Pound for Pound: In Gunner we must trust

Published 9:08 am Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Three games to go and Carson Beck isn’t going to come out of the tunnel wearing pads in any of them.

Barring a benching or injury, the starting quarterback job at Georgia belongs to Gunner Stockton for the rest of this season. The Rabun County product has been thrust into the spotlight due to Beck’s elbow injury that required surgery to fix.

If you haven’t read Mark Schlabach’s excellent ESPN piece on Stockton and his family, I urge you to do so. It begins by highlighting Beck’s and Stockton’s choice in vehicles. The Florida native Beck drives a Lamborghini that came his way as part of an NIL deal with a high-end automotive group. Stockton drives down from the north Georgia mountains in a 1984 Ford F-150 pickup truck that’s twice his age with over 300,000 miles on it. No air conditioning, power locks or windows.

While their respective rides could not be any more different, I think there are more similarities between the two signal-callers than most realize. Stockton has been pegged as the more proficient runner, but Beck was more mobile than he’s received credit for. On multiple timely occasions these past two seasons, he’s pulled the football down and bought time or found some yardage with his feet.

The two are also alike in that they both have been ‘trust the process’ guys. Beck and Stockton arrived in Athens as highly-touted prospects, but have had to wait their turns to get into the driver’s seat. They didn’t skip town and seek early playing time elsewhere. And if football wasn’t going to work out, the quarterbacks had possible futures on the baseball diamond as well.

Where do the two differ? Experience is the obvious divide. Beck has nearly two full seasons as starter under his belt while Stockton only began taking first-team snaps a few weeks ago. It’s that experience gap that, I think, makes Beck more comfortable as a passer.

I’ve got to see more downfield throwing ability from Stockton before I’m satisfied with handing him the starting role in 2025. He was Captain Checkdown when he completed 12 of his 16 passes against Texas in Atlanta.

But you don’t checkdown your way to the Georgia high school record for career passing touchdowns or third all-time in career passing yards behind Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Georgia Tech’s Aaron Philo, who threw the football 30 times per game at Prince Avenue. I know Stockton has it in him; it’s just a matter of how much more comfortable he’s gotten in the offense over these last several weeks.

He’ll take the first snap of Georgia’s opening drive in the Sugar Bowl in a familiar position – a Georgia native backup behind the out-of-state starter who got hurt. It happened back in 2017 when Houston County’s Jake Fromm had to take over for Jacob Eason, who got hurt in the season opener against Appalachian State. The team Stockton gets his first start against is the same as the one Fromm did – Notre Dame.

Maybe a little Georgia football history will repeat itself when the Dawgs take on the Irish in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal New Year’s night.