Ladd McConkey sees Georgia football ‘really rallying’ behind Gunner Stockton
ATHENS — Los Angeles Chargers rookie record-holder Ladd McConkey knew about Gunner Stockton — up close and personal — before either player emerged on the Georgia football radar.
“I knew he was a stud back then,” said McConkey, whose North Murray High School team played Stockton’s Rabun County in 2018 and 2019.
“When he was a freshman and sophomore … I won’t say how the score went for my sake, but that was my first impression of him.”
Stockton served notice of what was to come in his high school record-breaking years in the second game of his freshman season, leading Rabun County to a 52-42 win, despite a 92-yard McConkey kick return for a touchdown that jump-started a comeback from 24-0 down in that 2018 high school game.
Stockton, whose rapid improvement as Georgia’s quarterback has him in the Heisman Trophy conversation, was 23-of-30 passing for 267 yards and 4 touchdowns against North Murray and carried 10 times for 40 yards in the first of his many high school victories.
Stockton, as a sophomore, led Rabun County to a 38-17 win over North Murray in 2019 in a game that saw McConkey exit with an injury in the second quarter. Stockton was 20-of-29 passing 262 yards with three touchdown passes along with 12 carries for 72 yards and a touchdown.
McConkey was emerging as a collegiate star when Stockton arrived at UGA in 2022, going off with five catches for 73 yards and a touchdown and two carries for 16 yards and another touchdown in Georgia’s season-opening 49-3 win over then-No. 11 Oregon.
Stockton, a freshman, stood on the sidelines that day in Mercedes-Benz Stadium as UGA’s fourth-string quarterback and quietly watched McConkey ascend from being a 3-star recruit to Wuerffel Trophy winner and 34th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
Stockton did have some meaningful passes to McConkey leading up to that NFL draft, throwing to him at UGA’s Pro Day workout in front of scouts leading up to the Chargers’ picking him.
When McConkey’s not dazzling NFL fans — he set an NFL rookie record with 197 yards in a playoff game after setting the Chargers franchise rookie record with 82 receptions for 1,149 yards (along with seven touchdowns) last season — he’s watching Stockton lead the Bulldogs.
“They’ve been playing good, I feel like they just found ways to win,” McConkey said. “(They’ve) not always started off the hottest, but when it comes down to crunch time, they just find a way to win, and Gunner’s leading those guys.
“You can tell those guys are really rallying behind him and believe in him and trust him.”
McConkey, key to both of Georgia’s CFP championship seasons in 2021 and 2022 as a leading receiver and punt returner, sees the current team building the same chemistry that led his Bulldogs teams to titles.
“Those guys just love each other,” McConkey said. “You can see how they play and how excited they get for one another, so I’m riding with the Dawgs the whole way this year.”
McConkey expects he’ll one day be exchanging postgame handshakes in the NFL with many of the UGA players, as he makes it a point to do with all former Georgia players.
“One hundred percent, whether it’s pregame, or postgame … I switch jerseys, or just catch up with them,” McConkey said. “It’s always good to see those guys because we had some battles on the field, team runs, Bloody Tuesdays.
“We’ve been through some stuff together, so it’s always good to catch up with them.”
McConkey shared that “stuff” — the player development Kirby Smart is known for — truly makes a difference in preparing players for the NFL.
“They prepared me in a ton of ways …. one of the biggest things is like, everything matters in the way that Georgia approached meetings, the way that Georgia approached walk-throughs,” McConkey said. “Walk-throughs in the NFL, you might rep something on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and you don’t rep it again until Sunday.
“So those walk-through reps are game reps. They matter. And I think we kind of approached it like that at Georgia, too.”
McConkey said there are similar traits playing for Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, even though the former Michigan quarterback and head coach takes a different approach than Smart.
“They’re really different in a lot of ways, but the similarity is they both find a way to win, and they both know how to get their guys to buy in and really dive into the culture and what the teams are about,” McConkey said.
“So different in their own ways and how they get that to happen, but they’re both winners, they’re both competitors, and they both do a good job of bringing the team together.”
McConkey’s Chargers, 7-4, have a bye this week and will return to action with a home game against Brock Bowers and the Las Vegas Raiders at 4:25 p.m. on Nov. 30.
As much as McConkey knows the Chargers’ faithful will be behind him, he knows the Fantasy Football phenomenon will be in full effect.
“There’s people out there that live, breathe and die with fantasy football, I tell everybody out there, all my fantasy owners, I’m giving you my all,” McConkey said with a chuckle.
“You’ll get my all every week, so I’m doing my best out there. I want to score as many points as I can, (and) I want to score more points for myself than y’all do.”
No doubt, and with McConkey’s great speed and quickness, there promises to be more big performances ahead.
“A big thing is just trusting your speed, hitting it, playing fast,” McConkey said. “There’s a lot of fast guys, but if you’re not playing fast on the field, then you’re not using your skill set.
“So I just try to play fast, react on the fly, and I think that’s when I’m playing my best football.”
About the Author
Mike is in his eighth season covering SEC and Georgia athletics for AJC-DawgNation and has 30 years of collegiate sports multimedia experience, 25 of them in the SEC including beat writer stops at Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee and now Georgia. Mike was named the National FWAA Beat Writer of the Year in January, 2018.
