ATHENS – If you’re buying into the narrative that Georgia has one passing quarterback and a couple of running quarterbacks, Kirby Smart has some words for you.
Smart took umbrage with one blogger’s question Saturday evening about the Bulldogs’ “diversity” at quarterback and how they go about preparing for “QB run” when quarterbacks are not allowed to be hit during practice.
“I don’t really see any of our three quarterbacks as quarterback-run people,” Smart said following the Bulldogs’ first scrimmage of preseason camp. “I mean, I didn’t see Stetson (Bennett) that way. Could Stetson run? Yeah. But we didn’t design runs. Maybe a few in the red area, but we didn’t design runs. We don’t really want our quarterback physically getting hit.”
As everyone knows, Bennett exhibited exceptional mobility playing quarterback for the Bulldogs the last two seasons and occasionally broke long runs. The most notable was his 64-yard scamper for a touchdown against Auburn last October.
But while that run came off a designed zone-read quarterback keeper, most of Bennett’s yards on the ground were produced more organically through the offense, either when evading pass pressure, not finding receivers open or as the third-option on a run-pass option (RPO) play. Bennett totaled 330 yards rushing last season, or an average of 13.7 per game. He had 10 rushing touchdowns, most of them coming on quarterback sneaks and other such plays deep inside the red zone.
Credit: Tony Walsh/UGAAA
Credit: Tony Walsh/UGAAA
Both Brock Vandagriff and Gunner Stockton came to Georgia with reputations for being able to move with the football in their hands. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Vandagriff signed with the Bulldogs as the No. 2-ranked “dual-threat” quarterback in the nation in 2021. He had 74 carries for 500 yards and 17 touchdowns as a high school senior at Prince Avenue Christian School.
Similarly, the 6-1, 210-pound Stockton also was ranked No. 2 in the country as a dual-threat quarterback when he signed with UGA out of Rabun County High in 2022. He had 956 yards and 15 TDs on a 137 carries his senior year.
Despite their supposed acumen for carrying the football, Smart said there are no plans to create special QB run packages for either Vandagriff or Stockton, who are expected to open the season as backups to Beck.
“Not the case,” Smart said sharply. “Now can one of them maybe run a little better than the others? Maybe a little bit. These three guys are all three pretty good athletes. I don’t know how diverse they are. When I hear diverse, I think, ‘oh, they’re all three really different.’ They’re all three really more the same than they are different.”
Smart often has asserted that Beck is more athletic than he is given credit for. At 6-4 and a beefed-up 220 pounds as a fourth-year junior this season, Beck always has been considered a traditional pro-style, drop-back quarterback. When he was named Mr. Florida Football as a junior at Mandarin High School in Jacksonville, Beck passed for 3,546 yards and 39 TDs, including five in the victorious state championship game. He ran for just 167 yards and 6 touchdowns that year.
At Georgia, Beck has only 58 yards rushing on 12 attempts over three seasons.
“If you lined them up in the 40, one might be a little faster than the others,” Smart said of Georgia’s three quarterbacks. “One might be a little more instinctive in the pocket than the others. One might be just a better runner, as in reading blocks, because maybe he ran better in high school. But I don’t see them that different.
“We will not have an extensive quarterback run package. We just don’t. We’re going to give the ball to our backs and we’re going to throw the ball to the perimeter and let our skill guys do things with it.”
