His term has been briefer even than a Democratic congressman’s.
In the garden of perennial quarterbacks, he is the annual — the marigold among the forget-me-nots. A one-and-done by circumstance, not by choice.
We’re coming up on a year now since Hutson Mason made his first start for Georgia, as injured Aaron Murray’s stand-in against rival Georgia Tech. On Saturday, the fifth-year senior makes his final start against Tech. Blink and the Mason Era is ancient history.
“I’ve always said over my career here, it seems like the days have gone by slow, but the years have gone by fast. It’s weird how that works,” Mason said, allowing himself a bit of reverie in the midst of a tunnel-visioned football season. “How can those two work together?
“Overall it really has gone fast. And what really makes it go fast is when you’re winning and when you’re enjoying it.”
There remains work to be done before Mason drives off in the same 1992 Chevy pick-up that delivered him to Athens from Lassiter High in 2010. There’s the encore against Tech, and he’ll have to go some distance to improve upon the drama of that one, awakening the Bulldogs from an early 20-0 deficit to win in overtime squared.
An appearance in the SEC Championship game — and a chance to mirror that other Job of Georgia quarterbacks, D.J. Shockley — remains a possibility. And there’s a bowl game out there somewhere, along with a chance to show off to pro scouts at the East-West Shrine game.
Still, having bided his time for so long while Murray owned the stage, it seems that there should be even more for Mason at this point. Especially since he really seems to be getting a feel for this big-time-college-starting-quarterback thing.
Turns out, this job was like a new pair of jeans. Week by week, the more he wore it, the more comfortable it became. And in the process, haven’t the skeptics in the audience grown more relaxed with him?
Not that it came automatically or easily. Can we slow for a second and inventory what went into the making of the one-year quarterback? There have been grand victories and two debilitating losses, but it remains possible here, near the end — depending upon Missouri — for Mason to duplicate Shockley’s feat of stepping in his senior year and winning the SEC in 2005. So, how did he get here?
Not blindly or by chance.
For instance, early this season while Mason said he was struggling to find his place in the Bulldogs’ run-oriented offense, he found himself scouting Tom Brady news conferences. He was looking for clues on how to deal publicly with poor production. (New England was down at the time). “I found it interesting to watch see how he’s handling it, what’s his demeanor?” Mason said. And like Brady, Mason was cool and collected during every media autopsy.
Having spent the better part of four years as the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency quarterback, Mason had to learn all over again how to handle being coached up to play the most important position on the field.
“I wasn’t used to the kind of really hard coaching that I got this year,” he said. “I’ve had to learn how to handle it when a coach is really getting on you. Learn that even when you feel like the coaches don’t have confidence in you, you’ve got to have that thick skin and that confidence in yourself.”
Mason does not fit any kind of metro Atlanta stereotype. He’s an east Cobb product with a country disposition. “I call myself the blacktop cowboy,” he said, grinning. Thus, it is fitting to use an allegory from his favorite hobby when describing the unease Mason was feeling in this season’s first handful of games.
He recalls last hunting season, lining up a deer in his sights, but being unsure whether it was mature enough to harvest. So he didn’t shoot. A couple of weeks later he heard that someone else had killed what was believed to be that same buck, and it would have been the biggest trophy of Mason’s hunting life.
That’s a little how he felt at the start of this season: uncertain, wanting the perfect outcome, hesitant about pulling the trigger.
Around Game 6 at Missouri, coincidental with Todd Gurley’s suspension, Mason said he finally fell into a comfortable competitive rhythm.
“For me, earlier in the year I wanted to be the perfect quarterback. Where was the perfect place to go with the ball on every play? And it kind of made me into a robot instead of being out there being the gunslinger that I was,” he said.
“Early on, our run game was so dominant that everyone was talking run game, run game. (He and the receivers in particular) were wondering: Where do I fit in this puzzle? So for us to kind of step out of our shell and make some plays helped our confidence. We thought: Now we are adding something to this pie, we are contributing.”
Four of Mason’s top five passing yardage outputs have come in the back half of this season. That’s not the ultimate measure, for with the Bulldogs’ backfield, why would he put up huge passing numbers? (He ranks 10th in the SEC in passing yardage.) In this offense, the very best thing he could do is to be a good shepherd of the football. He has a conference-low three interceptions and ranks first in passing efficiency.
Who can even remember his last interception? It was Oct. 4, vs. Vanderbilt, if you must know.
“That’s him being a smart football player, him knowing his reads, not taking any dumb chances really,” Bulldogs receiver Michael Bennett said. “He’s going to take the check-down if it’s there. He’s not going to force the ball downfield. He’s going to be a sound football player.”
A roommate and a hunting buddy, Bennett can speak to the “goofy” Mason who occupies a deer stand. On the more regimented fields of football, he has to play the leader. That was one of the great unknowns: After so long in a supporting role, how would Mason step up to all the responsibilities of being in charge?
“Be a leader,” his parents often told their young son when they tucked him into bed at night. “Be a leader,” they reminded him later before he’d go out at night with friends.
He always seemed to take to heart the best advice of his elders, his father, Kirk Mason, said. And when speaking about the various keys to leadership, sure enough, Mason relies upon the wisdom of those Socratic voices in the coaches’ offices.
“One thing coach Bobo (offensive coordinator Mike) talks about all the time is you’re not here to be liked, you’re here to accomplish something great,” Mason said.
“That’s what makes a great leader. Do you have that relationship with your players where they know you have their backs but at the same time, if I feel like my buddy is not giving full effort, are you willing to jump on that guy?”
As part of the process of steeling himself for the starting job, Mason shut down most of his social-media exposures (back home, his mother, too, took a Facebook break). Already Mason has advised his likely successor, Brice Ramsey, to do the same. Along the way he coined a phrase for Twitter, one the company is unlikely to adopt. “The devil’s playground,” Mason called it.
OK, there was the 12-year-old who got through on Instagram after the Florida loss and told him how much he stunk. “Well, I thought, that’s a wonderful way to wake up on a Sunday morning,” Mason remembered.
What emerged was not the most statistically sparkling quarterback to play for Georgia, not the most cannon-armed nor crazy-legged. But, certainly, an administrator of the offense of the highest order.
Asked recently what he would want any NFL personnel man to know about his quarterback, Bulldogs coach Mark Richt pointedly stressed qualities not measured on the combine turf:
“That he’s a very sharp guy; he can process any kind of information that you might need him to process within your system. He has a great sense of anticipation and is a very accurate passer.
“And he’s tough enough to handle the responsibility of the job. He’s also been a guy that teammates have gravitated to as a leader, a guy they trust, a guy they enjoy playing with and for.”
Twice Mason toyed with the idea of transferring from Georgia, after his freshman season and in advance of his junior season. Early, he just couldn’t make it happen. Later, said his father, “The red and black was in his blood.”
As the brief window of his Georgia playing career closes, inevitably Mason must judge whether the results have been worth the wait.
Even at this late date, the answer remains incomplete.
“It has been worth the wait in that I don’t have any regrets,” he said.
“But I think the question is: Did you accomplish what you really wanted to accomplish? And that can only be answered if we go to Atlanta and win. That’s really all I ever had on my mind, why I wanted to stay here. I wanted to win an SEC championship.”
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