King, Stockton to meet for first time in Clean Old-Fashioned Hate

Fans who make their way to Mercedes-Benz Stadium at 3:30 p.m. Friday for the next installment of the Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalry could be treated to an elite level of play by two quarterbacks.

Both Tech’s Haynes King and Georgia’s Gunner Stockton have been exceptional for their respective teams this season, and both have been in and out of the Heisman Trophy discussion for the past four months. Now the two will take the same field for the first time as opposing QBs.

“I met (Stockton) this past summer at the Manning Passing Academy” King said Tuesday. “We have a pretty good relationship. Great dude. Great guy. Great ballplayer as well.”

King didn’t have the worst game of his career Saturday in a 42-28 loss to Pittsburgh at Bobby Dodd Stadium, but it was arguably one of his toughest to stomach.

King’s first-quarter interception, with the Yellow Jackets (9-2) already trailing 14-0, led to Pitt’s third touchdown of the evening. King’s second pick later that night was a backbreaker.

Tech had scored 14 consecutive points and trailed 28-14 as the clock ticked toward the six-minute mark of the third quarter. On third down from the Pitt 5, with the Jackets on the cusp of cutting the deficit to seven, King took a shotgun snap and rolled left while under heavy pressure.

His soft pass toward the goal line fell into the lap of Pitt linebacker Braylan Lovelace, who went the other way the length of the field for a pick-6 to make the score 35-14.

“They had it mugged up. They dropped the mug (linebacker), brought him outside, we couldn’t get back out to him. Technically, I gotta get the ball out,” King said of the play. “The mug ‘backer, he popped out, didn’t see him. Tried to replace with a little snap because they went, like, fire zone 2 (coverage) or whatever, like 2-deep, 4-under. I couldn’t throw to the (running) back, tried to use him as the hot (route), didn’t see him. I’m on the ground. Didn’t know (Lovelace) picked it.”

Said Tech coach Brent Key: “One thing I will say, credit to (King) for pulling himself in and getting right. The maturity and the focus of him was able to set.

“And it’s not always him either, now, by any means. He’ll sit there and take responsibility for it all. But we had protection breakdowns, we had timing and routes, we had receivers knocked off, we had drops, we had everything. So you can pile it all, let’s don’t for a second put all that on Haynes.”

Friday’s game will be King’s third chance to beat Georgia and his fifth chance to beat an SEC opponent as Tech’s quarterback (King himself, of course, was an SEC quarterback for three years at Texas A&M before transferring to Tech). In the previous four games against SEC foes, King is 90-for-130 passing (69.2%) for 972 yards and seven touchdowns, with only one interception. He also has 185 rushing yards in those games and six rushing scores.

One of King’s all-time performances came in 2024 in Athens at Sanford Stadium when the Texan ran for 110 yards, threw for 303 and accounted for five touchdowns in a 44-42, eight-overtime loss.

“Just look at the numbers, right? I mean, anytime you have a quarterback that has the experience he has — now I don’t know if he’s played five years, six years, I don’t know what it is? But he’s extremely experienced, extremely tough,” UGA coach Kirby Smart said of King on Monday. “I don’t think people understand how fast this guy is. He can run, and he was a great athlete in high school, track guy. The stories are all over of his success and his stories of where he’s been and the injuries he’s been through. And you see the hits he takes. I mean, he just gets stronger with each hit.”

Stockton, a redshirt junior from Rabun County High School, has had an outstanding season for the Bulldogs (10-1), his first as the team’s full-time starter. He has thrown for 2,465 yards and 19 touchdowns, completed 71.4% of his throws and been intercepted only four times.

Pro Football Focus grades Stockton as the 10th best passer in the country. He did not play in the 2024 or 2023 meetings between the Jackets and Dogs.

Friday’s game will be the last regular-season game for King in a Tech uniform and the final chance for Tech fans to see him play in Atlanta. And for all the numbers in his record-setting career, it is still a career void of a win over the Jackets’ most-hated rival.