experienced of the two: the transfers. Newman and Daniels ran passing drills alongside each other in practice this week, according to photos released by the school, and it became a first look for players and coaches.
Georgia had only held walkthrough periods before Monday. Smart likened it to a mini-camp in the NFL. Newman (mid-foot sprain) and Daniels (knee) did not participate fully in those walkthroughs, Smart said. Newman is now fully cleared.
“(Newman) does a really good job of standing behind the huddle, standing behind the play, imagining taking the snap and getting the mental reps,” Smart said. “Until you get out there and do it, it’s not as easy.”
The Bulldogs have not yet donned pads due to the acclimation period. That will happen in the coming days.
“This is the chance to go out there and show what they got,” senior safety Richard LeCounte said of the quarterbacks. “This camp is to prove who you are, what kind of player you are. It’s going to be a lot of competition, a lot of guys going out there to make a name for themselves and this is the place to do it.”
Smart sees the quarterback competition just like competition at other positions. He realizes each of the five prospects for starter have been in competitive rooms before, and developments have occurred. Each day, all of the contending quarterbacks will get the chance to showcase and be evaluated.
They’ll be judged on a series of criteria, and Georgia hopes that process results in an adequate starter after a 40-day practice period.
“How do they command the huddle?” Smart said, listing a series of skills. “How do they respond to an interception? What do they do when they make a bust? Are they making the right check? Are they making the right decisions? Can they use their feet to extend plays?”
Smart favors his depth at quarterback, and understands that future attrition could be to come of it. In a shortened season, however, it could play to Georgia’s advantage with injuries or positive coronavirus tests.
This is nothing new in Athens. Allow evaluation time to begin.
“It’s going to be important that we find out what each one of those individual strengths and weaknesses are,” Smart said, “and what we can improve over the next four or five weeks to figure out who the best guy for the job is.”